release time:2023-11-29 07:47:09 source:clear white net author:{typename type="name"/}
Glossin, being a tall, strong, muscular man, was not unwilling rather to turn upon a stranger whom he hoped to bully, than maintain his wretched cause against his injured patron:--"I do not know who you are, sir," he said, "and I shall permit no man to use such d-d freedom with me."
Mannering was naturally hot-tempered--his eyes flashed a dark light--he compressed his nether lip so closely that the blood sprung, and approaching Glossin--"Look you, sir," he said, "that you do not know me is of little consequence. I know you; and, if you do not instantly descend that bank, without uttering a single syllable, by the Heaven that is above us, you shall make but one step from the top to the bottom!"
The commanding tone of rightful anger silenced at once the ferocity of the bully. He hesitated, turned on his heel, and, muttering something between his teeth about unwillingness to alarm the lady, relieved them of his hateful company.
Mrs. Mac-Candlish's postilion, who had come up in time to hear what passed, said aloud, "If he had stuck by the way, I would have lent him a heezie, [* Kick] the dirty scoundrel, as willingly as ever I pitched a boddle." [* A small copper coin]
He then stepped forward to announce that his horses were in readiness for the invalid and his daughter.
But they were no longer necessary. The debilitated frame of Mr. Bertram was exhausted by this last effort of indignant anger, and when he sunk again upon his chair, he expired almost without a struggle or groan. So little alteration did the extinction of the vital spark make upon his external appearance, that the screams of his daughter, when she saw his eye fix and felt his pulse stop, first announced his death to the spectators.
The bell strikes one.--We take no note of time But from its loss. To give it then a tongue Is wise in man. As if an angel spoke, I feel the solemn sound.-- YOUNG.
The moral which the poet has rather quaintly deduced from the necessary mode of measuring time, may he well applied to our feelings respecting that portion of it which constitutes human life. We observe the aged, the infirm, and those engaged in occupations of immediate hazard, trembling as it were upon the very brink of non-existence, but we derive no lesson from the precariousness of their tenure until it has altogether failed. Then, for a moment at least,
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