Too well the squire knew the voice of the smith not to feel convinced that it was he, who in some freak of wilfulness or drunkenness was thus invading his gay saloons. Defy him, he dared not; kill him he dared not; nay, it was questionable if he dared even be rude to the burly, and perhaps infuriated savage. A deep groan burst from Learmont’s labouring breast, as the conviction came across his mind quicker than we can relate the various steps of thought that led to it, that he would always be subject to these visitations, even in his hours of greatest enjoyment, when he was making the attempt to drown reflections in a crowd of the gay and the trifling. None of the guests seemed disposed to place themselves in the way of Britton, and when the contest ceased between him and the servants, which it did at the door of the ball-room, he found himself free and unimpeded. With a reeling gait he walked to the very centre of the splendid apartment, and for the space of about a minute he seemed confused and half stupified by the glare of light around; and the brilliant costumes and decorations that everywhere met his drunken gaze. “Hulloa!” he cried at length, “the squire’s coming out at last. A dance, by h—ll I’m your man—I’ll dance with the best of you; I tread on no one’s toes if they avoid mine; I’ve had a little drop, but what matters? There are lights enough here to make a sober man’s brain dance again; what do you all stare at me for? I came with a message from the Old Smithy—tell that to the squire, and then hear what he says. Ho—ho—ho! We are old friends, very old friends, but he didn’t invite me to-night: it was d—d shabby; but here I am—the messenger from the Old Smithy, at ten guineas a visit. What do you think of that? If anybody says I’m drunk, I’ll take his life—his life I say—Hurrah for a dance! A dance! Hurrah!” Britton had all the ball-room nearly to himself, for the guests shrank from him on all sides, and Learmont seemed for the moment completely unmanned and powerless. Shaking off, however, by a violent effort the confusion of his senses, he suddenly advanced and confronted Britton. The smith shrunk for a moment before the pale face of Learmont, in which was an expression of concentrated rage and hate that might well have appalled even a far bolder man. Britton, however, was not in a state to admit of any moral control; drink was inflaming his brain, and there was a recklessness about him that, if not carefully treated, might involve both Learmont and himself in one common destruction. The haughty squire felt fully the precarious situation in which he stood, and therefore was it that in the midst of a wild passion that made him tremble, he felt obliged to temporise with the man whose life’s blood flowing at his feet would scarcely have satisfied his feelings of awful hatred. “Andrew Britton,” he said, in a half-choked voice, which he wished no one to hear but the smith.