Lame as his horse was, the banker instantly put his foot into the stirrup; but before he could mount, a heavy gripe was laid on his shoulder--and turning round with as much fierceness as he could assume, he saw--what the tone of the voice had already led him to forebode--the ill-omened and cut-throat features of Luke Darvil. "Ha! ha! my old annuitant, my clever feelosofer--jolly old boy--how are you?--give us a fist. Who would have thought to meet you on a rainy night, by a lone haystack, with a deep ditch on one side, and no chimney-pot within sight? Why, old fellow, I, Luke Darvil,--I, the vagabond--I whom you would have sent to the treadmill for being poor, and calling on my own daughter--I am as rich as you are here--and as great, and as strong, and as powerful." And while he spoke, Darvil, who was really an undersized man, seemed to swell and dilate, till he appeared half a head taller than the shrinking banker, who was five feet eleven inches without his shoes. "E-hem!" said the rich man, clearing his throat, which seemed to him uncommonly husky; "I do not know whether I insulted your poverty, my dear Mr. Darvil--I hope not; but this is hardly a time for talking--pray let me mount, and--" "Not a time for talking!" interrupted Darvil angrily; "it's just the time to my mind: let me consider,--ay, I told you that whenever we met by the roadside it would be my turn to have the best of the argufying." "I dare say--I dare say, my good fellow." "Fellow not me!--I won't be fellowed now. I say I have the best of it here--man to man--I am your match." But why quarrel with me?" said the banker, coaxingly; "I never meant you harm, and I am sure you cannot mean me harm." "No!--and why?" asked Darvil, coolly;--" why do you think I can mean you no harm?" "Because your annuity depends on me." "Shrewdly put--we'll argufy that point. My life is a bad one, not worth more than a year's purchase; now, suppose you have more than forty pounds about you--it may be better worth my while to draw my knife across your gullet than to wait for the quarter-day's ten pounds a time. You see it's all a matter of calculation, my dear, Mr. What's-your-name!" "But," replied the banker, and his teeth began to chatter, "I have not forty pounds about me." "How do I know that?--you say so. Well, in the town yonder your word goes for more than mine; I never gainsaid you when you put that to me, did I? But here, by the haystack, my word is better than yours; and if I say you must and shall have forty pounds about you, let's see whether you dare contradict me." "Look you, Darvil," said the banker, summoning up all his energy and intellect, for his moral power began now to back his physical cowardice, and he spoke calmly, and even bravely, though his heart throbbed aloud against his breast, and you might have knocked him down with a feather--"the London runners are even now hot after you." "Ha!--you lie!"