"As you cannot get about and see for yourself, it seemed my duty to say something--for Miss Fisher's sake." "Aw!" ominously low and deep. "I say for Miss Fisher's sake, because I am in hopes, with your permission, to visit her as her--her future husband, and as I am sure her happiness and--" Crash! The blackthorn whizzed by St Bees' head and smashed the jug on the table. "Jim! Bill! Jane! Jack!" shouted the old man, starting out of his chair, purple in the face. "Drow this veller out! Douse un in th' hog-vault! Thee nimity-pimity odd-me-dod! [Little contemptible scarecrow] I warn thee'd like my money! Drot thee and thee wench!" Poor Felix could do nothing but beat a retreat with half a dozen grinning chawbacons watching him over the bridge. On hearing their master's angry voice in the porch, they ran together from the rick-yard in the rear. For some distance Felix could hear the old man howling and telling the men to "zet th' dogs at un." When he got fairly out of sight of the mill his indignation disappeared in his sense of the ludicrous, and he burst into a hearty fit of laughter, and then sobered down again. "For," thought he, "it is a wholesome doctrine--reverence for old age; and yet how little there is to revere! Ask this aged man's advice--you would suppose he would tell you of the vanity of the world, and instruct you to turn your mind to higher things. Not at all; he would say, `Get money; dismiss all generous feelings: get money.' In the last decade of a century of life his avarice prompts him to risk heavy sums on this horse. But I must write and explain that _I_ do not want his hoards."