Cady then addressed her thus: “Is this your way of travelling? What! carry but half a crown in your pocket when you are to meet a gentleman-collector on the highway? I’ll assure you, madam, I shall be even with you, therefore off with that ring from your finger.” She begged him to spare her marriage ring, as she would not lose it for double the value, having kept and worn it these twenty years. “You whining old woman,” quoth William, “marriage is nothing to me;--am I to be more favorable to you than any other woman, I’ll warrant? Give me the ring in a moment, without any more cant, or I shall make bold to cut off your finger for despatch, as I have served several of your sex before.” The good woman, seeing all her entreaties vain, hastily pulled the ring off her finger, and thrust it into her mouth. Cady then stamped, raged, and swore that he would be even with her: and instantly shooting her through the head, went away perfectly unmoved, while the husband, being tied to a tree, was a spectator of this horrid barbarity. Cady rode instantly to London, but fearing that even that great city could not conceal the author of a crime so unparalleled, he left the metropolis, and went to Scotland. Either his inclinations did not lead him, or he deemed that country too poor to afford him sufficient booty; he therefore soon returned again to England. On his road to the capital, between Ferrybridge and Doncaster, he met with Dr. Morton, a prebendary of Durham, well mounted; but whether meditating upon the amount of his tithes, or the next Sabbath’s sermon, is uncertain. Cady instantly rode up to him, and cried, “Deliver, or you are a dead man!” The doctor, unaccustomed to such language, began to admonish him concerning the atrocity of his conduct, and the danger that he was in, both with respect to his body and his soul. Cady stared him in the face with all the ferocity that he could muster, and informed him that his remonstrances were in vain, saying, that if he did not deliver him what he had, he should speedily send him out of the world. “But then,” added Cady, “that is nothing, because all the gentlemen of your cloth are prepared for death. What, you unreasonable, you unmannerly dog!” continued he, in a rage, unable to discover the doctor’s cash, “what do you mean, to meet a man in the midst of his journey, without bringing him any money to pay his charges?” For the doctor had taken care to hide his money in a hedge, so that Cady, upon examining him, found his pockets completely empty. The ruffian, convinced that a man of his appearance could not travel without money, with dreadful imprecations threatened that if he would not inform him what he had done with it, he should never go home alive. The doctor insisting that he had none, the wretch shot him through the heart with as little remorse as he would have drunk a glass of burgundy.