"Why, hang it, I cannot tell," replied Mowbray--"were it not that I think he has scarce the impudence to propose such a thing to succeed, curse me but I should think he was coming the old soldier over me, and keeping up his game.--But no--he can scarce have the impudence to think of that.--I find, however, that he has done Wolverine--cleaned out poor Tom--though Tom wrote to me the precise contrary, yet the truth has since come out--Well, I shall avenge him, for I see his lordship is to be had as well as other folk." "Weel, Mr. Mowbray," said the lawyer, in a tone of affected sympathy, "ye ken your own ways best--but the heavens will bless a moderate mind. I would not like to see you ruin this poor lad, _funditus_, that is to say, out and out. To lose some of the ready will do him no great harm, and maybe give him a lesson he may be the better of as long as he lives--but I wad not, as an honest man, wish you to go deeper--you should spare the lad, Mr. Mowbray." "Who spared _me_, Meiklewham?" said Mowbray, with a look and tone of deep emphasis--"No, no--he must go through the mill--money and money's worth.--His seat is called Oakendale--think of that, Mick--Oakendale! Oh, name of thrice happy augury!--Speak not of mercy, Mick--the squirrels of Oakendale must be dismounted, and learn to go a-foot.--What mercy can the wandering lord of Troy expect among the Greeks?--The Greeks!--I am a very Suliote--the bravest of Greeks. 'I think not of pity, I think not of fear, He neither must know who would serve the Vizier.' And necessity, Mick," he concluded, with a tone something altered, "necessity is as unrelenting a leader as any Vizier or Pacha, whom Scanderbeg ever fought with, or Byron has sung." Meiklewham echoed his patron's ejaculation with a sound betwixt a whine, a chuckle, and a groan; the first being designed to express his pretended pity for the destined victim; the second his sympathy with his patron's prospects of success; and the third being a whistle admonitory of the dangerous courses through which his object was to be pursued. Suliote as he boasted himself, Mowbray had, soon after this conversation, some reason to admit that, "When Greek meets Greek, then comes the tug of war."