"You take me for a fool, do you, with your cock-and-bull stories!—you flam me off, rat me! with your ’magnificent apartment’, your ’munificent patron’, your ’constant zeal’, which I—I, you swashbuckling villain—am to pay for! Where are the two hundred guineas paid to the captain of the _Merry Maid_?—the fifty guineas to your footpad friends in Wapping?—the hundred sent you but a few weeks past? How has your zeal furthered my interest? Zeal, forsooth! there’s a many of your cut-throat gossips would sink you as a disgrace to the craft, for at least they hold to their bargains and are not swindlers as well as——" "Fire and fury!" shouted Aglionby, springing to his feet and drawing his sword. "’Tis not to be borne! Clap a bridle on your canting tongue or I’ll run your bloodless carcass through!—as I’ve done with many a better man. D’ye hear, you old Pharisee! Your white hairs under your wig sha’n’t preserve you if Rafe Aglionby is roused. And where would you be, rot you—Squire Berkeley of Winton Hall—you and your guineas—if I told what I know?" [Illustration: "Fire and Fury!" shouted Aglionby] Mr. Berkeley had drawn at the same moment, and the two stood glaring at each other over the chair. The old man, his face livid with passion, was in nowise daunted by the other’s threats; Aglionby’s cheeks were purple, and the veins on his brow stood up like whipcord. For some moments both stood tense, each leaning towards the other; then the squire dropped his sword back into the sheath, gulped, and said: "Well, well, maybe I was hasty. But you have a great deal to explain, Aglionby—a very great deal to explain." "As I could have done, had you but given me time instead of treating me as you would a common pickpocket. By George! Mr. Berkeley, Rafe Aglionby is not the man to stand that mode of dealing, as you well know, for all the luck has been against me these late years. Who could have supposed that young Rochester, sink him! would escape from the _Merry Maid_? Was that my fault, pray? By what I can make out he jumped overboard off Gravesend and got aboard a Dutch brig, and the rascally Hollander—one Grootz, a smug corn-dealer—refused to give him up. Could I help that? Then, when I had my snivelling cousin Sherebiah fast in the net, could I prevent my lord Marlborough from signing his discharge and undoing all my work? Could I? I’ve had the worst of luck all through; and foul words won’t mend matters. And, beshrew me, you were not over successful yourself with the cockerel’s father, for all your guineas. The youngster’s a chip of the old block, and a precious hard chip too, rot him! But I’ve vowed to carry the thing through; besides your affair, I’ve now one or two private accounts to square with him; and if you have patience and a trifle more courtesy—by George! you’ll have no cause to complain of Rafe Aglionby."