“Is it so?” said Crauford; and as he saw that it was no longer possible to feign, the poison of his heart broke forth in its full venom. The fiend rose from the reptile, and stood exposed in its natural shape. Returning Glendower’s stern but lofty gaze with an eye to which all evil passions lent their unholy fire, he repeated, “Is it so? then you are more penetrating than I thought; but it is indifferent to me. It was for your sake, not mine, most righteous man, that I wished you might have a disguise to satisfy the modesty of your punctilios. It is all one to Richard Crauford whether you go blindfold or with open eyes into his snare. Go you must, and shall. Ay, frowns will not awe me. You have desired the truth: you shall have it. You are right: I hate you,--hate you with a soul whose force of hatred you cannot dream of. Your pride, your stubbornness, your coldness of heart, which things that would stir the blood of beggars cannot warm; your icy and passionless virtue,--I hate, I hate all! You are right also, most wise inquisitor, in supposing that in the scheme proposed to you, I am the principal: I am! You were to be the tool, and shall. I have offered you mild inducements,--pleas to soothe the technicalities of your conscience: you have rejected them; be it so. Now choose between my first offer and the gibbet. Ay, the gibbet! That night on which we made the appointment which shall not yet be in vain,--on that night you stopped me in the street; you demanded money; you robbed me; I will swear; I will prove it. Now, then, tremble, man of morality: dupe of your own strength, you are in my power; tremble! Yet in my safety is your escape: I am generous. I repeat my original offer,--wealth, as great as you will demand, or--the gibbet, the gibbet: do I speak loud enough? do you hear?” “Poor fool!” said Glendower, laughing scornfully and moving away. But when Crauford, partly in mockery, partly in menace, placed his hand upon Glendower’s shoulder, as if to stop him, the touch seemed to change his mood from scorn to fury; turning abruptly round, he seized the villain’s throat with a giant’s strength, and cried out, while his whole countenance worked beneath the tempestuous wrath within, “What if I squeeze out thy poisonous life from thee this moment!” and then once more bursting into a withering laughter, as he surveyed the terror which he had excited, he added, “No, no: thou art too vile!” and, dashing the hypocrite against the wall of a neighbouring house, he strode away.