"Well, Cousin Bessy," said the father, "I dare say, after all your fatigue and fright, you will sleep well to-night. You are quite safe here; for we have got three white men in the house, Irishmen, who will shoot down any one I order them to destroy; so you need not be in the least alarmed." "I am not alarmed at all," I answered; though I am afraid, Richard, it was a great fib. "Don't you know, Mr. Thornton, it takes a great deal to alarm me?" The old man looked a little confounded at my reply; but he said,-- "Well, well, we will soon leave you to go to sleep; only there are some old accounts and things between you and me, Cousin Bessy, in regard to matters that occurred when I had the management of your property, which I think we had better settle now. I only just want you to sign these receipts and acquittances. They are all right, as you can see. Give me down the ink; here's a pen." Robert Thornton brought the ink from the mantel-piece, and his father put the papers before me. I did not pay much attention to them; but I just caught in one part, some words which I think were, "For, and in consideration, of the sum of thirty thousand dollars, the receipt of which is hereby acknowledged." I pushed them away at once to the other side of the table, saying,-- "Mr. Thornton, I will sign no papers whatever except in the presence of Mr. Hubbard, and Mr. Henry Thornton; and if these papers are fair and right, I cannot understand your pressing them upon me at such a moment, and in such circumstances." "The reason of their being pressed upon you, Miss Davenport," said Robert Thornton, with one of his cold sneers, "and the reason why I shall insist upon their being signed at once, lies in the very circumstances to which you do not choose to allude; namely, that you are about to be married to a man whose father deprived you of your father, and who himself nearly deprived me of life. Unless these are signed before your marriage, difficulties must and will arise which I am determined----" "Stay, stay, Bessy!" I cried, interrupting her narrative; "let me hear that again." "Not now, Richard, not now," she said, eagerly. "He alluded to your father, Sir Richard Conway; but the very allusion drove me half wild; and I am afraid that I showed myself such a dragon that you would never wish to marry me, if you had seen me then." I took up the papers, and tore them into a thousand pieces, and then said, with as big a look as I could put on--I can hardly think of it without smiling--"Leave the room, sirs! and do not venture to come back again!" The old man got up and drew back; but the younger kept his chair, saying coldly,-- "The papers are soon re-written; and, though sorry to prevent you from sleeping, we shall bring them back in about a quarter of an hour."