"I want to have a talk with you, my plump money-bag, my well-acred Squire father-in-law, and if there are others by, so much the better. It is well that all the world should see the bubble burst. Ha! ha! ha! This is the man who was a little farmer, and pushed himself to become a justice! The little shrivelled toad who would blow himself out to be like an ox. His sides are cracking, mark you!" "Take him away," said the old man, "he is drunk." "Go--I pray you go!" pleaded Bessie. "Prithee, respect him, at least in public, look at his grey hairs, consider the trouble he is in." "His grey hairs!" retorted Fox. "Why should I respect them? They have grown grey in rascality. So many years of sandy locks, so much roguery, so many more with grey hair, double the amount of roguery. Why should I respect an old rogue? I would kick and thrash a young one out of the house. His trouble--forsooth! His trouble is naught to mine, hooked on to a disreputable, drowning family, and unable to strike out in their faces, and wrench their hands away, and let them swallow the brine and go down alone." The Squire and the guests stood or sat spell-bound. What was to be done with the fellow? How could he be brought to silence? The stream of words of a drunken man is no easier stopped than is a spring by the hand laid against it. "Ha! ha!" jeered Fox, still pointing at his father-in-law; "there is the man who has ruled so tyrannically in his house, who drove his son out-of-doors because he followed his own example and married empty pockets. But his son did better than the father, he did take a girl with a few lumps of granite and a few shovelfuls of peat, but the father's own wife had nothing. What he suffered in himself he would not suffer in his son." The old man, shaking with rage as with the palsy, and deadly white, turned to the servants, and called to them to take away the fellow. "Take me away!" screamed Fox. "Take and shake me, and see if there be any gold in my pockets that will fall out, and which he may pick up. I tell you I am rich; I have the money all ready, I could produce that in an hour, which would save Hall, and send that fellow there, the lawyer, and his men back to Exeter to-night, if they cared to go over Black Down in the dark, where robbery is committed and coaches stopped and plundered. I have the gold all ready, but do not fancy I will give one guinea to help a Cleverdon. I hate them all--father, daughter, and son; I curse the whole tribe, I dance on their heads, I trample on their hearts, I scorn them. They hold out their hands to me, but I will not pick them up." Bessie put her arms about him, and, with eyes that were full of tears, and face blanched with shame, entreated him to go, to control himself, to remember that this old man that he insulted was his father-in-law, and that, for better, for worse, in riches or poverty, he was her husband.