“Shall Gustavus M’Iver, who has killed a dozen of Frenchmen in one day, be afraid of three women? The never will he, by Saint Sebastian!” So he went back to the house; and when the three women and the carrier saw him coming out of the planting, they set up such a loud scream as had never been heard in these woods since the reign of the wolves, and ran up to him, crying out, that he was a base and a bloody murderer, and demanding to see the body of the sacrificed Julia, who, as her mother ejaculated, was never intended by nature to be the wife of such a fearful ogre. “Give me the body of my daughter,” she said, “dead or alive. Where is the coffin that the carrier saw standing in the house? It is gone, and Julia is in it—buried, no doubt, in some hole of the woods. Why will you not speak, Gustavus M’Iver?” Now, the very best reason on earth could be assigned for Gustavus saying nothing—and that was, that he had of a real truth nothing in the wide extent of his brain to say, that any one in the world, far less the mother of his wife, would believe for one instant of time. So he stood and rolled over the three women his large eyes, just, as the mother said, as if he would have eaten them all three, as she suspected he had done her daughter; but the never a vocable escaped from his lips. “Why will you not speak, Gustavus?” cried the mother. “Why will you not speak, man?” cried another of the women. “Why will you not speak?” cried they all together in one question, so loud that no question since the time when all the Barons of England asked, in one cry, King John to give them their rights, had ever exceeded it in intensity and vociferation. But it was clear this could last no longer than the patience of the women; and every one knows that the time comprehended by the longevity of that feminine virtue, is not so long as the life of Methuselah; so, in a minute, they fell on him with their nails, and rugged his hair, and scratched his face, and pulled him to the earth, and trampled upon him, till he who had fought in the Peninsula began to think that it was time for him to call up his old courage, and fight once again in his advanced years. So, rising up, he placed himself in an attitude which he knew had produced terrible effects in former times; and, to be sure, so it might, for he gnashed his teeth, and held out his yard-long arms, and rolled his eyes in such a manner, yet saying not a word all the while, that the women got alarmed, and cried to the carrier to assist them; but the man was off the moment he saw there was a chance of battle. So the women gave in, and began to try the soothing system with him—an effort in which they were as successful as their sex ever is when a man is to be humbugged; and Gustavus was on the instant mollified into softness, and even lugubrious sentimentality. CHAPTER IX. AN APPARITION.