Staggering forward under this burden--a burden equally active and

heavy--who should I encounter at the head of the stairs, but the

liege lord of the lady--my poor imbecile uncle. As soon as she

beheld him--foaming and almost unintelligible in her rage--she

screamed for succor--cried "murder" "rape," "robbery," and heaven

knows what besides. A moment before, though she scratched and

scuffled to the utmost, she had not employed her lungs. A momentary

imprecation alone had broken from her, as it were, perforce and

unavoidably. Now, nothing could exceed the stentorian tumult which

her tongue maintained. She called upon her husband to put me to

death--to tear me in pieces--to do anything and everything for the

punishing of so dreadful an offender as myself. In thus commanding

him, she did not forbear uttering her own unmeasured opinion of

the demerits of the man whose performances she required.

"If you had the spirit of a man, Clifford--if you were not a poor

shoat--you'd never have submitted so long as you have to this

viper's insolence. And there you stand, doing nothing--absolutely

still as a stock, though you see him beating your wife. Ah! you

monster!--you coward!--that I should ever have married a man that

wasn't able to protect me."

This is a sufficient sample of her style, and not the worst. I am

constrained to confess that some portions of the good lady's language

would better have suited the modes of speech common enough among

the Grecian housekeepers at the celebration of the Eleusinian

mysteries. I have omitted not a few of the bad words, and forborne

the repetition of that voluminous eloquence poured out, after

the Billingsgate fashion, equally upon myself, her daughter, and

husband. During the vituperation she still kicked and scuffled;

my face suffered, and my eyes narrowly escaped. But I grasped her

firmly; and when her husband, my worthy uncle, in obedience to her

orders, sprang upon me, with the bludgeon which he now habitually

carried, I confronted him with the lusty person of his spouse, and

regret to say, that the first thwack intended for my shoulders,

descended with some considerable emphasis upon hers. This increased

her fury, and redoubled her screams. But it did not lessen my

determination, or make me change my mode of proceeding. I resolutely

pushed her before me.

The husband stood at the head of the stairs

and my object was to carry her down to the lower story. The stairs

were narrow, and by keeping up a good watch, I contrived to force

him to give ground, using his spouse as a sort of battering-RAM--not to

perpetrate a pun at the expense of the genders--which, I happened

to know, had always been successful in making him give ground on all

previous occasions. His habitual deference for the dame, assisted

me in my purpose. Step by step, however, he disputed my advance;

but I was finally successful; without any injury beyond that which

had been inflicted by the talons of the fair lady, and perhaps

a single and slight stroke upon the shoulder from the club of her

husband, I succeeded in landing her upon the lower flat in safety.

Beyond a squeeze or two, which the exigency of the case made

something more affectionate than any I should have been otherwise

pleased to bestow upon her, she suffered no hurt at my hands.




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