“Where was God,” said he, addressing them, and his voice, naturally thin and wiry, now became lmsky and hollow, “where was God, to suffer this? to suffer the poor to be ruined, and the rich to be made poor?  Was it right for the Almighty to look on an’ let the villain do it?  No—­no—­no; I say no!”

The group around him shuddered at the daring blasphemy to which his monstrous passion had driven him.  Many females, who were in tears, lamenting audibly, started, and felt their grief suspended for a moment by this revolting charge against the justice of Providence.

“What do you all stand for here,” he proceeded, “like stocks an stones?  Why don’t yees kneel with me, an’ let us join in one curse; one, no, but let us shower them down upon him in thousands—­in millions; an’ when we can no longer spake them, let us think them.  To the last hour of my life my heart ‘ill never be widout a curse for him; an’ the last word afore I go into the presence of God, ‘ll be a black, heavy blessin’ from hell against him an’ his, sowl an’ body, while a drop o’ their bad blood’s upon the earth.”

“Don’t be blasphamin’, honest man,” said a bystander; “if you’ve lost money, that’s no rason why you should fly in the face o’ God for P——­’s roguery.  Devil a one o’ myself cares if I join you in a volley against the robbin’ scoundril, but I’d not take all the money the rip of hell ran away wid, an’ spake of God as you do.”

“Oh, Saver!” exclaimed Fardorougha, who probably heard not a word he said; “I knew—­I knew—­I always felt it was before me—­a dog’s death behind a ditch—­my tongue out wid starvation and hunger, and it was he brought me to it!”

He had already knelt, and was uncovered, his whitish hair tossed by the breeze in confusion about a face on which was painted the fearful workings of that giant spirit, under whose tremendous grasp he writhed and suffered like a serpent in the talons of a vulture.  In this position, with uplifted and trembling arms, his face raised towards heaven, and his whole figure shrunk firmly together by the intense malignity with which he was about to hiss out his venomous imprecations against the defaulter, he presented at least one instance in which the low, sordid vice of avarice rose to something like wild grandeur, if not sublimity.

Having remained in this posture for some time, he clasped his withered hands together and wrung them until the bones cracked; then rising up and striking his stick bitterly upon the earth—­

“I can’t,” he exclaimed, “I can’t get out the curses against him; but my heart’s full of them—­they’re in it—­they’re in it!—­it’s black an’ hot wid them; I feel them here—­here—­movin an if they war alive, an’ they’ll be out.”

Such was the strength and impetuosity of his hatred, and such his eagerness to discharge the whole quiver of his maledictions against the great public delinquent, that, as often happens in cases of overwhelming agitation, his faculties were paralyzed by the storm of passion which raged within him.