"Ellen, I was ready to tear my hair off my head! I sobbed and wept so that my eyes were almost blind: and the ruffian you have such sympathy with, stood opposite; presuming every now and then, to bid me "wisht," and denying that it was his fault; and finally, frightened by my assertions that I would tell papa, and that he should be put in prison, and hanged, he commenced blubbering himself, and hurried out to hide his cowardly agitation.
"Still, I was not rid of him: when at length they compelled me to depart, and I had got some hundred yards off the premises, he suddenly issued from the shadow of the road-side, and checked Minny and took hold of me.
"'Miss Catherine, I'm ill grieved,' he began, 'but it's rayther too bad—'
"I gave him a cut with my whip, thinking, perhaps he would murder me—He let go, thundering one of his horrid curses, and I gallopped home more than half out of my senses.
L 3
