"Take you with her, pitiful changeling?" I exclaimed. "You marry? Why, the man is mad, or he thinks us fools, every one. And, do you imagine that beautiful young lady, that healthy, hearty girl, will tie herself to a little perishing monkey like you? Are you cherishing the notion that anybody, let alone Miss Catherine Linton, would have you for a husband? You want whipping for bringing us in here at all, with your dastardly, puling tricks; and—don't look so silly now! I've a very good mind to shake you severely, for your contemptible treachery, and your imbecile conceit."
I did give him a slight shaking, but it brought on the cough, and he took to his ordinary resource of moaning and weeping, and Catherine rebuked me.
"Stay all night? No!" she said, looking slowly round. "Ellen, I'll burn that door down, but I'll get out."
And she would have commenced the execu-
