th your story."

"Yes, I am too fast. When you first hatched out this plan, you came to
me and put a pistol to my head, and swore that if I didn't apply for a
divorce from you at once, you would blow my brains out. I had swore
more than once to have a divorce; and Lord knows I had cause enough;
what, with the drunkenness and the beatings, and the idleness, and the
night prowlin', and all the rest; but I never expected that."

The woman paused for a moment, and then resumed her tirade of mixed
eloquence and bad grammar.

"I didn't expect to be drove into the divorce court at the point of a
pistol, but that's how it ended, and you was free to torment Miss
Lamotte, poor young thing! Don't you let yourself think that I envied
_her_! Lord knows I had had enough of you, and your meanness, but I
pitied her; and if I had knocked out your brains, as I've been tempted
to do a dozen times, when you have rolled in here blind drunk, I'd have
done her a good turn, and myself too. The time was when Nance Fergus was
your equal, and more too; but you left England with the notion that here
you would be the equal of anybody, and you've never got clear of the
idea. I've tried to make you understand that there's a coarse breed of
folks, same's there is of dogs, and that you are of a mighty coarse
breed. I've lived out with gentle folks over the water, and they were
none of your sort. But, go on John Burrill, the low women you are so
fond of, and the girls at the factory, have called you good lookin',
until your head is turned with vanity. You have got yourself in among
the upper class, no matter how, and I suppose you expect your good looks
to do the rest for you. I mind once when I was at service in
Herefordshire, the Squire had a fine young beast in his cattle yard,
black an' sleek, an' handsome to look at, and the young ladies came down
from the big house and looked at it through the fence, and called it a
'beautiful creature,' but all the same they led it away to the slaughter
house with a ring in its nose, and the young ladies dined off it with a
relish."

John Burrill stroked his nasal organ fondly, as if discerning some
connection between that protuberance and the aforementioned ring; but he
made no attempt to interrupt her.

"You was bad enough in England, John Burrill; what with your poaching
and your other misdeeds, and sorry was the day when I left a good place
to come away from the country with you, because it was gettin' t