preferment."

"Madge's preferment! Does your old blind eyes see no farther than that?
If he is as you say, dye think he'll ever marry a moon-calf like Madge?
Ecod, that's a good one--Marry Madge Wildfire!--Ha! ha! ha!"

"Hark ye, ye crack-rope padder, born beggar, and bred thief!" replied the
hag, "suppose he never marries the wench, is that a reason he should
marry another, and that other to hold my daughter's place, and she
crazed, and I a beggar, and all along of him? But I know that of him will
hang him--I know that of him will hang him, if he had a thousand lives--I
know that of him will hang--hang--hang him!"

She grinned as she repeated and dwelt upon the fatal monosyllable, with
the emphasis of a vindictive fiend.

"Then why don't you hang--hang--hang him?" said Frank, repeating her
words contemptuously. "There would be more sense in that, than in
wreaking yourself here upon two wenches that have done you and your
daughter no ill."

"No ill?" answered the old woman--"and he to marry this jail-bird, if
ever she gets her foot loose!"

"But as there is no chance of his marrying a bird of your brood, I
cannot, for my soul, see what you have to do with all this," again
replied the robber, shrugging his shoulders. "Where there is aught to be
got, I'll go as far as my neighbours, but I hate mischief for mischiefs
sake."

"And would you go nae length for revenge?" said the hag--"for
revenge--the sweetest morsel to the mouth that over was cooked in hell!"

"The devil may keep it for his own eating, then," said the robber; "for
hang me if I like the sauce he dresses it with."

"Revenge!" continued the old woman; "why, it is the best reward the devil
gives us for our time here and hereafter. I have wrought hard for it--I
have suffered for it--and I have sinned for it--and I will have it,--or
there is neither justice in heaven or in hell!"

Levitt had by this time lighted a pipe, and was listening with great
composure to the frantic and vindictive ravings of the old hag. He was
too much, hardened by his course of life to be shocked with them--too
indifferent, and probably too stupid, to catch any part of their
animation or energy. "But, mother," he said, after a pause, "still I say,
that if revenge is your wish, you should take it on the young fellow
himself."

"I wish I could," she said, drawing in her breath, with the eagerness of
a thirsty person while mimicking the action of drinking--"I wish I
could--but