ok thence an official-looking scroll, sat down, formally unfolded
it, cleared his throat, and began with pompous complacency to read
aloud its title, preamble, clauses, and provisions, compulsory
regulations, and peremptory prohibitions to the apparently
semi-asphyxiated Mr. WITLER.

The elder Mr. WITLER, who still continued to make various strange
and uncouth attempts to appear indifferent, offered not a single
word during these proceedings; but when STIGGINS stopped for breath,
previous to a second reading, he darted upon him, and, snatching
the scroll from his hand, first buffeted him briskly about the
head therewith, and then threw it into the fire. Then, seizing the
astonished gentleman firmly by the collar, he suddenly fell to kicking
him most furiously, accompanying every application of his boots to Mr.
STIGGINS'S person with sundry violent and incoherent anathemas,
such as--"Blatant Barabbas!"--"Bumptious busybody!"--"Unblushing
bandit!"--"Barefaced spoliator!"--"Hypocritical humbug!"--"Iniquitous
inquisitor!"--"Fanatical faddist!"--"Self-righteous sneak!"--"Sham
saint!"--"Jerrymandering JEREMY DIDDLER!"--"Pragmatical
pump!"--"Little Bethelite Boanerges!" and "Nonconformist
_Tartuffe_!!!"

"SAMMY," said Mr. WITLER, "put my cap on tight for me!" SAM dutifully
adjusted the cap more firmly on his father's head, and the old
gentleman, resuming his kicking with greater agility than before,
tumbled Mr. STIGGINS through the bar, and through the passage, out
at the front door, and so into the street, the kicking continuing the
whole way, and increasing in vehemence rather than diminishing every
time the boot was lifted.

It was a beautiful and exhilarating sight (_to "the Trade"_) to see
the water-drinker writhing in Mr. WITLER'S grasp, and his whole frame
quivering with anguish as kick followed kick in rapid succession;
it was a still more exciting spectacle (_to Bungdom all round, from
boisterous_ Lord BURTON _to the humblest rural Boniface_) to behold
Mr. WITLER, after a powerful struggle, immersing Mr. STIGGINS'S head
in a horse-trough full of water, and holding it there until he was
half suffocated.

"There!" said Mr. WITLER, throwing all his energy into one most
complicated kick, as he at length permitted Mr. STIGGINS to withdraw
his head from the trough, "send any vun o' them villainous Vetoists,
from burly Sir VILLIAM BARABBAS hisself down to the pettifoggingest
Local Hoptioniser in Little Peddlington, _he