The father had been drinking, not what would have been by any of the
neighbours thought too much, but enough to add to the fierceness of his
wrath, and make him yet more capable of injustice. He had come into the
study straight from the stable, and when the poor creature looked up
half awake, and saw his father standing over him with a heavy whip in
his hand, he was filled with a terror that nearly paralyzed him. He sat
and stared with white, trembling lips, red, projecting eyes, and a look
that confirmed the belief of his father that he was drunk, whereas he
had only been, like himself, drinking more than was good for him.
"Get out of there, you dog!" cried his father, and with one sweep of his
powerful arm, half dragged, half hurled him from the chair. He fell on
the floor, and in weakness mixed with cowardice lay where he fell. The
devil--I am sorry to have to refer to the person so often, but he played
a notable part in the affair, and I should be more sorry to leave him
without his part in it duly acknowledged--the devil, I say, finding the
house abandoned to him, rushed at once into brain and heart and limbs,
and _possessed_.
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