Faint in body, mind, and spirit, as if from the
sudden temptation of an unholy power, he caught up the bottle. The
_elixir mortis_ flowed gurgling from the narrow neck into the tumbler
which Mr Cupples had lately emptied. Heedless and reckless, he nearly
filled it, and was just lifting it to his lips, when a cry half-moulded
into a curse rang from the bed, and the same instant the tumbler was
struck from his hand. It flew in fragments against the grate, and the
spirit rushed in a roaring flame of demoniacal wrath up the chimney.
"Damn you!" half-shrieked, half-panted Mr Cupples in his night-shirt,
at Alec's elbow, still under the influence of the same spirit he had
banned on its way to Alec Forbes's empty house--"damn you, bantam!
ye've broken my father's tumler. De'il tak' ye for a vaigabon'! I've a
guid min' to thraw the neck o' ye!"
Seeing Mr Cupples was only two-thirds of Alec's height, and one-half of
his thickness, the threat, as he then stood, was rather ludicrous.
Miserable as he was, Alec could not help laughing.
"Ye may lauch, bantam! but I want no companion in hell to cast his
damnation in my teeth. Gin ye touch that bottle again, faith, I'll
brain ye, and sen' ye into the ither warl' withoot that handle at least
for Sawtan to catch a grip o' ye by.
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