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THE STRIPLING: A TRAGEDY.
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MADALINE.

Your own notions?

HUMPHRY.

Don't look frightened, Madam. I watched by him last night, after his return, and from his tossings and restlessness, and some strange words which he uttered, as if in a kind of agony, once or twice, I shrewdly suspect the poor boy was at a fortune-teller's, to enquire about his father's doom, and that he was frightened with some horrid sight or other.

MADALINE.

Think you so?

HUMPHRY

I am almost sure of it. Those cursed hags make people run mad sometimes with the sights they raise up before them.

MADALINE.

I have heard of such things in the country, in days gone by, but now——

HUMPHRY.

But the days of London wickedness never go by; and if they have unsettled the brain of that noble boy, burning at the stake is too good for them.

MADALINE.

Nay, you are savage.