Middlemarch‘s Fred Vincy momentarily loses the run of himself while intervening in a local territorial skirmish:
“What do you confounded fools mean?” shouted Fred, pursuing the divided group in a zigzag, and cutting right and left with his whip. “I’ll swear to every one of you before the magistrate. You’ve knocked the lad down and killed him, for what I know. You’ll every one of you be hanged at the next assizes, if you don’t mind,” said Fred, who afterwards laughed heartily as he remembered his own phrases.
