Opening…

CX. CONTINUATION OF THE BLACK’S VISITS TO HIS PRISONERS

Having quitted the dungeon in which Josh Pedler was confined, the Blackamoor proceeded to the next cell; but, instead of opening the door, he merely drew back a small sliding-lid that covered a grated trap, and the faint rays of a light streamed from the inside.

“Tidmarsh,” said the Blackamoor, in a feigned tone, “has your mind grown easier?”

“Yes, sir--oh! yes,” replied the prisoner from the interior of his dungeon. “Since you allowed me a light and good books, I have been comparatively a happy man. I know that I deserve punishment--and it seems to do me good to feel that I am atoning for my offences in this manner. I am not afraid of being alone now; and when I put out my light, I am not afraid of being in the dark.”

“You pray with more composure?” said the Black, interrogatively.

“Yes, sir--I can settle my mind to prayer now,” was the answer; “and I am sure that my prayers are heard. But pray believe, sir, that I never was so wicked--so very wicked as that bad man who kept me for years in his employ. I know that I was too willing an instrument in his hands; and I am sorry for it now. The thing that lays heaviest on my mind, is the share I had in sending poor Tom Rain to the scaffold.”

“You are sorry for that deed?” enquired the Black, in a low and slightly tremulous tone.

“Oh! God, forgive me!” exclaimed Tidmarsh, his voice expressing sincere contrition. “I do indeed deeply--deeply deplore my share in that awful business; and the ghost of poor Tom Rain used to haunt me when I was first here. In fact, Tom Rain was ever uppermost in my thoughts; and--strange though it may seem--it is not the less true, sir, that your voice appeared to penetrate to my very soul, as if it was Tom Rain himself that was speaking to me. But I have got over all those ideas now--since I learnt to pray; and when I grow dull, I read the good books you have lent me. Sometimes I study the Bible; and I find that if I pore over it too much, it makes me melancholy. Then I turn to the Travels and Voyages; and I become tranquil again.”

“Should you not rejoice at any opportunity of retrieving your character--even in your old age--and earning an honest livelihood for yourself?” asked the Black.

“Oh! if such a thing could be!” cried the man, in a tone of exultation. “But, no--it is impossible!” he added, after a pause, and speaking in an altered voice. “I have sinned too deeply in respect to poor Tom Rain, to be able to hope for such happiness. God is punishing me in this world, you being his instrument;--and yet I can scarcely call it punishment, since you treat me with such kindness. There are times when I even wish that I was more severely punished here, so that I might expiate all my sins and feel certain about my fate in another world.”

“God is full of forgiveness, Tidmarsh,” said the Black: “I feel that He is,” he added in a somewhat enthusiastic manner. “The prospect I distantly hinted at in respect to yourself, may possibly become practicable. You are old--but you may still have many years to live; and it would be wrong--it would be detestable not to give you a full opportunity, sooner or later, of enabling you to testify your contrition. But I cannot speak farther on this subject at present. I have brought you some more books: one is a tale--‘The Vicar of Wakefield’--the perusal of which will do you no harm. It will show you how virtue, though suffering for a time, was rewarded at last. In a few days I shall myself visit you again.”

The Black closed the trap, and stood away from the door, which Wilton now opened; and the basket furnished the prisoner with his provisions and also with some volumes of good and beneficial reading.

The visiting-party next proceeded to the cell in which Toby Bunce and his wife were confined together; and here, as in the immediately preceding instance, the Black spoke to them through a sliding trap, from which a light also gleamed.

“For three days have you now been together, after dwelling some time apart,” said the Blackamoor, continuing to speak in a feigned tone; “and I now conjure you to tell me truly whether you would rather be thus in each other’s company, or separated as before?”

“Oh! leave us together, sir--leave us together, I implore you!” cried Mrs. Bunce, in a voice of earnest appeal. “We are now the best friends in the world; and I have promised my husband never to say a cross word unnecessarily to him again.”

“She seems quite an altered woman, sir,” observed Toby. “But then----”

“But then what?” demanded the Black, seeing that the man hesitated.

“Well, sir--I will speak my mind free,” continued Bunce; “because I’m no longer afraid to do so. I was going to say that p’rhaps it is this loneliness in which we are placed that makes Betsy talk as she does; and that if we was to be again together out of doors----”

“You would not find me change, Toby,” interrupted the woman, but not in a querulous manner. “I like to hear you read to me from the Bible, and from the other good books that the gentleman has given us. I wish we had passed more of our time in this way before we got into all this trouble. But, pray, sir,” she added, turning towards the door, “do tell me whether you mean to keep us here all our lives!”

“You must ask me no questions, remember,” said the Black, in a mild but firm tone. “I have told you this before. Learn to subdue all impatience, and to become resigned and enduring. You have made others suffer in the world;--you have been the agents and tools of a wicked man;--and you now see that heaven is punishing you through the means of one who has power thus to treat you.”

“Oh! how I wish that I had never known that detestable Bones?” exclaimed the woman, covering her face with her hands.

“And how I wish that I had stuck to my trade in an honest manner!” cried Toby Bunce, in a voice of unfeigned contrition.

“Think of all that--repeat those sentences to each other--as often as you can,” said the Blackamoor. “In the course of a few days I shall visit you again.”

With these words, he stood back from the door, which Wilton opened; and the two inmates of the dungeon received supplies of wholesome food and moral or instructive books.

The party then proceeded farther along the subterranean passage from which the various cells opened.

“Do you mean, sir, to fulfil your intention of this night visiting him?” enquired Cæsar, addressing his master in a low, faint, and tremulous tone, as if he were a prey to some vague terror.

The Blackamoor did not immediately answer the question; but, placing his hand upon his brow, appeared to reflect profoundly for almost the space of a minute.

Wilton--who seemed acquainted, as well as Cæsar, with all his master’s secrets--likewise surveyed the Black with mingled curiosity and apprehension.

“Yes!” at length exclaimed the mysterious personage; “I will now, for the first time since he has been my prisoner here, hold personal communication with Benjamin Bones!”

The party proceeded in silence to a cell near the extremity of the long subterranean passage; and on reaching it, the Black handed the lamp to Cæsar, at the same time making a sign to that youth and the other dependants to stand back so that no gleam of the light should penetrate into the dungeon when the door was opened. They obeyed in profound silence; and their master immediately entered the cell, closing the door behind him with that rapidity which is exercised by a brute-tamer when introducing himself into the cage of a wild beast.

The interior of the dungeon was as dark as pitch,--so dark, that there was not even that greyish appearance which obscurity frequently wears to eyes accustomed to it. It was a darkness that might be felt,--a darkness which seemed to touch and hang upon the visual organs like a dense black mist.

“Who is it?” demanded the sepulchral voice of Old Death, his tone marked with a subdued ferocity and a sort of savage growling which seemed to denote a rancorous hate and pent-up longings for bitter vengeance against the author or authors of his solitary imprisonment.

“I am the person who keeps you here,” answered the Black, studying to adopt a voice even more feigned and unlike his natural tones than when he was ere now addressing Tidmarsh and the Bunces.

Still that voice had in it some peculiarity which appeared to touch a chord that vibrated to the very core of Old Death’s heart; for he evidently made a starting movement, as he said hoarsely and thickly, “But who are you--a spectre or a living being? Tell me who you are!”

“I am a living being like yourself,” was the reply, delivered in a voice disguised in deeper modulations than before. “Are you afraid of being visited by spectres?”

There was a long pause, during which the deep silence was interrupted only by the heavy breathing of Old Death, as if the utter darkness of the place sate oppressively upon him.

“Are you afraid of spectres, I ask?” demanded the Black, who was leaning with folded arms against the door, and with his eyes in the direction where he presumed Old Death to be seated; though not even the faintest outline of his form could he trace amidst that black obscurity.

“Bring me a light, or let me out--and I will answer all your questions,” cried Benjamin Bones, his anxiety to obtain his freedom giving a cadence of earnest appeal to his voice in spite of the tremendous rage which his bosom cherished against the individual who had proclaimed himself to be his gaoler.

“Do you deserve mercy?--do you merit the indulgence of man?” asked the Black, in a tone profoundly solemn.

“What do you know of me?--who are you?--why did you have me brought here?--and by what right do you keep me in this infernal place?” demanded Old Death, rapidly and savagely.

“Is it not a just retribution which makes you a prisoner in a subterranean where you have often imprisoned others?” said the Black.

“Then ’tis that miscreant Ellingham who has put me here!” exclaimed Bones, in a tone which showed that he was quivering with rage. “Demon!--fiend!--yes--you are Lord Ellingham--I thought I knew your voice, although you tried to disguise it. At the first moment I fancied--but that was stupid,--still it struck me that it was the voice of Tom Rain which spoke. Ha! ha!” the old wretch chuckled with horrible ferocity and savage glee--“I did for him--I did for him! I sent him to the scaffold--I got him hanged--and now he is food for worms! Ellingham--for I know you are Lord Ellingham--I can have the laugh at you, you devil, although you keep me here!”

“Miserable old man,” said the Black, in a tone of deep pity, though still disguised in modulation,--“are you insensible to the whisperings of conscience?”

“Yes--now that you are here!” cried Benjamin Bones, his clothes rustling as if with the trembling nervousness of enraged excitement. “You made me sell you these houses--you took them away from me by force, as it were; and now you keep me a prisoner here. It is all through vengeance that you do it--you who pretended to be above all thoughts or intentions of revenge!”

“As God is my judge, I harbour no such sentiment towards you!” said the Blackamoor, emphatically. “But will you converse tranquilly and calmly with me?”

“Well--I will try,” returned Old Death. “What do you want to say to me?”

“To remind you that you are an old--very old man, and that you cannot hope to live much longer----”

“Fiend! would you kill me in cold blood!” interrupted Bones, in a sort of shrieking, yelling tone that indicated mingled alarm and rage.

“Had I intended to slay you, I might have done it when you were first brought here as my prisoner,” answered the Black. “Rest satisfied on that head----”

“Then you do not mean to kill me?” exclaimed Old Death, with all the hysterical joy of a coward soul, in spite of his natural and still untamed ferocity.

“Heaven forbid!” ejaculated the Blackamoor.

“There--now ’tis the voice of Tom Rain once again!” cried Old Death, evidently shuddering as he spoke. “But, no--I am a fool--you are the Earl! Yes--tell me--are you not the Earl of Ellingham?”

“No matter who I am,” was the solemn reply. “If you ask me questions, I will immediately leave you.”

“No--don’t go for a few minutes!” exclaimed Old Death, imploringly. “I have been here a month,--yes--for I have counted the visits of your men, who come, as they tell me, every night to bring me food,--and I know that I have been here a month. In all that time I have only exchanged a dozen words with human beings--and--and--this solitude is horrible!”

“You have leisure to ponder on all your crimes,” said the Black.

“Who made you my judge?” demanded Old Death, with a return of his ferocity of tone and manner. “If you want me to confess all my sins, and will then set me free, I will do it,” he added in a somewhat ironical way.

“Confession is useless, without true repentance,” observed the Blackamoor. “Besides, all your misdeeds are known to me,--your behaviour to your half-sister, Octavia Manners, years ago--your treatment of poor Jacob Smith--your machinations to destroy Thomas Rainford----”

“Then, by all this, am I convinced that you are the Earl of Ellingham!” cried Old Death. “Ah! my lord,” he immediately added, in a voice which suddenly changed to a tone of earnest appeal, “do not keep me here any longer! Let me go--and I will leave London for ever! Reflect, my lord--I am an old man--a very old man,--you yourself said so just now,--and you are killing me by keeping me here. Send me out of the country--any where you choose, however distant--and I will thank you: but again I say, do not keep me here.”

“When the savage animal goes about preying upon the weak and unwary, he should be placed under restraint,” said the Blackamoor. “You are not repentant, Benjamin Bones! A month have you been here--a month have you been allowed to ponder upon your enormities,--and still your soul is obdurate. Not many minutes have elapsed since you gloried in one of the most infamous deeds of your long and wicked life.”

“I spoke of Tom Rain to annoy you--because I was enraged with you for keeping me here,” returned Old Death, hastily. “There have been moments,” he added, after a short pause, “when I have felt sorry for what I did in that respect. I would not do so over again--no, my lord, I assure you I would not! I wish your poor half-brother was alive now--I would not seek to injure him, even if I had the power.”

“You speak thus because you have been alone and in the dark,” observed the Blackamoor, in a mournful voice: “but were you restored to freedom--to the enjoyment of the light of God’s own sun--and to the possession of the power of following your career of iniquity, you would again glory in that dreadful deed.”

“No,” answered Old Death: “I am sorry for it. I know that my nature is savage and ferocious: but will you tame me by cruelty? And your keeping me here is downright cruelty--and nothing more or less. It makes me vindictive--it makes me feel at times as if I hated you.”

“I shall keep you here, nevertheless, for some time longer--aye, and in the dark,” returned the Blackamoor; “because you seek not to subdue your revengeful feelings. It is terrible to think that so old a man should be so inveterately wicked. Do you know that your gang is broken up--rendered powerless? In the cells of this subterranean are Timothy Splint--Joshua Pedler--Mrs. Bunce and her husband--and your agent, Tidmarsh.”

“Then I have no hope from without!” growled Old Death, his garments again rustling with a movement of savage impatience; and for an instant it struck the Blackamoor that he could see two ferocious eyes gleaming in the dark--but this was doubtless the mere fancy of the moment.

“Yes,--you are beyond the reach of human aid, unless by my will and consent,” said the Blackamoor. “Your late companions or tools in iniquity are all housed safely here;--and, what is more, they are penitent. Listen for a moment, Benjamin Bones; and may the information I am about to give you, prove an instructive lesson. Timothy Splint is at this instant reading the Bible, therein to search for hope and consolation, which God does not deny to the worst sinners when they are truly penitent. Joshua Pedler is occupying himself in writing a letter of advice to a young girl who became his mistress, whom he drove to prostitution, but who is now earning her livelihood in a respectable manner. Tidmarsh deplores the folly which made him your instrument; and he is reading good books. Bunce and his wife are together in the same dungeon; and the woman is rapidly yielding up to her husband that empire which she had usurped. They too regret that they ever knew you; and the Bible is their solace. Of six persons whom I imprisoned in this place which was once your own property, five are already repentant: you, who are the sixth, alone remain obdurate and hardened.”

“And my old friends curse me!” moaned the ancient miscreant, his voice seeming more hollow and sepulchral than ever, as if he were covering his face with his hands. “What--the people who owe so much to me--the Bunces--Tidmarsh----”

“Would not speak to you, unless it were to convert you,” added the Black. “Thus, you perceive, you--who, in the common course of nature, are of all the six the nearest to the threshold of the tomb,--you, who have so many years upon your head, and such deep and manifold crimes to expiate,--you, Benjamin Bones,” continued the warning voice, “are the last to show the slightest--the faintest sign of penitence. Is not this deplorable? And even now you appear to regret that your late companions in crime should be in their hearts thus alienated from you. Doubtless you trusted to the chapter of accidents--to the hazard of chances to enable them to discover your place of imprisonment and effect your rescue?”

Old Death groaned heavily, in spite of himself.

“Yes:--such was your hope--such was your idea,” resumed the Black; “and now you are unmanned by disappointment. Even your friend Jeffreys turned against you--he led you into the snare which I set for you--he will not raise an arm to save you from my power. He does not even know where you are.”

“Then I am abandoned by all the world!” shrieked forth the wretched miscreant, unable to subdue the agonising emotions which this conviction excited within him.

“He who finds himself abandoned by all the world, should throw himself upon his Maker,” said the Blackamoor.

“There--there--’tis the voice of Rainford again!” cried Old Death, evidently seized with ineffable terror. “But, no--no--you are the Earl of Ellingham--you must be the Earl! Yet why do you every now and then imitate the tone of Tom Rain? Is it to frighten me, my lord? Tell me--is it to frighten me?”

“You seem inaccessible to fear of any kind,” answered the Black,--“I mean a fear which may be permanent and salutary. You have occasional qualms of conscience, which you cannot altogether resist, but which almost immediately pass away. Have you no wish to make your peace with heaven? Would you pray with a clergyman, were one to visit you?”

“No:--I am unfit for prayer--I should not have the patience to stand the questioning of a clergyman,” answered Old Death hastily: then, almost immediately afterwards, he said, “But I was wrong to give such a reply! Yes--send me a clergyman--let him bring a light--do any thing to relieve me from this solitude and this darkness. My lord--for I know that you are the Earl of Ellingham--pray take compassion upon me! I am an old--a very old man, my lord; and I cannot endure this confinement. I told you just now that I was sorry for what I did to your brother-in-law; and you know that I cannot recall him to life. Neither will you do so by killing me. Have mercy upon me, then, my lord: let me leave this horrible place----”

“To enter the great world again, and renew your course of crime?” interrupted the Black. “No--Benjamin Bones, that may not be! Let me first become assured that you sincerely and truly repent of your misdeeds--let me be impressed with the conviction that you are sorry for the crimes which have marked your long life,--and then--then, we will speak of ameliorating your condition. For the present, do not consider me as your enemy--do not look upon me as a man acting towards you from vindictive motives only. No:--for were I inclined to vent on you a miserable spite or a fiendish malignity, the means are not deficient. I might keep you without food for days together--but each day your provender is renewed: or I might even kill you outright--and yet I would not violently injure a hair of your head! To-morrow evening I will visit you again: in the meantime endeavour to subdue your feelings so that you may then speak to me without irritation.”

With these words the Black abruptly thrust the door open, and quitted the dungeon; but at that instant Cæsar, who had been pacing up and down with Wilton in the immediate vicinity of that particular cell, was so close to the entrance that the light of the lamp which he carried in his hand streamed full upon the countenance of his master as the latter sprang forth from the deep darkness of Old Death’s prison-house.

The glare for a moment showed the interior of the dungeon; and the Black, mechanically turning his eyes towards the place where he presumed Benjamin Bones to be, caught a rapid glimpse of the hideous old man, seated--or rather crouched on his bed, his hands clasped round his knees, and his form so arched that his knees and chin almost appeared to meet.

In another instant the dungeon-door was closed violently by the Blackamoor, who, as he locked and barred it, said in a low and somewhat reproachful tone to Cæsar, “You should not have been so incautious as to throw the light upon me just as I was leaving the cell. Old Death had time, even in that single moment during which the glare flashed upon my countenance, to observe me distinctly.”

“I am truly sorry, sir, that I should have been go imprudent,” answered Cæsar, in a tone of vexation at his fault. “But it is impossible that he could recognise you.”

“I believe so,” observed the Black: “and therefore we will say no more upon the subject. The old man remains obdurate and hardened,” he continued, still speaking in a low whisper; “and yet I have hopes of him as well as of the others.”

Wilton supplied Benjamin Bones with provisions through the trap in his dungeon-door; and the party then quitted the subterranean by the mode of egress communicating with the house in Red Lion Street, Clerkenwell--for the reader now perceives, as indeed he may long ago have conjectured, that the Black’s dwelling was established in the quarters lately tenanted by Old Death.

CXI. A CONVERSATION

Pass we over another month--eight weeks having now elapsed since the six prisoners were first consigned to their dungeons, and four weeks from the date of those visits the description of which has occupied the two proceeding chapters.

It was between nine and ten o’clock in the evening; and the Blackamoor was seated in his apartment, looking over some letters, when Cæsar ushered in Dr. Lascelles.

“Good evening, my dear sir,” said the Blackamoor, shaking the worthy physician cordially by the hand. “Be seated--and Cæsar will bring us a bottle of that claret which you so much admire. I am delighted that you have at length found time to give me an hour or two, in order that I may enter into full and complete explanations of certain matters----”

“I understand--I understand,” interrupted the doctor, good humouredly. “Your theory has proved to me more practical than I expected: but I shall not say any more about it until you have given me all the details of its progress. And before you begin, I must observe that the case which took me out of town six weeks ago, and has kept me at Brighton all the time, has ended most satisfactorily. I have effected a complete cure.”

“I am delighted to hear tidings so glorious from you, doctor,” said the Black. “A case which had baffled all the physicians who had previously been concerned in it, is now conducted to a successful issue by yourself. It will wondrously and deservedly increase your reputation, great as that fame already was.”

“My dear friend,” replied the physician, “without for a moment seeking to recall any thing unpleasant connected with the past, I must inform you that galvanism was the secret of the grand cure which I have effected. But let us pass on to another subject,” exclaimed the doctor hastily, as if considerately turning the discourse from a disagreeable topic. “I have been absent for six weeks--quite a strange thing for me, who am so wedded to London; and you are one of the very first of my friends on whom I call. All day long I have been paying hurried visits to my patients; and now I come to sit a couple of hours with you. I suppose you have plenty of news for me?”

“None of any consequence beyond the sphere of my own affairs in this place,” answered the Black. “You are of course aware that the Earl has made Esther an offer of his hand----”

“To be sure, my dear friend,” interrupted Lascelles: “that engagement was contracted, you remember, two or three weeks before I left London, when summoned to Brighton. But I presume that the Earl is still ignorant of----”

“All my proceedings?” exclaimed the Black, finishing the sentence for the physician. “Yes--he remains completely in the dark respecting every thing. The time may, however, soon come when he shall be made acquainted with all; and then I do not think he will blame me.”

“Far from it!” cried Lascelles, emphatically: “he doubtless owes you his happiness, if not his life--for there is no telling what that miscreant, Old Death, might not have done to gratify his frightful cravings for vengeance. The monster!” exclaimed the physician, indignantly: “he would even have inflicted the most terrible outrages and wrongs upon the amiable Esther and the generous-souled Lady Hatfield, in order to wound the heart of the Earl.”

“And yet I do not despair of reforming that man, bad as he is,” observed the Black.

“Reform the Devil!” cried the doctor. “But I will not anticipate by any hasty opinion of mine the explanations which you are going to give me. By the bye, have you had any intelligence relative to that Mr. Torrens?”

“Yes,” answered the Black. “Esther received a letter from his daughter Rosamond a few days ago. The poor girl and her father were on their way to Switzerland, where they intended to settle in some secluded spot. The old gentleman is worn down and spirit-broken; and Rosamond states that she is afraid he is oppressed with some secret care beyond those with which she is acquainted.”

“And your man Jeffreys?” said Lascelles, interrogatively.

“The next time you visit Hackney, doctor,--should your professional avocations take you to that suburb,” replied the Blackamoor, “forget not to look out for the most decent grocer’s shop in Mare Street; and over the door you will see the name of JOHN JEFFREYS. He entered the establishment only a few days ago; and I believe he is a reformed man. I tried his fidelity as well as his steadiness in many ways, during the last two months; and I have every reason to entertain the best hopes relative to him. At all events, he has every chance of earning an honest and good living; for he has purchased an old-established business, which Wilton previously ascertained to be a profitable concern.”

“Have you heard or seen anything lately of our friend Sir Christopher Blunt?” enquired the physician, laughing as he spoke.

“I have not seen him since that memorable night when he fulfilled the duties of a magistrate in this room,” answered the Black, smiling: “but I have occasionally heard of him. He is so puffed up with pride in consequence of the importance which he derived from his adventure here, that he looks upon himself as a perfect demigod. By the bye, I saw an advertisement in this day’s papers, announcing the speedy publication of the ‘The Life and Times of Sir Christopher Blunt. By Jeremiah Lykspittal, Esq. With numerous Portraits; and containing a mass of interesting correspondence between the Subject of the Biography and the most Eminent Deceased Men of the present Century.’ So ran the advertisement.”

“At which you of course laughed heartily,” exclaimed the doctor. “But here is Cæsar with the wine--and long enough he has been in fetching it up, too.”

The lad made some excuse, placed the decanters and glasses on the table, and then withdrew.

“Now for the promised explanations, my friend,” cried the physician, as he helped himself to the purple juice of Bordeaux.

“First,” began the Blackamoor, “I shall speak to you of the six prisoners generally--or rather of my system, as applied to them. My belief originally was that bad men should become to a certain extent the reformers of themselves through the medium of their own thoughts. It is not sufficient, I reasoned within myself, that criminals should be merely placed each night in a situation to think and reflect, and then enjoy the light of the glorious day again. A night’s meditations may be poignant and provocative of a remorse of a salutary kind: but when the day dawns, the mind becomes hardened again, and all disagreeable redactions fly away. The most guilty wretches fear not spectres in the day-time: ’tis in the darkness and silence of the night that phantoms haunt them. In a word, then, the natural night is not long enough to make an impression so deep that the ensuing day can not easily obliterate it.”

“Good!” exclaimed the physician: “I follow you attentively.”

“These considerations,” resumed the Black, “led me to the conclusion that a wicked man’s thoughts could only be rendered available as a means to induce sincere repentance and excite a permanent remorse, by extending their train to a long, long period. If a night of a few short hours’ duration would produce a very partial and limited effect upon the mind of a criminal, I reasoned--why not make a night of many weeks, and hope for a proportionately grand and striking result? Accordingly, I resolved to subject those six prisoners to the test; and I will now give you a detailed account of the consequences.”

“Proceed,” said the physician: “I am becoming deeply interested.”

“The six prisoners were each placed in a separate cell, and not allowed any light in the first instance,” continued the Blackamoor. “Each dungeon was plainly but comfortably furnished; and every evening they were supplied with a sufficiency of food for four-and-twenty hours. They were ordered to perform their ablutions regularly under pain of having their meat stopped; and you may be sure that they did not fail to obey the command. Twice a week the men were shaved by one of my people; and twice a week also they were supplied with clean linen. The woman was of course provided with additional changes; and as her health was more likely to suffer than that of the men, I allowed her to walk up and down the long subterranean for two hours each day, watched by Wilton so that she might not communicate with either of the prisoners. But I am now about to enter on details connected with each individual.”

The physician drew his chair a little closer to the Black.

“Tidmarsh was the first who showed any signs of contrition,” resumed the latter. “He could not endure that one, long, endless night into which I had plunged him,--a night interrupted only by the short and regular visits of myself or my people. He was ever alone with his own thoughts, which no intervals of a long day broke in upon: the impression created by his thoughts was ever in his mind--the continuous night kept that impression there! By degrees he began to see the error of his ways--and, when his thoughts were on one occasion intolerable, and his imagination was filled with frightful images, he had recourse to prayer. The next time I visited him he assured me that his prayers had relieved him, but that he could not sufficiently settle his mind to pray so often as he desired. That was the moment to give this man a light; and I did so. At the same time I offered him his choice between the Bible and a Tale-book; and he chose the former with unaffected readiness. Had he selected the latter, I should have seen that he craved for amusement only--and he would have had neither lamp nor books until he had gone through a farther ordeal of his lonely thoughts in utter darkness. Well--this Tidmarsh, by the aid of the light, was enabled to study the Bible and settle his soul to prayer. But a continual and unvaried perusal of the Bible is calculated to render the mind morbid, and convert a sinner into a grossly superstitious fanatic. Accordingly, when I saw that Tidmarsh began to grow gloomy--which was in a very few days--I gave him books of Travels and Voyages; and his soul was refreshed by the change. The improvement in that man was far more rapid than I could have possibly anticipated. During my visits to him, I tested his sincerity in a variety of ways,--by means of questions so artfully contrived as to admit of two kinds of answers: namely, one kind hypocritical, and the other sincere--and at the same time implying a sort of promise of release if the hypocritical reply were given. But I found him straight-forward and truly conscientious in his answers. In due time I allowed him such novels as ‘The Vicar of Wakefield,’ ‘Paul and Virginia,’ ‘Elizabeth, or the Exiles of Siberia,’ to read: but I found that he preferred the Travels, Voyages, and Biographies of good or great men. Indeed, scarcely six weeks had elapsed from the date of that man’s incarceration in the dungeon, when I felt convinced that he was so far a reformed character as to be anxious to earn an honest livelihood if he were only afforded the chance. Then I removed him from his dungeon, and lodged him in a room up stairs. He was still in reality a prisoner, because any attempt to escape on his part would have been immediately detected--so narrowly yet secretly was he watched. To him, however, it must have seemed that he was free: but he never evinced the least inclination to avail himself of the apparent liberty which he enjoyed. Every circumstance spoke in that man’s favour; and the night before last he was sent off, in company with one of my dependants, to Portsmouth, whence they embarked together for the little island of Alderney, where Tidmarsh is to settle in a small way of business, to establish which the means will be found him. My retainer will remain for a few weeks--or perhaps months--so as thoroughly to watch his conduct; and if during that period, and in a place where there are no evil temptations, he manifests an uniform steadiness of conduct, I think we may safely calculate that there is no fear of a relapse.”

“And all this has been effected in two short months!” exclaimed the physician, with a tone and manner indicative of mingled surprise and admiration. “I could scarcely have believed it possible.”

“Listen to my next case, doctor,” said the Black; “and you will see that my system is most salutary. I shall speak of the two Bunces collectively. The man Bunce I always looked upon rather as a soft-pated, hen-pecked fool than a radically wicked fellow; and accordingly, the moment he began to exhibit very serious alarm and horror at being alone and in the dark, I gave him a lamp and the Bible. The length of night which I made him endure was not more than two-thirds of a week. In respect to his wife, the first demonstration of repentance which she showed, was in a desire to speak to her husband if only for a few minutes and through the trap-door of his cell. Of course I issued orders that the request should be complied with; and it was evident that the woman derived comfort from this indulgence. Next day she was permitted to converse with him at the trap-door for nearly half an hour; and then she was overheard begging his pardon for the ill-treatment which he had so often endured at her hands. For many, many successive days this short intercourse was allowed them; and on one occasion, Toby Bunce read her a few verses from the Bible, he being in his cell with the lamp, and she standing outside his door in the dark subterranean passage. The manner in which she received the passage thus read to her, induced me to order that she also should be provided with a light and a Testament: for the night which she endured, and which could scarcely be said to have been even interrupted by the daily walk in the dark passage, was just three weeks. It gave me pain, doctor--oh! it gave me pain, I can assure you, to punish that woman so severely: but her mind was very obdurate--her heart very hardened;--and darkness was long before it produced on her the effect which I desired. At length, a few days after she had been allowed a lamp,--and a little more than one month ago--I yielded to her earnest entreaties that she might be lodged with her husband. Then what a change had taken place in her! She was tamed--completely tamed,--no longer a vixenish shrew, but questioning her husband mildly and in a conciliating tone relative to the passages of the Bible, or the Travels and other instructive books, which he had read to her. Good feelings appeared to establish themselves rapidly between this couple. I had them put to several tests. On one occasion Wilton persuaded Toby Bunce that he was not looking very well, and some little luxury was added to the evening’s supply of food, it being intimated that the extra dish was expressly for himself. Wilton remained near the cell, and listened to what passed within. Bunce insisted upon sharing the delicacy with his wife; and she would not hear of such a proposal. He urged his offer--she was positive; and in this point she once again showed a resolution of her own, but not in a manner to give her husband offence. The very next day--this was a week ago--I had the pair removed to a chamber over-head, giving them the same apparent chance of escape as in the case of Tidmarsh. They did not however seek to avail themselves of it; and yesterday evening they were separated again--but only for a short time. In fact, Bunce was last night sent off to Southampton, in company with one of my people; and thence they doubtless embarked for the island of Sark this morning. Mrs. Bunce will leave presently, guarded by my faithful dependant Harding and his wife, who will not only take her to rejoin her husband in the little islet opposite Guernsey, but will also stay with them there for a period of six months. Bunce will follow his trade as a tailor, Harding finding a market for the clothes which he makes in St. Peter’s Port, which is the capital of Guernsey, as you are well aware.”

“So far, so good,” exclaimed the physician, highly delighted with these explanations. “Should your system produce results permanently beneficial, you may become a great benefactor to the human race; for it is assuredly far better to reform the wicked by a course of a few weeks’ training by playing upon their feelings in this manner, than to subject them to the contamination of a felons’ gaol and inflict years of exile under circumstances which are utterly repugnant to all hopes of reformation. But pray answer me one question. Should either of these Bunces, or Tidmarsh choose to resist the control and authority of your dependants who have charge of them at present--and should any one of those quasi-prisoners demand their unconditional freedom--how can your men exercise a power or sway over them?”

“These quasi-prisoners, as you term them,” answered the Black, “have not, as a matter of course, the least idea who I really am. Their minds, somewhat attenuated by their incarceration and all the mysterious circumstances of their captivity, are to a certain extent over-awed. They know that they have been, and still believe themselves to be, in the power of one who wields an authority which they cannot comprehend; and fear alone, if no better motive, therefore renders them tractable. This ensures their obedience and their silence at least for the present. Eventually, when they again become accustomed to freedom, they will find themselves placed in a position to earn an honest and very comfortable livelihood--care being taken to keep alive in their minds the conviction that the business which produces them their bread and enables them to live respectably, only remains their own so long as they prove worthy of enjoying its advantages. Now, my calculations and beliefs are these:--People who have entered upon a course of crime, continue in it because it is very difficult, and often impossible, to leave it for honest pursuits. But when once they have experienced the dreadful effects of crime, and are placed in a way to act and labour honestly, very few indeed would by choice relapse into evil courses. Therefore, I conclude and hope that the Bunces on the one hand, and Tidmarsh on the other, will, if from mere motives of policy and convenience alone, steadily continue in that honest path in which they are now placed, and the advantages of which they will soon experience.”

“Good again,” said that doctor. “If your calculations only applied to six criminals out of ten, you would be effecting an immense good by means of your system. But I hope and indeed am inclined to believe that the proportion in your favour is even larger.”

“I am certain that it is,” answered the Blackamoor. “Well, I now come to Timothy Splint--the man, who, as you may remember, was the actual assassin of Sir Henry Courtenay.”

“If you succeed in redeeming that fellow,” exclaimed the physician, “I shall say that your system can have no exceptions. Stay, though!” he cried, a thought striking him;--“I had forgotten Old Death. Ah! my dear friend, you may as well endeavour to tame the boa-constrictor, as to reform that dreadful man.”

“You shall hear of him in his turn,” said the Black, his tone assuming a slight degree of mournfulness, as if he were less satisfied in respect to the application of his system to Old Death, than in either of the other cases. “For the present,” he observed, “you must have patience enough to listen to certain details relative to Timothy Splint.”

“Go on, my dear friend,” cried Dr. Lascelles. “I am all attention--and patience too, for that matter. Your narrative is too interesting to be tedious.”

“Timothy Splint,” continued the Blackamoor, “appeared to suffer more horribly from the darkness than all the others. The spectre of the murdered baronet was constantly by his side, and even prevented him from committing self-destruction. For a whole month did his night continue; and during that period he must have endured the most frightful mental tortures. This was all the better: such a state of mind naturally drove the man to pray;--and prayer relieved him. I remember how touchingly, although in his rude style, he assured me one evening that when he prayed the spectre grew less and less. Now, notwithstanding I was well pleased to find him in this frame of mind, I did not choose to encourage superstitious notions: and therefore I explained to him that the only apparitions which existed were those that were conjured up by a guilty conscience. At the expiration of, I think, exactly thirty-one days, I allowed this man a light and a Bible. Then I pursued the same treatment with him as in respect to Tidmarsh and the Bunces: I mean, I gave him books of Travels and Voyages and moral Tales. He seemed very grateful--not only seemed, but really was; and his hard heart was melted by my kind treatment. A few days ago, he gave me the outlines of his early life; and I found that circumstances had driven him into the ways of crime. His reformation was, therefore, all the easier; because he had a youth of innocence to look back upon and regret. He moreover assured me that even with his late companion in crime, Josh Pedler, he had frequently spoken, in mournful mood, of the unhappiness which often marks the hours of men of lawless character; and, all these circumstances tended to give strength and consistency to his declarations that he longed--deeply longed to have an opportunity of earning an honest livelihood for the future. What to do with him I scarcely knew. Whenever I reflected on this subject, I remembered that he was a murderer--stained with the blood of a fellow-creature; and his case was therefore widely different from that of the Bunces and Tidmarsh. At length it struck me that emigration to a far-distant land was the only fitting course to adopt; and I proposed it to him. He was rejoiced at the idea; for he instantly saw how, by changing his name, and commencing the world anew in another sphere, he should be removed from old haunts where either unpleasant reminiscences would be awakened, or temptations present themselves. Moreover, he beheld the necessity of repairing to some part of the earth where he stood no chance of being recognised by either friend or foe. His consent to my proposed arrangement being thus obtained, and all his best hopes and feelings being warmly enlisted in the plan, I had then to ascertain whether any one of my dependants would consent to accompany such a man on a long voyage and to a far-off clime. Fortunately my enquiries amongst my retainers were followed by success; and at a very early hour this morning Timothy Splint and his guardian, or rather companion, set off for Liverpool, thence to embark for the United States. There, in the backwoods of the Far West, let us hope that this man--this murderer, whom the savage law would have hanged,”--and the Blackamoor shuddered, as he pronounced the word,--“let us hope, I say, that Timothy Splint will some day rise into a substantial farmer, and that he may yet live to bless the period when he went through the ordeal of the subterranean dungeon.”

The Black paused, and drank a glass of the cooling claret; for his mouth had grown parched by the simple fact of giving utterance to that one word on which he had shudderingly laid so great an emphasis. The physician, who appeared to guess full well what was passing in his mind, made no remark; and in a few moments the other continued his explanations in the ensuing manner:--

“I now come to Joshua Pedler. His disposition is naturally savage and brutal; and a long night of darkness produced on him effects which varied at different periods. His thoughts were dreadful to him; and sometimes, when I visited him, he would at first speak ferociously. But a kind word on my part immediately reduced him to meekness. He had not been many days in the dungeon when, doubtless encouraged by my manner towards him, he told me that he was not only unhappy on his own account, but also on that of a young woman whom he had married according to the rights of the vile class with which he had so long herded. I immediately undertook to provide for the girl; and Pedler really demonstrated a sincere gratitude. You need scarcely be told that I kept my promise. Wilton sought her out; and she was found in a state of starvation and despair. A comfortable lodging was taken for her; and when she was somewhat restored to health, needle-work was supplied her. But all this was done without allowing her to believe that any other circumstance beyond a mere accidental discovery of her wretched condition had thus rendered her the object of Wilton’s charity. The assurance which I gave Pedler that Matilda was provided for, had a most salutary effect upon his mind; although he frequently afterwards showed signs of savage impatience. The tenour of his thoughts was chiefly a regret that he had been so foolish as to pursue an evil career. He reproached himself for the folly of his wickedness, rather than for the wickedness itself, he disliked solitude and darkness, but was not so much influenced by fears as his late companion, Splint. During the first month he remained in darkness, and never once spoke to me of prayer. Two or three times he alluded to the Bible, but did not express a wish to read it. At last he admitted to me his conviction that the thoughts which oppressed him were beneficial to him, though most unpleasant. I fancied this to be a favourable opportunity to test his worthiness to receive some indulgence. I accordingly asked him if he would like to be able to write to Matilda. My calculation was just: I had touched him in a vulnerable point;--and he was that night allowed a lamp and writing-materials. Moreover, on that very occasion, he shed tears; and I no longer despaired of taming the last remnants of ferocity which lingered in his nature. A few days afterwards he gave me a letter to send to Matilda. Of course I opened and read it; for it was to obtain a precise insight into the real state of his mind that I had suggested the correspondence with his mistress. The contents of that document confirmed the hopes I already entertained of him; and I saw that his affection for that young woman might be made a most humanizing means in respect to him. I accordingly had her brought into this house, and lodged in one of the attics. Then I broke to her as gently as possible the fact that Joshua Pedler was my prisoner. I shall not pause to describe her joy at receiving intelligence concerning him; suffice it to say that she read his letter with tearful eyes, and gladly consented to reply to it. In the evening I took her answer to the prisoner; and he wept over it like a child. I then knew that his reformation was a certainty. Two or three days afterwards, he begged me to allow him a Bible; and his request was of course complied with. The correspondence that passed between him and Matilda was frequent and lengthy; and, that he might feel himself under no restraint, I assured him that I neither saw his letters nor his replies. ’Twas a falsehood on my part--but a necessary, and therefore an innocent one. For I did peruse all this correspondence; and Matilda was aware of the fact by which I was enabled to watch the gradual but sudden change that was taking place in the mind of that man. At length I perceived that I might in safety think of providing for him elsewhere; and I was as much embarrassed how to accomplish this aim, as I was in the case of Timothy Splint. But in the midst of my bewilderment I happened to notice an advertisement in a daily newspaper, stating that by a particular day two men, or a man and his wife, were required to undertake the care of Eddystone Light-house. You may start with surprise, doctor--you may even smile: but I assure you that this advertisement appeared most providentially to concur with the object I had in view. Without a moment’s delay I spoke to Matilda respecting the matter; and she expressed her readiness to follow my advice in all things, so long as there was a prospect of her being reunited to Josh Pedler. Her consent being procured, it was no difficult task to obtain that of the man. On the contrary, he accepted the proposal with joy and thankfulness. Wilton soon made the necessary enquiries and arrangements; and at this moment Joshua Pedler and the young woman are the sole inmates of the Eddystone Light-house!”

“Thus, my dear friend,” said the physician, counting the names of the persons upon his fingers, “you have disposed of Tidmarsh in Alderney--the Bunces are to go to Sark--Splint is bound as an emigrant to the Far West--and Joshua Pedler is on the Eddystone rock.”

“And Pedler is the only one who is unaccompanied by an agent of mine,” observed the Black; “because Matilda is a good young woman; and I can rely upon her. Moreover I should tell you that I procured a license for them; and Wilton saw them legally married at Plymouth, before they embarked for the Light-house.”

“I congratulate you upon the success of your projects thus far,” said the physician. “It is truly wonderful how admirably you have managed thus to redeem and satisfactorily dispose of some of the greatest villains that ever lurked in the low dens of this metropolis. But now, my friend, I wish to hear something of that arch-miscreant, Old Death.”

At this moment the door opened; and one of the Black’s dependants entered the room.

“The woman Bunce, sir,” he said, “is most anxious to communicate something to you before she quits London. She declares that she has a secret preying upon her mind----”

“A secret?” exclaimed the Black.

“Yes, sir--a secret which she says she must reveal to you, as it is too heavy for her heart to bear. She cried a great deal, and implored me to come to you.”

“Doctor,” said the Blackamoor, after a few moments’ profound reflection, “you know wherefore I do not wish that woman to behold my features--even though they be thus disguised. During her incarceration I never spoke to her save through the trap of her dungeon door; and since she has been an inmate of the house I have not visited her. It will be as well to continue this precaution: do you, then, hasten to her and receive the confession, whatever it be, which she has to make.”

“Willingly,” replied Lascelles; and he followed the servant from the room.

CXII. THE CONVERSATION CONCLUDED

Upwards of a quarter of an hour had elapsed, when Dr. Lascelles returned to the apartment in which he had left the Blackamoor.

“Yes,” exclaimed the physician, throwing himself into the chair which he had recently occupied; “that woman is indeed penitent--truly penitent!”

“What proof have you acquired of this fact, doctor?” demanded the Black.

“The confession which she has just made to me--or rather the motive which induced her to make it,” answered Lascelles. “But not to keep you in suspense, my dear friend, she has revealed something which only confirms a suspicion that you yourself had long ago entertained, if I remember right.”

“And that suspicion----”

“Is relative to Jacob Smith,” added Lascelles.

“Ah! the woman has confessed it?” exclaimed the Blackamoor.

“She has confessed that Jacob Smith is her own son, and that Benjamin Bones is his father,” replied the physician, in a solemn tone.

“My God! what a parent that man has been!” cried the Black, his brows contracting, and his voice indicating the emotions of horror that were suddenly excited within him. “When I recall to mind every detail of the history of poor Jacob,--his neglected infancy--his corrupted youth,--when I reflect that his own father was the individual who coolly and deliberately initiated him in the ways of crime----Just heavens! I begin to think with you that the reformation of such a monster is an impossibility!”

“Subdue your excitement, my dear friend,” said the doctor; “and let us converse calmly and reasonably upon these matters.”

“First, then, explain to me the nature of your interview with Mrs. Bunce,” observed the Black. “I shall listen with earnest attention.”

“I went up stairs to the room in which she is located,” said Lascelles; “and she rose from a chair the moment I entered; but she started back in evident disappointment mingled with surprise when she saw me. ‘It was not you, sir,’ she almost immediately observed, ‘that I wanted to see. I know that the master of this house is of dark complexion; for I have caught a glimpse of him when he has visited my dungeon below.’--I explained to her that I was a friend of yours, and that you had deputed me to receive any confession which she had to make. She appeared to hesitate for a moment, and then burst into tears. ‘I have been wicked--very wicked, sir,’ she said, in a voice broken by deep sobs; ‘and it is only very lately that I have had my eyes opened to my sinful life. The dark gentleman, who I suppose is the master here, has done this good thing for me: and now he is going to provide for me and my husband. But I shall not go away happy, unless I tell him every thing that weighs on my soul.’--I spoke a few words of comfort to her; and in a few minutes she confessed that the lad who bore the name of Jacob Smith is her own son, born while she was the mistress of Old Death, and before her marriage with Bunce. I informed her that Jacob was well provided for and happy; and she seemed deeply grateful for this assurance. Then I recommended her not to reveal this secret to her husband when they should be united again; inasmuch as, having entered on a new phase of existence together, it would be useless and wrong to acquaint him with a fact calculated only to disturb that harmony. She promised to follow my advice, and appeared much eased in mind by having unbosomed her secret to me.”

“You gave her most excellent counsel, doctor,” said the Black: then, after a few moments’ reflection, he added, “Jacob ought not to be informed of this secret of his hideous parentage----at least not for the present.”

“By no means!” exclaimed the physician. “His mind is tranquil--he feels a certain confidence in himself--and your friendship is his greatest delight. Let not that salutary equanimity be disturbed.”

“No--it would be wrong and useless,” said the Black, musing. “I remember that in the course of the long narrative which he gave me of his life, he mentioned the occasional scintillations of kindness which marked the conduct of Mrs. Bunce towards him. I also recollect that he observed to me how there were moments when he thought a great deal of any gentle words which she ever uttered to him, or any kind treatment she ever showed him.”

“Nature, my dear friend--Nature!” exclaimed the good physician. “Even in a woman so bad as she was at the time of which he spoke, there were certain natural yearnings which she could not altogether subdue; while, on his part, there existed filial inclinations and tendencies which he could not understand. How much that villain Benjamin Bones has to answer for!”

“Alas--alas! I fear that he is beyond redemption!” cried the Black, bitterly. “But--no,” he added immediately afterwards, in a changed and more decided tone: “we must not despair!”

“I am now anxiously waiting to hear your report concerning him,” observed Lascelles.

“He is still in darkness--his night still continues,” was the answer. “A month has elapsed since I visited him for the first time in his dungeon; and during the other four weeks that have subsequently passed, I have had several interviews with him in the same manner. These interviews have taken place in the utter obscurity of his cell; and I have been constrained, though with pain and difficulty, to assume a feigned tone on each of those occasions. At my first visit he declared, in terror and amazement, that he recognised in my voice something which reminded him of that of Thomas Rainford; and then he seemed to be impressed with the conviction that I was the Earl of Ellingham. His rage against the Earl was deep and terrible; and I saw too plainly that if he relapsed into a milder tone, it was but to deceive me as to the real state of his mind, and induce me to grant him some indulgences--if not his freedom. I visited him again on the following night; and he spoke less savagely, and more meekly: but I mistrusted him--yes, I mistrusted him, and I fear with good grounds. I cannot give you a very satisfactory description of our subsequent meetings. At one moment he has appeared touched by my language, and has even expressed penitence and contrition for the past: at the next moment, he has exhibited all the natural ferocity of his disposition. Sometimes he has assumed a coaxing manner, and has endeavoured to move me to grant him a light;--but I have hitherto refused. One thing I must not forget to mention--which is that never since the first visit I paid him has he once alluded to the impression made upon him by the sounds of my voice; and never has he again addressed me as Lord Ellingham. In moments of excitement or rage, he has demanded in a wild and almost frantic tone who I am: but seldom waiting for the reply, he has relapsed either into a humour of stubborn taciturnity, or of a meekness which I knew to be assumed. Indeed, there are many points in his character and conduct, since he has been an inmate of the dungeon, which I cannot comprehend. It is however certain that darkness has not produced on him the same rapid and important effects as upon the other five: something more severe in the shape of punishment, or something better calculated to touch his heart and appeal to his feelings, is requisite. At the same time, I believe him to be already moved and shaken in his obduracy to a certain degree: but reformation in respect to him must be a work of time.”

“On the whole, you have hopes?” said the physician, interrogatively.

“Yes--when I call to memory all the particulars of his conduct and language from the first occasion of my visits until the last, which took place yesterday, I can recognise a change,” answered the Black. “Indeed, I am almost convinced that if it were possible for me to speak to him at very great length--to argue with him on the folly and wickedness of his past life--to reason with him unrestrainedly, I should be able to move him deeply. But the necessity of maintaining an assumed tone, and the impossibility of taking a light with me so as to watch the chantings and workings of his countenance and follow up those appeals or those arguments which appear to have most effect with him,--in a word, the disguise I am compelled to sustain and the precautions I am forced to adopt, militate considerably against my system in respect to him.”

“It would be imprudent for me to visit him on your behalf,” observed the physician. “On that memorable night when Lord Ellingham had him, Tidmarsh, and Mrs. Bunce in his power in an adjacent room, and wrested from them all the secrets of their damnable plots and schemes,--on that occasion, you know, I was present; and Old Death would therefore cherish only rancorous feelings with regard to me.”

“True,” said the Black, musing: then, suddenly starting from a deep reverie of a few minutes, he exclaimed, “Doctor, I have thought of a plan which I hope and trust, for the honour of human nature, may prove efficacious in respect to that obdurate sinner: but I hesitate--yes, I hesitate to put it into execution!”

“Explain yourself, my dear friend,” replied Lascelles; “and I will give you my advice candidly and frankly.”

“In a word, then, doctor,” continued the Blackamoor, “I have such faith in the soft persuasion of woman, that I am half inclined to conjure Esther de Medina to assist me in this good work. Would she but consent to visit this great sinner--or rather to address him through the sliding-panel of his dungeon door, I am certain that her eloquence, aided by the musical tones of her voice and the deep feeling which would characterise her language,--I am certain, I say, that she would succeed in touching a chord in his heart, which no words--no appeal of mine can reach.”

The physician heard with attention, and began to reflect profoundly.

“For my part,” continued the Blackamoor, “I believe that the eloquence of woman, when rightly used and properly directed, is endowed with an influence and a power almost irresistible. Woman’s mission is to tame and humanize the ferocity of man’s disposition; and the more antagonistic are the characters of two beings of opposite sexes thus to be brought in contact with each other, the better for the purpose. Now, decidedly no two living creatures can be more dissimilar in all respects than Benjamin Bones and Esther de Medina,--the former so savage and unrelenting; the latter so mild and forgiving,--the one possessing a soul blackened by every possible crime; the other endowed with every virtue that approximates the nature of woman to that of the angel!”

“I like your project--I see not the least objection to it, my dear friend,” said Dr. Lascelles, after a long pause, during which he pondered deeply on the plan suggested. “Do you think that Miss de Medina would consent to aid you in this matter?”

“I have no doubt of it,” returned the Black. “You perceive that the dilemma is somewhat serious, and not slightly embarrassing. I cannot allow Benjamin Bones to go forth again into the world, to recommence his vile intrigues: besides, to give him his liberty thus, would be to defeat the primary object which I had in view in breaking up his gang. To release him at present is therefore impossible; and I scarcely feel myself justified in keeping him locked up much longer in a dark dungeon. It would be unsafe to remove him into one of the apartments of either this house or that in Turnmill Street; for such a crafty fox can alone be kept secure by massive stone walls and iron bolts. What, then, am I to do with him?--how am I to dispose of him? Esther will assist me in this difficulty; and God send that through her agency, some salutary impression may be made upon Old Death’s mind!”

“Bear in memory,” exclaimed the physician, an idea suddenly striking him, “that one of this man’s horrible schemes was to avenge himself on Lord Ellingham by torturing Esther de Medina.”

“And when he hears her sweet voice revealing to him her knowledge of his atrocious designs, and sincerely promising him her pardon,--when he discovers how much virtue and goodness there is in woman,” continued the Black, in an impassioned tone, “he will be moved--he will be led to contemplate the blackness of his own heart--he will find himself placed in such frightful contrast with that forgiving angel----”

“Yes--yes!” cried the physician, emphatically: “it must be done! You have devised the only means to produce a real and effectual impression on that bad man’s heart; and if he prove inaccessible to the persuasiveness of Esther’s tongue, his case may be looked upon as hopeless.”

The deep-toned bell of Clerkenwell church now struck the hour of eleven; and scarcely had the sound died away in the silence of night, when a post-chaise drove up to the door of the house.

“Mrs. Bunce is now about to take her departure,” said the Black. “Everything is prepared in that respect--Harding and his wife have already received full instructions and the necessary funds--and the sooner that the woman is safe out of this mighty city of temptation, the better.”

The sounds of several footsteps were now heard descending the stairs; and a minute afterwards, the post-chaise drove rapidly away from the house.

“Of all my prisoners, Old Death alone remains to be disposed of,” observed the Black, as soon as the din of the wheels was no longer audible.

“And it is to be hoped that he will not be a source of difficulty or embarrassment to you for many weeks more,” said the physician, rising to take his departure.

CXIII. ESTHER DE MEDINA AND OLD DEATH

It was on the third day after the explanations given to Dr. Lascelles, and between five and six o’clock in the evening, that Esther de Medina was conducted by the Blackamoor into the subterranean passage, the latter holding a lamp in his hand.

“Shall I remain near you, Esther?” he enquired, in a whisper.

“No--it is not necessary,” she answered. “I am not afraid of being in this place, gloomy as it appears; and since I am merely to address the miserable man through the trap-door of his dungeon, no harm can reach me.”

Thus speaking, she turned and received the light from her companion,--her manner being calm and even resolute, though her countenance was very pale.

“God bless you, Esther!” said the Black, emphatically: “your willingness to aid me in this important matter is not the least admirable trait in your character!”

“It is a duty--though a painful one,” responded the beautiful Jewess. “And now leave me--I would rather proceed alone to the prisoner’s cell.”

“Remember,” said the Blackamoor, “it is the last on the right hand side of this long subterranean passage.”

He then retraced his way up the stone-staircase communicating with the house in Red Lion Street, while Esther advanced along the gloomy cavern, in which the lamp shone but with feeble lustre.

In less than a minute she reached the door of Old Death’s dungeon: and there she paused for nearly another minute, a sensation of loathing and horror preventing her from immediately announcing her presence to the terrible inmate of that cell. For the Black, in order to prepare her as fully and completely as possible for her philanthropic mission, had been compelled to reveal to her all the details of those dreadful designs which Benjamin Bones had cherished against herself and Lady Hatfield, and which had been made known through the medium of John Jeffreys. It was therefore natural that Esther de Medina should shrink from the bare idea of holding the slightest communication with a miscreant of so ferocious a character: but a short--a very short interval of reflection was soon sufficient to arm her with the courage necessary to support the ordeal.

Drawing back the sliding-panel which covered the small aperture in the upper part of the massive door, she said in her soft, musical voice, “Prisoner, will you grant me your attention for a few minutes?”

“Who are you?” demanded Old Death, starting as if from a lethargic state--a movement that was indicated by the sudden rustling of his garments and the creaking of the bed whereon he was placed.

“I am Esther de Medina,” was the answer; and the beautiful Jewess allowed the lamp to cast its light upon her countenance, which was so close to the aperture that Old Death caught a momentary but perfect view of her features.

She then placed the lamp upon the ground, thus again leaving the interior of the cell in complete darkness.

“Yes--it is Miss Esther de Medina!” exclaimed Benjamin Bones, in a voice which he endeavoured to render as mild and conciliatory as possible. “Dear young lady, open the door, and let me out of this horrible place. I am sure you possess a good heart----”

“A heart good enough to forgive you for the dreadful atrocity which you contemplated against me upwards of two months ago,” interrupted Esther, scarcely able to subdue a shuddering sensation which came over her. “Yes--I know every thing,” she continued: “you would have entrapped me into your power--you would have deprived me of the blessing of sight,--and yet I never, never injured you.”

“But you say that you forgive me!” cried Old Death, impatiently. “Open the door, then, my sweet young lady--and I will find means to reward you well. Listen,” he exclaimed, approaching the trap, and speaking in a confidential kind of hollow, murmuring whisper,--“don’t be offended at what I am going to say--but I know that you are fond of jewellery--and it is natural for such a beautiful creature as you are----”

“Silence, sir!” interrupted Esther, indignantly. “I am well aware to what you allude; and it is time to undeceive you on that head,” she added, in a proud tone: “indeed, there is no longer any necessity for concealment in that respect! In my turn I desire you to listen--and listen attentively. You entertain a belief so prejudicial to my character, that I cannot allow even such an one as you to cherish it another minute. Know, then, that I have a sister so like myself in outward appearance----”

“By Satan! it must be so,” ejaculated Old Death, a light breaking in upon his mind as in a single moment he took a rapid survey of all the circumstances which had originally led him to suppose that Esther was the thief of Mr. Gordon’s diamonds and the mistress of Tom Rain. “Yes--yes--I understand it all now!” he added, in a tone that appeared to imply vexation at his former blindness in respect to these matters.

“With pain and sorrow am I thus compelled to allude to a sister who is so dear--so very dear to me,” resumed Esther: “but this explanation was necessary--not only for my own sake, but likewise to convince you of the folly and wickedness of endeavouring to induce me, by the promise of reward or bribe, to draw back the bolts of your prison-door. No--my visit to you is inspired by the earnest desire to move your soul to the contemplation of all the dreadful deeds which have marked your life----”

“Then you will not set me free?” exclaimed Old Death, in a tone of subdued rage and latent ferocity.

“Not now--not now,” repeated Esther. “But listen to me attentively!”

“Go on,” growled the inmate of the dungeon, as he retreated from the door, and threw himself upon his bed again.

“If you entertain the slightest hope that you will ever be allowed an opportunity to re-enter on a course of wickedness and crime, you are sadly mistaken,” continued Esther, speaking in a conciliatory and yet energetic tone. “Even were you liberated this moment, measures would be adopted to render you completely powerless for the future in respect to the perpetration of fresh enormities. Reflect, then, whether it will not be better for you to devote the remainder of your days--and in the ordinary course of nature they must necessarily be few--to the important duty of making your peace with heaven! Do not despair of pardon--oh! no--do not despair! You see that I, who am a mortal being, can forgive you for the wrongs you meditated against me,--and surely the mercy of heaven is greater than that of human creatures! Yes--repent ere it be too late; and God will not cast you off eternally. His mercy is infinite: His pardon is never asked in vain by the penitent sinner.”

“Continue to speak to me thus,” cried Old Death, in a tone strangely subdued and wondrously meek, considering the ferocious excitement which so lately animated him.

“Oh! I sincerely hope that you will recognise the error of your ways, ere it be indeed too late!” exclaimed Esther, in a tone of enthusiasm deeply felt by her generous soul. “Consider your advanced age--and think how soon the hand of Death may be laid upon you! Then how wretched--how awful would your feelings be,--and how would you shudder at the idea of being about to stand in the presence of that Almighty Power whose laws and mandates you have so often violated! For, after all, what have you gained by your long, long career of wickedness? All your treasures were annihilated in one hour----”

“Yes--yes,” interrupted Old Death, in a voice half suffocated with emotions which the Jewess fondly believed to be those of remorse.

“The hoardings of many years and the produce of innumerable misdeeds were thus swept away,” she continued, impressively; “and Providence at length decreed that you should become a prisoner in the very place where you had so long ruled as a master. Does not heaven, then, afford you solemn and significant warnings that your career of crime is no more to be pursued with success?--and do not those warnings move your heart to repentance and remorse? Neglect not such warnings as these, I conjure you!”

“Your words do me good, young lady!” exclaimed Old Death. “I am glad that you have come thus to speak to me.”

“And shall you ponder upon what I have said?” she demanded.

“Yes. But you will not leave me yet?--and you will come again?” he said, in a voice indicative of suspense and anxiety relative to the answer that was to be given.

“I will return to-morrow,” observed Esther.

“Thank you!” exclaimed Old Death, his tone now denoting a profound emotion.

But Esther did not immediately leave the vicinity of the cell on the present occasion. Believing that she had succeeded in making some salutary impression upon him, she was desirous of following up the promising commencement of her mission; and she accordingly continued to reason with him for nearly half-an-hour longer. In the course of the observations and arguments which she addressed to the ancient sinner, she displayed a sound judgment and a deep but enlightened religious feeling: there was nothing bigoted--nothing fanatical in her language. She indulged in no quotations from the Old Testament--the book that formed the basis of her own nation’s creed: but she expatiated on the goodness of the Creator--the hope that exists for penitent sinners--the terrors of a death-bed without previous repentance--and the folly, as well as the wickedness, of the course already pursued by the prisoner. Old Death interrupted her but seldom; and when he did interject an observation, it was in a tone and of a nature calculated to inspire the charming Jewess with the hope that her mission had not been undertaken in vain.

At length she quitted the vicinity of the cell, having reiterated her promise to return on the following day.

And this pledge was faithfully kept;--and again do we find the Hebrew maiden persevering in her humane--her noble task of awakening proper feelings in the breast of a terrible sinner. To her question whether he had meditated upon his spiritual condition, Old Death replied earnestly and eagerly in the affirmative; and throughout this second visit, he not only sought to retain the young lady near him--or rather at his door--as long as possible, but likewise seemed sincere in his endeavours to inspire her with the belief that her reasoning and her representations had not been thrown away upon him.

On the third day, Esther fancied that there was even a still more striking change in his language when he responded to her questions or her remarks; and not once, during the hour that she remained standing outside his dungeon, addressing him in a style of fervid eloquence which came from her very heart,--not once, we say, did he give the least sign of that ferocity and savage impatience which characterised his behaviour on the first occasion of her visit.

For a fortnight did the Hebrew maiden continue her visits regularly, without however venturing to enter the dungeon. On the fifteenth day she found the prisoner anxiously expecting her arrival as usual; and almost immediately after she had drawn aside the panel and announced her presence, he said, “Oh! dear young lady, I am so glad you are come! I have been thinking so much--so very much over all you have lately told me; and I have felt comforted by repeating to myself the arguments you advance urging me to repentance. Ah! Miss, I have been a dreadful sinner--a dreadful sinner; and I see that I am righteously punished. But though I am penitent, you have no confidence in me yet--and that gives me pain. Yon are afraid to trust yourself with me! Do you think that I would harm you?”

“I hope not,” replied Esther; “and you shall not much longer have to accuse me of want of confidence in you. I am pleased to observe that you at length feel how shocking it is to become an object of mistrust and suspicion.”

“You are an angel, young lady!” exclaimed Benjamin Bones, approaching the door on the outer side of which stood the Hebrew maiden. “No one on earth save yourself could have made such an impression upon my mind, and in so short a time. But will you promise me one thing?”

“Name your request,” said Esther.

“That you will not send any man to converse with me,” answered Old Death. “You are of the gentle sex--and that is why your sweet voice has had such power and influence with me. Had that gentleman--whoever he is--continued to visit me, he would have done no good. I suspect my own sex:--I do not think that men can be so sincere--so conscientious----”

“The gentleman to whom you allude will not visit you again without your consent,” interrupted Esther. “I have undertaken this mission, and will fulfil it to the utmost of my ability. I have now something important to communicate,--important indeed, I should imagine, to one who has been so long in darkness. In a word, I intend to give you a lamp----”

“Oh! excellent young lady!” cried Benjamin Bones, in a voice expressive of the most unfeigned joy. “Make haste and open the door--give me the light----”

“Nay--I must not manifest too much confidence, in you all at once. See what it is to have been so long the votary of crime and wickedness--you inspire a mistrust which cannot be dissipated in a moment.”

“What can I do to convince you of my penitence--my gratitude?” demanded Old Death, in an earnest--anxious tone.

“Leave me to judge for myself relative to your state of mind,” said Esther. “You perceive that I already begin to entertain hopes concerning you: the proof is that I now give you a lamp--and a book also, if you have a sincere inclination to examine its pages.”

As she uttered these words, Esther unfastened the grating which covered the aperture, and passed the lamp through to Old Death--then the volume to which she had alluded.

The light flashed upon his countenance as he received the lamp; and it struck Esther that there was something hideous even in the expression of joy which now animated those repulsive features:--but she knew that looks which had grown sinister and become stamped with ferocious menace during the lapse of many, many years, could not be changed nor improved in a moment, however great were the moral reformation that had taken place within.

“Thanks, dear young lady--a thousand thanks!” exclaimed Old Death, as he placed the lamp upon the table: then, after a few minutes’ pause, during which he looked into the book, he said in a tone of surprise, “But you have brought me a Bible containing the New as well as the Old Testament--and yet yourself only believe in the latter?”

“I respect the religion of the Christian, although I have been taught to put no faith in it,” answered Esther de Medina, in a modest and subdued tone. “But I must now depart: and to-morrow I shall visit you again.”

Esther withdrew, in the firm belief that a most salutary impression had been made upon the mind of one of the greatest criminals of modern times. Her report was received with the most heart-felt joy by the Blackamoor; and he was enthusiastic in his expressions of gratitude towards the beautiful maiden for her exertions in what may unaffectedly be denominated “a good cause.”

“Do you return to Finchley Manor with me this evening?” she asked, cutting short his compliments with a good-humoured smile.

“No--I have particular business to attend to, Esther,” he replied. “But you may tell a certain young lady,” he added, now smiling in his turn, “that I shall be sure to see her to-morrow evening.”

“To-morrow!” repeated Esther. “You forget----”

“Ah! I did indeed forget,” interrupted the Black. “To-morrow is the day on which Arthur returns to town; and I must not risk a visit to the Manor. The fortnight of his absence has soon expired, methinks: but doubtless in that time he has made all the necessary preparation to render his country seat in Kent fitting and comfortable to receive his bride,” observed the Black, smiling again. “Nay--do not blush, Esther: he is a noble fellow, and well deserving of all your love! And, by the bye, this absence on his part has proved most serviceable in one sense,” he continued, again assuming a serious tone: “for had he remained in town, you never would have been able to devote the time you have given each day to the reformation of that wretched man below.”

“To speak candidly,” observed Esther, “I foresee a considerable difficulty relative to my future visits to the unhappy prisoner: but I feared to mention my embarrassment in this respect--I fancied that you might suppose me to be wearied of the task I had undertaken----”

“I know you too well to entertain such an injurious suspicion,” interrupted the Black, hastily and emphatically. “But it is natural, now that Arthur and yourself are so shortly to be united, that he should seek your society as often and for as long a period each day as circumstances will permit----”

“Yes,” observed Esther, with a modest blush: “and though his welfare is so deeply interested in our present enterprise--though, in a word, so many grave and important interests depend upon the success of our endeavours to humanize and reform that wretched prisoner, and disarm him for the future--still I could not stoop to any falsehood or subterfuge to account to the Earl of Ellingham for my daily absence from home for several hours. It is true that my father is in the secret of our proceedings--that he even approved of the course which you suggested, and which I have adopted----”

“Stay! an idea strikes me!” suddenly ejaculated the Black. “You told me ere now that Benjamin Bones implored you to continue your visits to him, and not allow me to take your place; and from this circumstance we have both drawn favourable auguries relative to his ultimate and complete repentance. He already looks upon you as his guardian angel--the means of his salvation; and it would be perhaps productive of evil results--it might even lead to a moral reaction on his part--were he to believe that you had deserted him. You have so well prepared the way in the grand work of reformation with regard to this man, that another might now undertake your duties--and Benjamin Bones would still continue to believe that it is the same Esther de Medina who visits him.”

“I understand you,” said the Hebrew maiden, evidently rejoiced at a suggestion which relieved her mind from the fear of a serious difficulty. “But would you be satisfied with such an arrangement?”

“I see no alternative,” replied the Black. “Arthur will call daily at Finchley Manor--and your frequent absence would, to say the least of it, appear strange.”

“Oh! wherefore not allow Arthur at once to be made acquainted with the whole truth?” demanded Esther, in an earnest and appealing manner.

“No--no--that may not be!” exclaimed the Blackamoor. “My projects must first be carried out to the very end: for it would be my pride and my triumph, when all danger shall have passed away, to say to him, ‘Arthur, you were surrounded by perils which you did not suspect: demons were plotting every kind of atrocity against your peace;--and I have annihilated all their schemes, and tamed the schemers themselves!’ Urge me not therefore, my dear Esther, to deviate from the course which I have chalked out for myself, and which I consider to be to some extent an atonement for the misdeeds of my own life. Yes--for he who accomplishes a great good, assuredly expiates a great amount of evil.”

“For heaven’s sake, recur not to the past!” murmured the beautiful Jewess, turning pale and shuddering at the crowd of unpleasant--nay awful reminiscences which her companion’s language recalled to her mind.

“No--let us deliberate only for the present,” exclaimed the Black; “and the more I think of the plan which I have suggested, the more suitable does it appear. Yes,” he continued, “this is the only alternative. Let your visits to Benjamin Bones cease, Esther--and yet let him still continue to believe that he is not neglected nor deserted by Miss de Medina. I need say no more: the rest lies with you.”

“I understand you,” returned the Hebrew maiden; “and it shall be as you desire.”

She then took her departure.

CXIV. OLD DEATH IN THE DUNGEON

It was five o’clock in the evening of the following day; and Old Death was crouched up, like a wild beast, upon his bed in the dungeon, which was now lighted by the lamp that Esther de Medina had given him.

His natural emaciation had so frightfully increased, that he seemed but a skeleton in the clothes which hung upon him as if they had never been made for one so thin as he. The skirts of his old grey coat were wrapped around his wasted shanks--for, though it was now the month of May, yet it was cold in that dungeon. His countenance was wan and ghastly;--but its expression was little calculated to excite pity--for any thing more diabolically ferocious than the old miscreant’s aspect, cannot be well conceived. His face was the horrible reflex of a mind filled with passions and longings of so savage and inhuman a nature, that the mere thought makes one shudder.

“She will come presently,” he muttered to himself, with a kind of subdued growling which indicated the fury of his pent-up rage: “she will come presently,” he repeated, his eyes glaring like those of a hyena beneath his shaggy, over-hanging brows; “and perhaps it will be for to-day! Who knows? she may think me penitent enough to be no longer dangerous: and then--then----”

He paused, and ground his jaws savagely together as if they were filled with teeth; and his hands were clenched with such spasmodic violence that the long nails ran into the palms.

“For two months and a half,” he continued at length, and still musing to himself, “has the fiend--the infernal wretch--my mortal enemy, kept me here! For two months and a half have I been his prisoner! Perdition seize upon him! That man was sent into the world to be my ruin--to thwart me--to persecute me! From the first moment I ever met him six or seven months ago, all has gone wrong with me. But the day of vengeance must and shall come,--yes--vengeance--vengeance--though it costs me my life. Ah! he fancies that I am ignorant of his secret: and yet I understand it all now--yes--all, all! Rapid as was the gleam of the lamp which showed me his features the first time he ever visited me here, so quick did a light flash to my mind--so quick did the truth break upon me! Yes--yes--I understand it all now;”--and he chuckled in a scarcely audible manner, yet the more horribly menacing because it was so subdued and low. “But how can it be?--how could he have been saved?” he asked himself, in his sombre musings: then, after a brief pause, during which he rocked to and fro on the bed, he continued, “Never mind the how! That such is the fact I am confident--and that is enough for me! Yes--yes--that is enough for me! Fool that I was ever for a moment to suspect him to be Lord Ellingham! And yet I should have clung to this belief, had not the lamp glared upon his face as he darted out of the cell! Ah! ah! he little thinks that I know him now--that I have known him ever since the moment when the light showed me his features, blackened as they were! Ah! ah!” again chuckled Old Death: “I fancy that I have lulled them into an idea of my penitence! They imagine that the work of reformation has begun with me! Ah! ha! I played my cards well there! I did not whine and weep too soon--I appeared to be precious tough, and precious obstinate; and my slow conversion seemed all the more natural. They will fall all the easier into the snare: they----”

At this moment a slight noise at the door of the cell made the ancient miscreant start; and he instantaneously composed his features into as mournful and sanctimonious an expression as such a horribly hang-dog countenance could possibly assume.

The trap-door opened; and a sweet, musical voice said, “I am here again, according to my promise: you see that I do not desert you.”

“Ah my dear young lady,” cried Old Death, affecting a tremulous tone, “you are too good to such a dreadful sinner as I have been! My God! when I think of all the atrocity that I once planned against you, I feel inclined to implore you to depart from even the vicinity of such a wretch as me!”

“Have you not been already assured that you are fully and completely forgiven in reference to the wickedness to which you allude?” demanded the young lady, whose beautiful countenance was now plainly visible to Old Death through the grating over the aperture in the door.

“Yes, Miss de Medina,” returned the wretch, assuming a still more penitent tone; “but I cannot forgive myself. You are an angel, dear young lady--and I am a demon. I know I am! All last night I endeavoured to read the Bible that you gave me yesterday: but I cannot settle my mind to the task. I want some one to read it to me--if only for half an hour every day. But this cannot be--I am aware it cannot! You--the only person living that could have made such an impression upon me--are afraid to enter my cell. You told me so yesterday. But am I not a human being?--am I a wild beast? Ah! dear young lady--I could not injure you!”--and the old miscreant appeared to weep.

“Do you think it would console you if I were to place confidence in you--enter your cell--and read you a portion of the Word of God?”

“Why do you tantalize an old, old man who is miserable enough as it is?” asked Old Death, in return to this question. “Do you suppose that I am not weighed down to the very dust by an awful load of crime? If you are afraid to come into the cell, send me a clergyman. But, no--no,” he added, as if yielding to the sudden influence of a second thought: “I will pray with no one but yourself! You have been my good angel--you first touched my heart. I must wait till you have sufficient confidence in me to follow up the blessed work you have already begun so well. Yes--yes--even if I must remain here for a whole year, I will not receive consolation from any one but you!”

“If I only thought that you were so far advanced in the path of penitence----”

“Can you doubt it?” hastily demanded the prisoner. “Have you such little confidence in your own powers of persuasion? Oh! my dear young lady,” continued the wretch, falling upon his knees on the floor of the cell, and joining his hands together, “have pity upon me--have pity upon me! Your mistrust of me pierces like a dagger to my heart. I crave--I long to be able to show you my gratitude;--and that can only be by proving my contrition. Dear young lady, have mercy on an old, old man, who would embrace the very ground on which you tread!”

“It would be wicked--it would be a crime to refuse your demand,” said the sweet, musical voice, now tremulous with emotion, of her whom the demon-hearted hypocrite called his good angel. “Stay--I will fetch the key--and on my return I will read the Bible to you.”

And the Hebrew lady hurried away from the vicinity of the dungeon; and, having ascended the spiral stone staircase with rapid steps, entered the apartment usually inhabited by the Blackamoor. But he was not there: and she paused--uncertain how to act; for she now remembered that he had gone out for a short time immediately after giving her certain instructions relative to the conduct she was to maintain towards Old Death.

“I should not like to do this without his consent,” she murmured to herself: “and yet the prisoner is so penitent--so contrite, that it would be a sin--nay, a crime, not to confirm the salutary impression which is now so strong upon him. Yes--yes,” she continued: “I will take this step upon my own responsibility! Surely he will not blame me for thus exceeding his instructions, when the cause is so good and the need seems so urgent!”

Thus speaking, she took down a large key from a nail inside a cupboard, and retraced her way to the subterranean.

In the meantime--during the ten minutes which her absence lasted--Old Death was agitated by a thousand conflicting thoughts. At one moment an infernal joy filled his heart, and he rubbed his hands together in horrible and fiend-like glee: at the next instant his countenance became convulsed with the hideous workings of his fears lest something should occur to prevent the Jewess from entering his cell. He seemed to live an age in that ten minutes; and he felt that if the terrific excitement which he thus endured, were to last for an hour, it would crush and overwhelm him. All the worst passions of his diabolical nature were set in motion like the waves of the sea: and in that short space of time were awakened feelings which, for intensity of awful spite and inveterate malignity, were probably never before nor since paralleled in the breast of man!

At length there was a slight rustling of a silk dress and the sound of a gentle though hasty tread in the passage without; and in a few moments the beautiful countenance of the Jewess appeared at the grated aperture.

“Blessed young lady!” exclaimed Old Death, suddenly exercising an immense mastery over his ferocious passions, and assuming a tone of mingled gratitude and hope.

“Heaven grant that the step which I am now taking may have a permanently beneficial effect!” said the Jewess, in a voice profoundly sincere, as she placed the key in the lock.

Then, with her gentle hands, she drew back the massive bolts; and in another moment she entered the dungeon in which the greatest miscreant that ever disgraced human nature was crouched upon the bed, like a tiger ready to spring from its lair.

For upwards of a minute this dreadful man could scarcely believe his eyes--could scarcely credit his own senses. Was it possible that she was there--there, in his presence--there, in his power? It appeared to be a dream; and a momentary dizziness seized upon him.

“Give me the Bible,” said the Jewess, taking the chair; “and do you draw near me.”

“Here is the book,” observed Old Death, in a deep tone which might well be mistaken for the sign of solemn feelings, and was indeed so interpreted.

The lady placed the sacred volume upon the table before her, and began to turn over its leaves in order to find the passage which she deemed most appropriate and suitable for the circumstances of the occasion. Having discovered the chapter which she sought, she raised her eyes towards Old Death’s countenance in order to assure herself that he was in readiness for her to begin; but a sudden sensation of horror and apprehension seized upon her, as she caught a glimpse of the diabolical expression of those features on which the pale light of the flickering lamp fell with sinister effect.

Then, with a howl of ferocious rage, that old man, whom the deep craving after a bloody vengeance now rendered as strong as a giant,--that old man precipitated himself upon the terrified Jewess with all the fury of a ravenous monster, the chair broke down beneath the shock; and with dreadful shrieks and appalling screams the Hebrew lady fell upon the dungeon-floor, held tight in the grasp of the miscreant, who was uppermost.

In another instant those shrieks and screams yielded to subdued moans; for his fingers had fixed themselves round her throat like an iron vice. Desperate--desperate were her struggles,--the struggles of the agony of death: but Benjamin Bones seemed to gather energy and force from the mere act of this strong resistance;--and as his grasp tightened round his victim’s neck, low but savage growls escaped his lips.

By degrees the struggling grew less violent--and a gurgling sound succeeded the moans of the Jewish lady. Tighter--and more tightly still were pressed the demon’s fingers, until his long nails entered her soft and palpitating flesh. Oh! it was horrible--horrible,--this scene of ruthless murder in that subterranean dungeon!

At length the movements of the victim became mere convulsive spasms: but her large dark eyes, now unnaturally brilliant, glared up at Old Death, fixedly and appallingly. Nevertheless, he was not terrified--he was not stricken with remorse! No--still, still he clung to his victim, his own eyes looking down ferociously into hers, and the workings of his countenance displaying a fiend-like triumph--a savage glory in the awful deed which he was perpetrating.

Nearly five minutes had elapsed from the instant when the murderer first sprang upon the unfortunate Jewess: and now, suddenly starting to his feet, he seized the lamp and dashed it upon her head. A low moan escaped her--and all was silent.

Yes--all was silent, and all was darkness too; for the light had been extinguished:--and Old Death precipitated himself from the dungeon.

He hurried along the subterranean, which he knew so well,--hurried along towards the spiral stair-case, wondering whether he should be enabled to effect his escape, yet almost reckless and desperate as to what might become of him, now that his savage vengeance was accomplished.

He ascended the stone steps--he entered the room which had for years and years served him as a bed-chamber, before he had been compelled to dispose of the house to Lord Ellingham. He passed into the laboratory: and as yet he had proceeded without interruption. Joy! joy! he should escape yet--the adjoining room, now fitted up as a handsome parlour, was likewise untenanted at the moment:--joy! joy! he is descending the stair-case leading to the hall!

Is it possible that he will escape? Fortune seems to favour the diabolical murderer; and his hand is now upon the latch of the front-door--he stands as it were once more upon the threshold of that great world which is so wide and has so many channels for the machinations of the wicked! The house seems deserted--not a questioning voice falls upon his ear,--not the step of a human foot, save his own, interrupts the silence of the place! Yes--it appears as if escape be now a certainty,--escape for him who dared not hope for it, and did not even think of it, when intent on the all-absorbing scheme of his vengeance!

And now the front-door opens to his touch: but--ah! he has blood upon his hands--the blood that had flowed from the neck of the murdered Jewess. He starts back--he hesitates for a moment,--but only for a moment: Old Death is not the man to remain long uncertain how to proceed in such a strait!

Thrusting his hands--his gore-stained hands--into his pockets, the demon-hearted monster issues as coolly and calmly from the house as if it were his own and he had nothing to fear. The fresh air of heaven--untasted by him for ten long weeks--comes gushing upon his face: he is free--he is free!

“Ah!” is the hasty ejaculation which now falls on his ear: he looks around--a man is bounding, flying towards him--and in another instant he is in the grasp of the Blackamoor.

A short and desperate struggle takes place; and a crowd immediately gathers near--for the Sessions are being held at Hicks’s Hall, on Clerkenwell Green, so that the neighbourhood presents the bustling appearance usual on such occasions.

“Seize him--hold him!” yells forth Old Death, as his powerful opponent hurls him towards the house-door, which the miscreant had not closed behind him.

“He is a mad-man--escaped from a lunatic asylum!” exclaimed the Blackamoor, horrible apprehensions filling his soul relative to the Jewess--for his eyes had caught sight of the blood upon Old Death’s hands.

“No--no--I am not a mad-man!” shrieked out the latter. “Seize him--hold him, I say:--he has escaped the scaffold--he is TOM RAIN, the highwayman!”

At that dreadful announcement the Blackamoor was struck speechless and motionless, as if a thunderbolt had fallen at his feet; and in the next instant he was in the grasp of Dykes and Bingham, who, having business at the Sessions House, happened to be amongst the crowd gathered at the entrance of Red Lion Street.

“Yes--seize him--hold him tight!” yelled Benjamin Bones: “he is Tom Rain, I tell you--his face is coloured purposely--but I knew that he is Tom Rain!”

“And hold that miscreant also!” ejaculated Rainford--for he indeed the Blackamoor was: “seize him--let him not escape!” he cried, recovering the power of speech, as his eyes again caught a glimpse of the blood-stained hands of Old Death. “There has been murder committed in this house----My God! my God!”

The crowd had now not only increased to such an extent as to render the way perfectly impassable; but a tremendous sensation suddenly seized upon the assemblage,--the news that Tom Rain, the celebrated highwayman, had escaped death by some miraculous means, and was once more in custody, circulating like wild-fire. Dykes and Bingham, knowing that in such a case the sympathies of the mob were most likely to turn in favour of the prisoner, hurried him and Old Death into the house, whither they were followed by three or four other constables; and the door was immediately closed in the face of the crowd, and secured within.

On reaching the sitting-room the first-floor, the party halted; and Old Death, now completely overcome by the excitement of the incidents which had so rapidly succeeded each other in a short half-hour, threw himself exhausted into a chair.

“Well, Mr. Rainford,” said Dykes, with something like a malicious grin, “I am sorry for this business--but how, in the name of all that’s wonderful, did you escape after being so deuced well hung as I seed you was with, my own eyes?”

“Silence!” ejaculated Rainford, in an imperious tone: “and come with me at once down below. For, as sure as you are there, murder--a horrible murder has been committed by that wretch,” pointing to Old Death, who now quivered beneath his furious looks; “and, if you doubt it, behold the blood upon his hands!” added Tom Rain, with a cold shudder.

“Bring him along with us, Bingham,” said Dykes, addressing his brother officer.

“No--no--I won’t go down there again!” yelled forth the murderer, his countenance becoming convulsed with horror; for he was now afraid of his crime, in the revulsion of his feelings.

“Well--let him stay here in custody,” observed Dykes; “and me and a couple of the runners will go with Mr. Rainford.”

The officer and the two myrmidons whom he had selected, accordingly proceeded with Tom Rain into the room where the trap-door of the spiral stair-case had been left open by Old Death; and the constables surveyed each other with, mingled apprehension and astonishment.

“You are not afraid?” exclaimed Rainford, in a contemptuous tone, as he lighted a lamp: then, with impatient excitement, he cried, “Do your duty, and come with me. Life may still be left in her--come--come!”

“Yes--yes: we shall go along with you, sure enough,” growled Dykes, as he led the way, followed by Rainford--the two runners closing the rear.

In three minutes more the little party entered the dungeon which had so lately been the prison-house of Old Death: and there what a dreadful spectacle met their eyes! The murdered lady was stretched upon the floor--her countenance horribly discoloured and swollen--the forehead completely smashed by the blow inflicted by the lamp which had been dashed at her--and her eyes staring with a stony glare, as if about to start out of their sockets.

“O Tamar! Tamar! my dearest--best beloved Tamar!” cried Tom Rain, in a tone of bitter--bitter anguish, as he threw himself upon his knees by the side of the corpse.

The officers, rude in heart, and rendered obdurate as they were by the very nature of their profession, stood back in respectful silence at this outburst of sorrow from the lips of the resuscitated highwayman.

“My God!” murmured the unhappy man, clasping his hands together; “who shall break these fearful tidings to your father and your sister? And will they not reproach me?--will they not attribute this frightful calamity to that project of reformation which I had devised in behalf of Benjamin Bones? O Tamar--my dearest Tamar--who could have foreseen that such a terrible destiny was in store for thee!”

And, bowing down his head, he wept bitterly.

Suddenly loud voices were heard from the top of the spiral stair-case, summoning Dykes thither.

“Come along, sir--it is useless to remain here!” cried the officer, speaking hastily but respectfully to Tom Rain, who suffered himself to be led away--or rather, he did not offer any resistance to those who conducted him thence.

“Well--what now!” demanded Dykes, hurrying up the steps, at the head of which his friend Bingham was continuing to shout after him.

“Why--don’t you know,” was the reply, “that Government has offered a reward for the diskivery of the chap wot carried off Sir Christopher Blunt and Dr. Lascelles--about that there Torrens’s affair----”

“Well--what then?” cried Dykes, impatiently.

“Blowed if it ain’t Tom Rain,” responded Bingham: “he did it--and we’ve knabbed him. So that’s a cool two hundred and fifty a piece!”

“By goles!” ejaculated Dykes, his countenance expanding into the most glorious humour possible, as if all remembrance of the horrible scene he had just witnessed were banished from his mind: “this is good news, though,” he added, as he emerged from the stair-case into the little back room with which it communicated. “But how do you know that the chap as kidnapped the knight and the doctor is Mr. Rainford?”

“Because I’ve been talking with old Ben Bones,” answered Bingham; “and he told me as how he’d been kidnapped too, and kept a prisoner down there for a matter of ten weeks;--and how there was a lot on ’em--and Josh Pedler and Tim Splint among the rest. So, when he mentioned them names, I pricks up my ears--and I asks him a question or two; and I find that they was all kidnapped just at the time that the Torrens affair was a-making sich a noise: so it’s a clear case.”

“Clear enough, to be sure!” exclaimed Dykes.

“Ben Bones doesn’t seem to know any thing about that affair,” continued Dykes: “cos why, he was lugged off and took down in that there place afore the business was made public by Sir Christopher and the doctor. But, I say--what has happened below?”

“A young o’oman killed--that’s all,” answered Dykes. “So here’s a pretty day’s business for us, Bingham: a man that had been hung, took up fust--then a murder diskivered, and the murderer in our power--and now this here affair about the Government reward. Well--we’ve been rather slack lately--and a little okkipation’s quite a blessin’.”

Thus conversing together, Mr. Dykes and Mr. Bingham returned to the apartment where Old Death was still sitting in a chair, watched by a couple of constables: but the moment Rainford, who had only a confused idea, of what was passing around him, was led into that room, he started back in horror--exclaiming, “No--no: I cannot bear to be in the company of this dreadful man!”

Old Death, to whom he pointed, grinned in savage triumph: but Rainford had already rushed back into the laboratory, attended by Dykes and two runners. Almost at the same instant, the lad Cæsar who had heard from the crowd outside enough to convince him that Rainford had been discovered, and also that a person answering the description of Old Death had first denounced the resuscitated highwayman, and had then himself been arrested on a charge of murder,--Cæsar, we say, now made his appearance, and threw himself at his master’s feet, exclaiming wildly, “Oh! no--my generous friend--my more than father--they shall not take you from us!”

“Jacob,” said Tom Rain, raising the distracted youth, who was no other than the reader’s former acquaintance, Jacob Smith,--“do not yield to grief. We have need of all our courage on this occasion. I have received a frightful blow--wounded I am in the tenderest point--oh! I can scarcely restrain my anguish, while conjuring you to be calm! And yet it is necessary to meet my afflictions face to face! Hasten, then, to Finchley--and break the sad intelligence to Mr. de Medina and Esther: tell them, Jacob--as gently as you can--tell them that Benjamin Bones has crowned all his enormities by----”

“My God! it is then too true!” ejaculated the youth; covering his face with his hands.

“Yes--Tamar is no more!” added Rainford, tears gushing from his eyes. “My poor wife has been brutally--foully murdered by that miscreant!”

Jacob Smith hurried away, his own heart feeling as if it were about to break.

“And now,” said Tom Rain, suddenly turning towards Dykes, “I appeal to you as men to allow me to superintend the removal of the remains of that lady, who was my wife, to a chamber in this house; and then, that duty being performed, I shall be ready to accompany you whithersoever you may choose to conduct me.”

“We are not particular for an hour or so, Mr. Rainford,” returned Dykes. “Indeed, it would be better to let the crowd disperse a little; and if so be you don’t mind staying here a bit, we’ll wait till dark. The evenings is long now, you see----”

“I should have wished to remain here until the relatives of the deceased lady had time to arrive and take charge of the body,” interrupted Tom Rain: “but I dared not ask such a favour at your hands. As it is, however, I thank you.”

“But you must likewise let old Ben Bones stay here, until after dusk at least,” urged Dykes: “for if it was knowed to the people outside that it was the ancient fence who had killed a woman, they’d be after tearing him to pieces. So we must smuggle him out presently.”

Rainford gave his consent to the proposition: he was too sick at heart--too profoundly overwhelmed by misfortune, to attempt to argue any question that might arise from the lamentable incidents of that evening.

CXV. THOMAS RAINFORD

The arrest of Tom Rain and Old Death took place at about twenty minutes to six on the evening in question; and by ten o’clock that night the news were circulated throughout every quarter of the metropolis.

The incidents involved in the double arrestation were well adapted to produce as much excitement as the extraordinary adventures of Sir Christopher Blunt and Dr. Lascelles ten weeks previously.

In the first place, a man who had been publicly executed at Horsemonger Lane, was now discovered to be alive, having been doubtless resuscitated in some extraordinary way; although the more credulous and wonder-loving portion of the community were firmly convinced that Tom Rain had never been hanged at all, but that the body of some prisoner recently deceased at the time was ushered through the dreadful ordeal instead of the formidable highwayman.

In the second place, this said Thomas Rainford was said to be the mysterious personage who, usurping the attributes of justice, had kidnapped Dr. Lascelles and Sir Christopher Blunt, and had somehow or another disposed of the real murderers of Sir Henry Courtenay, after having devised the necessary means to prove and make public the innocence of Mr. Torrens.

In the third place, a notorious fence, named Benjamin Bones, who had defied the police and the laws for many, many years, had at last fatally entangled himself with justice, by committing a diabolical murder upon the person of Thomas Rainford’s wife.

And, in the fourth place, it had been discovered that there were situate two houses in the very heart of London having a subterraneous passage connecting them, and this subterranean communicating with several dark and gloomy dungeons, decently furnished, and in which half-a-dozen prisoners had recently been confined. One of these prisoners was now known to be Benjamin Bones; but what had become of the other five?

Such were the circumstances which took the whole town by storm, and produced a tremendous sensation from one end of London to the other--the intelligence reaching even Lady Hatfield, retired and secluded as was her mode of living.

Shortly after ten o’clock on that eventful evening, a private carriage drove up to the house in Red Lion Street; and Mr. de Medina, Esther, and Lord Ellingham alighted. Jacob Smith leapt down from the box; and in a few moments the entire party entered the dwelling, thus disappearing from the gaze of the assembled crowd.

The Jew, his daughter, and the young nobleman were immediately conducted by one of Rainford’s dependants into the apartment where the unhappy husband of the murdered Tamar was pacing up and down, Dykes sitting in a corner watching his movements. The prisoner was no longer disguised: during the interval which had elapsed since his arrest, he had, by the officer’s express desire, washed off the black dye from his face and hands; and he now wore his natural aspect in one sense--though, in another, his expressive countenance was altered by the despair that filled his soul.

“Oh! Thomas--what terrible afflictions have occurred!” exclaimed Lord Ellingham, as he flew into his half-brother’s arms.

“You will not reproach me, Arthur-----Oh! do not augment my grief!” cried Rainford: and he wept bitter tears.

“No one will reproach you, excellent young man,” said Mr. de Medina, taking the hand of his bereaved son-in-law. “But----Oh! my daughter--my daughter, Tamar! Great God! thou hast chosen to afflict me deeply--deeply!”

In the meantime, Esther de Medina had thrown herself into a chair, giving way to the wildest paroxysms of grief--the Earl of Ellingham having vainly accosted her with the hope of importing some slight consolation. But, alas! he himself was a prey to the most poignant anguish: and, even had he been more calm, how was it possible to comfort Esther de Medina for the loss--the cruel assassination--of that sister whom she loved so tenderly and so well?

“Thomas,” at length said the Earl, approaching his half-brother, “has Jacob Smith told us the dreadful tale correctly?--and is it--he--Benjamin Bones--who has done this? My God! I have scarcely been able to comprehend all the terrible particulars!”

“It is true--it is too true--I know that it is!” exclaimed Mr. de Medina, shaking his head in despair. “Yes--Tamar is no more; but--at least--let me behold her remains!”

Rainford turned an appealing glance towards Dykes, as much as to say, “You surely will allow me to proceed unwatched and unguarded along with these mourners to the chamber where the corpse lies?”

But Dykes, who understood the meaning of that glance, said in a respectful though firm tone, “I dare not trust you out of my sight!”

“I will be answerable for him, officer!” cried the Earl of Ellingham. “Do you know me? I----”

“I know who you are, my lord,” answered Dykes; “but I cannot oblige you.”

“Is not grief such as that which you now contemplate,” said the nobleman, indicating the weeping father and sister of the deceased lady,--“is not such grief as this too solemn for the intrusion of a stranger?”

“Since your lordship forces me to speak plain,” returned Dykes, “Mr. Rainford is my prisoner on two charges----”

“On two charges!” ejaculated the Earl: then, remembering all that his brother had passed through, he said mournfully, “But, just heavens! one is enough!”

“As your lordship observes,” began Dykes, “one is----”

At that moment another private carriage rattled up to the door of the house, and a lady, alighting with feverish impatience, was instantaneously admitted into the dwelling. In less than a minute she was ushered by Jacob Smith into the room where the mourning party were assembled.

“Lady Hatfield!” cried Tom Rain, the moment she raised her veil: and, as if her presence were another blow on such an occasion, he staggered and would have, fallen had not the Earl of Ellingham caught him in his arms.

“Pardon this intrusion,” said Georgiana, advancing into the middle of the apartment; “and believe me when I assure you that nothing save the hope of being in some degree able to lighten the afflictions which pour upon you all--nothing,” she added emphatically, “but such a hope as this would have induced me to break upon your privacy. The dreadful rumours current in the metropolis reached me ere now--and I flew hither, only--alas! to hear them confirmed. But--Mr. Rainford----”

She stopped short--trembled--and seemed for an instant overcome by feelings of an unutterable nature. The bitterness--the intensity of grief which oppressed the others, was in some degree absorbed for the moment by the profound interest which the presence of Lady Hatfield excited, her words having given promise of hopes the nature whereof defied all conjecture.

But suspense on the part of her listeners was not destined to last long.

“Mr. Rainford,” she resumed, exercising a powerful control over her emotions, “you have sustained an affliction so great that it is almost impossible to impart consolation to you. Yet--even in the midst of such woe as this which has overtaken you--it may at least be a satisfaction to learn that the judgment of a criminal tribunal no longer hangs over you--that the past is indeed the past, and cannot be revived----”

“Georgiana!” cried the Earl of Ellingham, surveying her in profound astonishment; “what mean you?”

“I mean that Thomas Rainford is pardoned!” exclaimed Lady Hatfield: “I mean,” she continued, the wildest astonishment having sealed the lips of all who heard her,--“I mean that the sentence passed upon him months ago is dissolved--annihilated;--and here is the royal decree--bearing the Sovereign’s seal--and countersigned by the Secretary of the Home Department! ’Tis a full pardon for Thomas Rainford!”

Thus speaking, she handed Lord Ellingham a paper: but it fell from his hands--for his half-brother had sunk senseless upon the floor.

Water was speedily procured and all the usual means adopted to restore him. It was, however, some time ere he gave signs of life; and then, beckoning Georgiana towards him, he said in a faint tone, “May the great God above us bless you--for you are an angel!”

It was undoubtedly an immense alleviation of the general sorrow to learn that Rainford had received a full pardon for all those offences which had drawn down on his head the sentence of death pronounced at the Old Bailey; and the Earl of Ellingham, having now hastily glanced over the paper which decreed this act of royal mercy, submitted it to the examination of Mr. Dykes.

“Well, my lord,” said that officer, “I see and hear plain enough that one of the charges on which I held Mr. Rainford prisoner, is knocked on the head; and I’m glad of it--’specially as ’tis the most serious of the two. But I must still keep him in custody, he being the man who kidnapped Sir Christopher Blunt and Dr. Lascelles----”

“Wait--one moment!” exclaimed Rainford, a sudden thought flashing to his mind and restoring him to the wonted energies of his character.

While all present watched his movements with breathless interest, he hastened to a writing desk standing on a table in a recess; and thence he took a pocket-book, which he opened, and the contents of which he scanned rapidly as he turned over the various papers one after the other.

“Here it is!” he cried triumphantly at last; and, drawing forth a slip of paper, he handed it to Lord Ellingham, who mechanically read it aloud:--

“We acknowledge a sense of deep obligation to the bearer of this memorandum, the said bearer having rendered us special service; and we hold ourselves bound to grant him any boon which he may demand at our hands, so that it be not inconsistent with our royal honour, nor prejudicial to the interests of the State.

“Given this 3rd of March, in the year 1827.

“GEORGE REX.” (L.S.)

“You are saved, Thomas--you are saved, in all respects!” exclaimed Mr. de Medina, pressing with affectionate warmth the hand of his son-in-law, while tears trickled down the old man’s venerable countenance.

“All this is so truly astonishing,” cried the Earl of Ellingham, “that I am bewildered. How you, my excellent friend--my sister,” he added, turning towards Lady Hatfield, “obtained the royal pardon for Thomas Rainford, I well know--indeed, I have all along known.”

“You!” ejaculated Georgiana, in profound astonishment.

“Yes--I overheard your interview with the King in the Blue Velvet Closet at Carlton House,” continued the Earl; “and now I comprehend all the greatness and generosity of your conduct! Oh! and you must pardon me too, for having become a listener on that occasion, and for having ever since entertained suspicions most injurious to your honour.”

“The remainder of the tale can then be told by myself,” said Tom Rain, hastily: “for it was I--I, the Blackamoor--the negro--who saved your ladyship from insult and outrage, also at Carlton House. But--” he continued, glancing in a significant manner towards Dykes,--“all these explanations shall be for another and more convenient opportunity. In the meantime, Arthur,” he added, “it is for you to repair at once to the Home Secretary, and obtain from him all we require to ensure my complete freedom, by virtue of that acknowledgment bearing the sign-manual of the King.”

The Earl of Ellingham instantaneously undertook this commission, although at so late an hour; but he fortunately happened to be aware that the Secretary for the Home Department had a reception that evening, and was therefore certain to be at home.

Dykes, who had been led on from one source of astonishment to another, and who perceived that Thomas Rainford not only possessed powerful friends, but likewise the patronage and favour of the King himself,--the worthy Mr. Dykes, we say, now volunteered to withdraw into another room, merely requesting his prisoner to pledge his honour not to leave the house until the order of the Secretary of State should fully and completely release him from custody. The promise was given forthwith; and Dykes repaired to the apartment where Old Death was still remaining in the custody of Bingham and the other constables.

Immediately after the officer had retired, Georgiana rose to take her departure. This was the first time that she had ever seen the Medinas; but she accosted them with the affability of a well-bred lady, and proffered them her deepest and sincerest sympathy on account of the dreadful loss which they had sustained. They received these proofs of friendship in a manner which denoted the gratitude of their hearts; and Georgiana, on taking leave, shook them cordially by the hand.

Then, extending her hand likewise to him whose mere name had hitherto been sufficient to send a cold shudder through her entire form,--yes, extending her hand to him also, in the true spirit of Christian forgiveness,--but without raising her eyes to his countenance, she said, “Mr. Rainford, may you yet know many years of happiness!”

He pressed her hand with grateful fervour--and a tear dropped upon it: but he could not utter a word. His heart was too full to allow him to express his thanks--his admiration of the noble conduct of that woman whom, in a moment of delirium, as it were, he had outraged and ruined! Ah! bitter--bitter were thy reminiscences as thus thou didst stand before thy generous benefactress, Tom Rain!

Mr. de Medina--perceiving that his son-in-law was overcome by emotions which were not altogether intelligible to him--offered his arm to escort Lady Hatfield to her carriage; and Georgiana drove home with a heart rejoicing at the good she had done--for Lord Ellingham’s sake!

The Jew returned to the apartment where he had left Esther and Rainford; and there they all three mingled their grief together, for the loss of the lovely and much-loved Tamar.

But over this scene we shall draw a veil: sorrow such as they experienced cannot be adequately described. Neither shall we do more than allude to the violence of the grief and the poignancy of the anguish which were felt when they repaired to the chamber to which the remains of the murdered Tamar had been conveyed. The reader does not require to be informed that this was a ceremony of the most painful description.

While, therefore, Mr. de Medina, Esther, and Rainford, are mingling their tears and lamentations,--while, too, the Earl of Ellingham is absent on his mission to the Home Secretary, armed with the document which bore the autograph and seal of George the Fourth,--we shall request our reader to accompany us to the apartment where Old Death remains in the custody of Bingham and the subordinate officials.

CXVI. OLD DEATH

When Dykes made his appearance in the room just alluded to, he found Benjamin Bones rocking himself to and fro on the chair in which he was seated, while Bingham and the runners were partaking of refreshments at the table.

The old miscreant was horribly pale; end there was a wild glaring of the eyes which enhanced the ghastly expression of his countenance. The man was in fact hideous to behold.

Now that he had leisure for reflection, and that the excitement attending the perpetration of his bloody vengeance had passed away, he had become fearfully alive to the awful predicament in which be stood; nevertheless his entire aspect denoted dogged obduracy; and could he have recalled the past, it is more than probable that he would have played precisely the same part over again.

“Well, Mr. Dykes,” said Bingham, as the worthy thus addressed entered the room, “will you jine us here in a bit of grub? You see, we’re pitching into the cold jint like bricks; and the beer is fust-rate.”

“So is the pickles,” growled one of the runners, who was naturally of a surly disposition, and could not help speaking in a grunting tone even when best pleased.

“Come, sit down with us,” urged Mr. Bingham. “But, I say though, what have you done with Tom Rain?”

“Done with, him, indeed!” exclaimed Mr. Dykes, swelling with the importance of a man who had astounding news to communicate: “what hasn’t he done for his-self, you mean?”

“Has he cut his throat--or taken poison?” demanded Old Death, eagerly.

“Not he!” cried Dykes. “Why--you cursed old fence, you’ve always got wicked notions in your head--you have. Mr. Rainford is a genelman, every inch of him--and I always knowed it. He’s got a power of slap-up friends as won’t leave him long in the lurch, I can tell you.”

And the officer bestowed a significant wink upon his listeners, whose curiosity he had now worked up to the highest pitch.

“What--what has he done?” gasped Old Death, terribly excited with suspense. “Do you mean to say----that is--has he----escaped?” he demanded, scarcely able to give utterance to the word; so fearful was he lest Tom Rain, against whom he cherished a fiend-like hatred, should not again figure upon the scaffold.

“Patience--patience,” said Mr. Dykes, taking a chair. “In the fust place, you must know, that in comes a lady--and who should she be but that very same Lady Hatfield as I’m sure Tom Rain robbed some months ago near Hounslow, although I couldn’t bring the thing home to him at the time----”

“Well--well,” muttered Old Death, the agony of whose suspense was perfectly excruciating.

“But fust I should tell you,” resumed Mr. Dykes, “that Miss de Medina comes in with her father and Lord Ellingham----”

Old Death gave vent to a savage growl.

“And now I understand all about that diamond affair, Bingham, you know,” continued the officer; “for, although one of the sisters is a corpse and her face is disfigured, I never in my life see such a likeness as there is between them.”

We should observe that Old Death had already learnt, from the communications which had been made in his presence by the runners who were first in charge of Tom Rain on this eventful evening, that it was not Esther de Medina whom he had slain, but Tamar--the wife of the man whom he considered to be his most mortal enemy.

“But as I was a-saying,” continued Dykes, “in comes Lady Hatfield; and, behold ye! she makes a regular set speech to prepare us all for what’s about to take place; and then she tells us plump that Tom Rain has received his Majesty’s free pardon!”

“No--no!” yelled forth Old Death: “it’s a lie--it’s a lie!”

“Hold your tongue, you cursed fence!” exclaimed Mr. Dykes, deeply indignant at having his word thus unceremoniously called in question. “Lady Hatfield had the paper with her, all reglar according to the stattit in that case made and purwided.”

“It’s a forgery--a rank forgery!” shrieked Benjamin Bones, his countenance becoming truly appalling with its hideous workings. “And you have let him go, upon that pretence----you----you have----”

And he fell back in his chair, gasping for breath.

“Wot an inweterate old scoundrel it is,” observed Bingham. “Here--give him a glass of beer, Bill; for, by goles, he’ll suffocate--and the scaffold will be cheated of its dues after all.”

The runner, to whom the command was addressed, approached Old Death and offered him a tumbler of porter: but the savage monster repulsed it brutally, ferocious growls escaping from his breast.

“Well--leave him alone, then,” said Bingham.

The runner accordingly resumed his seat and his attack upon the cold viands at the same time.

“I tell you what it is, Mr. Ben Bones,” exclaimed Dykes: “I have seen a many free pardons--’specially where genelmen that got into trouble was concerned, for it’s seldom that a poor devil has interest enough to get such a thing--and I know precious well that the one I see just now, was as reglar as possible. It had the King’s own name--his sign-mangle, they call it--and his precious big seal--and the Home Secretary’s signatur underneath.”

“He will escape--he will escape yet!” yelled forth Old Death, clasping his hands together, as if in mortal agony. “The wretch--he will escape the gibbet--he--he----”

And again he gasped in so frightful a manner that his eyes seemed to be starting from his head, and his attenuated frame literally writhed in convulsive spasms.

“Ah!” he exclaimed, after a long pause, during which his shocking appearance had produced a dead silence of horror and amazement: “I have thought of something”--and he grinned malignantly. “Did you not say that men had been spirited away--in that Torrens’ affair----”

“To be sure I did,” answered Bingham, to whom the question was addressed: “and Tom Rain did it. Well, what about that, Mr. Dykes?”

“Why--that seems to be knocked on the head also,” was the reply: “though I have no doubt we shall get the reward, because we did our dooty in arresting him; and if so be that the Home Secretary chooses to grant him a pardon in that respect also----”

“He won’t--he won’t!” ejaculated Old Death, with feverish--nay, with hysterical excitement. “He does not dare do it! No--no--Tom Rain must swing for that, at all events! ’Tis as good as being accessory to the murder--’tis shielding the murderers! Ha! ah! he will swing for that--he will swing for that!”

“I’m blessed if he will, though,” said Dykes, bluntly; “for it seems that he’s got a paper signed by the King which will put him all to rights--and though I don’t exactly understand that part of the business, I’m pretty sure Tom Rain is in no danger. Lord Ellingham has got the matter in hand; and he has gone up to the Home Office. That’s why I left Mr. Rainford at liberty--just taking his word of honour that he wouldn’t bolt.”

“He’ll deceive you--he’ll run away--he’ll escape!” cried Old Death. “You are mad to trust him! Go--seize on him again--put hand-cuffs----”

“Yes--on you, in no time--if you don’t hold your tongue,” interrupted Mr. Dykes. “But ain’t all this a rummy business, though?” he demanded, turning towards Bingham and the subordinate officials. “The old Jew seems a most respectable gentleman--I’d take his bail for any amount, if I was a magistrate. And really his daughter is a sweet young o’oman: the Earl’s going to marry her, I’ll swear to it.”

“Mr. Dykes--Mr. Dykes,” whispered Old Death in his ear; and the officer, turning suddenly round again, perceived that the tall, gaunt form of the fence was close behind him.

“Well--what do you want?” demanded the functionary.

“One word--one word only,” murmured Bones, in a low, guttural, sepulchral tone, while his frame shook with nervous excitement: “one word, I say--only one word.”

“Now, then--what is it?” asked Dykes, suffering the old man to draw him towards the recess containing the door which opened into the laboratory.

“I must speak to you in private--I have something particular to tell you,” was the urgent and impatient reply. “Come into this room--I shan’t keep you a moment.”

“Well--I suppose I must humour you,” said the officer, in a surly tone. “One should look upon you as a dead man; for besides your nick-name, the law will soon make you one in right good earnest.”

With this brutal jest--brutal even in respect to so awful a miscreant as Old Death--the Bow Street functionary conducted him into the laboratory, where a light happened to be burning, and the door of which apartment Benjamin Bones closed cautiously behind them.

“Now, then--make haste, and tell us all you have got to say,” said Dykes, eyeing the old man suspiciously and in such a meaning fashion as to imply that any attempt at escape would assuredly prove abortive.

“Mr. Dykes, you are a good man--and a kind man--I know you are,” began Old Death, in a coaxing tone and with a manner indicating the most dreadful state of nervous excitement: “you would not like to see a poor, miserable old creature like myself sent to--to--the scaffold. No--no--you would not--you would not. But I know that it must be made worth your while--you understand me--and--and--I will give you all I have--yes, all I have--several thousand pounds--for I have got several thousands!” he added, with a ghastly grin. “But no one knows where they are except myself,--and you and I can go together to the place--and I will give you every guinea--yes, every guinea, Mr. Dykes--remember, every guinea I say--if you will agree to this.”

“Agree to what?” demanded Dykes, affecting not to comprehend the old villain.

“Oh! just as if you didn’t understand me, my dear friend--my good, kind friend!” exclaimed Benjamin Bones, becoming more coaxing in his tone, which was as low and subdued as his sepulchral voice would admit. “Do consider for an instant--an old man like me to be in such trouble! You wouldn’t be happy if you had it on your mind that you had been the means--the actual means of sending such a wretched creature as myself to the scaffold? Speak to me, Mr. Dykes! Five thousand pounds--yes--five thousand pounds, in good gold guineas--if--if----”

“If what?” asked the officer, with the most provoking determination not to understand any thing that was not explained in unmistakeable words.

“If you--you will let me escape!” whispered Old Death, while his eyes seemed to penetrate to the very soul of the man towards whom he bent in a confidential way as he spoke.

“Now that’s English,” said Dykes, whose countenance gave not the least indication of the manner in which he intended to receive the proposition.

“And--and you will agree, won’t you?” asked Bones. “Remember--five thousand guineas--all to be paid in one lump--this very night----”

“Well, now--it can’t be done, old chap,” interrupted Dykes, in a cool--almost brutal manner, as if he were glad of the opportunity to encourage hope for a time, merely for the sake of destroying it with a rude hand and in an abrupt way.

“It can’t be done,” murmured Old Death, despair seizing upon him: “it can’t be done, you say?”--and his eyes glanced wildly around.

“Is this all you have to tell me?” demanded the officer. “Because, if so----”

“Five thousand guineas!--and he refuses it!” ejaculated Bones. “My God! what will become of me?--what will become of me?”

And still his looks wandered rapidly about the apartment.

“Now, then--let as go back into the next room, if you please,” said Dykes; “for I don’t see no use in staying here, wasting our time.”

At that instant Old Death’s eyes settled upon something on a shelf close at hand; and, suddenly springing aside, he seized upon a bottle--the particular object for which he had been searching with his eager glances.

Dykes, without even having a moment’s leisure to make a single conjecture relative to his intentions, but instinctively foreseeing that something wrong was contemplated, closed upon the old man in an instant.

With the speed of lightning did Benjamin Bones raise the bottle which his right hand grasped; and in leas than the twinkling of an eye would it have been smashed down upon the officer, who, seeing his danger, by a natural impulse held down his head--when a yell of agony burst from the lips of the old miscreant.

For, as he raised the bottle, the glass stopper fell out, and the burning vitriol streamed down on his head and over his countenance, a few drops only falling upon Dykes, and those principally on his clothes.

The officer instantaneously fell back; and Old Death threw himself on the floor, where he rolled in horrid agonies--writhing like a stricken snake, and shrieking franticly, “Oh! my eyes! my eyes!”

Bingham and the subordinate functionaries rushed in from the adjoining apartment; and, having assured themselves that Dykes was unhurt--although his escape from the burning fluid was truly miraculous--they turned their attention towards Old Death. One of them obtained water, and dashed it over him; but still he rolled and writhed--uttering dreadful cries, mingled with horrid imprecations--and rubbing his face madly with his hands. For the miserable wretch was burnt in an appalling manner; and his sight was gone!

We must pause for a single moment to explain his design--that design which so signally failed and brought down such frightful consequences upon himself. Perceiving that all hope of being able to bribe Mr. Dykes was frustrated, he thought of the only alternative that could possibly be attempted--an escape. At the same instant that this last idea was formed, it flashed to his mind that Dr. Lascelles had been accustomed to keep many deadly poisons and ardent fluids in the laboratory. His eyes wandered round in search of them; and they lighted upon a large bottle, labelled “Vitriol.” To break it over the officer’s head, and escape in the confusion that must ensue by means of the little chamber which had once been his bed-room, and which, as the reader may recollect, had two doors--one opening from the laboratory, and the other into apartments beyond,--this was the hastily conceived but discomfitted design of Old Death!

The desperate project had failed--and in a desperate manner, too: for the miscreant had received mortal injuries--and his sufferings were horrible. A pint of vitriol had streamed over his head--penetrating beneath his clothes, all down his neck and chest--burning him horribly, even to his very eyes in their sockets!

Rainford, alarmed by the hideous yells which had reached him in another part of the spacious house, rushed into the laboratory to ascertain the cause, having begged Mr. de Medina and Esther to await his return. At the same instant that he entered by one door, Jacob Smith made his appearance by another; and Dykes hastily explained what had occurred. Rainford accordingly issued immediate orders to transport the dying man to a bed-chamber; and fortunately, at this crisis, Dr. Lascelles arrived at the house.

The physician had been alarmed by the rumours which prevailed relative to the incidents that had occurred in Red Lion Street: but a few words, rapidly exchanged with Tom Rain, relieved the doctor of all apprehensions on account of his friend--and all his attention was now devoted to Old Death.

But though the laboratory promptly supplied all the remedies needed in such a case, their application was vain. They gave relief, it is true: but they could not arrest the rapid advances which death was making upon the wretched old man.

“Jacob,” cried the doctor: “Jacob Smith, I say,” he repeated more impatiently, the lad not having heard his first summons; “hand me that bottle, and----”

“Jacob Smith!” cried Old Death, his moanings suddenly ceasing at the mention of that name: “is he here? Then let me tell him----My God! this burning sensation----Jacob--Jacob--my poor boy----Oh! my eyes--my eyes----doctor, do something to my eyes--they are like red hot coals in my head----Jacob--I--I--am your----father!”

“My father!” almost shrieked the lad, in the wildness of his amazement at these tidings: then, falling on his knees by the bed-side, he exclaimed, “Oh! if you are indeed my parent----”

“I am--I am, Jacob,” exclaimed the dying wretch: “but these tortures----why do they tear my flesh with pincers?--why do they put hot skewers into my eyes? Doctor--doctor----take away the red-hot iron----lift me out of the fire----take me away, I say--save me--save me--I am in flames--I am burning----My God! I am burning!”

“Father--father,” cried Jacob, in a tone of agonising appeal; “compose yourself--think of all your sins--repent----”

“Will no one snatch me from the fire?” yelled forth Old Death, writhing and tossing upon the bed in mortal pains: “perdition seize ye, wretches--I am burning--I am in flames--my eyes scorch me--my flesh is all seared over with red-hot irons----Oh! it is hell--it is hell! Yes--I am in hell----My God! this is my punishment! Oh! send me back to the world again--let me retrieve the past--let me live my existence once more--I will be good--I will not sin! No--no--for hell is terribly--terrible--and these fires----Oh! horror--horror--snakes of flame have seized upon me----they are gnawing at my heart--they have thrust their fiery stings into my eyes--they wind themselves round and round me--horror--horror--there--I feel them now--Oh! mercy--mercy----mercy----mer----”

“This is frightful!” whispered Tom Rain to Dr. Lascelles; and all the others present at the dreadful scene; shuddered from head to foot.

Jacob Smith buried his face in his hands and sobbed convulsively.

The dying man still continued to rave, and shriek, and yell for a short time longer: but his powers of articulation rapidly failed--his writhings grew less violent, until they ceased altogether,--and in a few minutes, the dark spirit which had never spared and never pitied human creature, fled for ever!

CXVII. AN EXPLANATORY CONVERSATION

Three days had elapsed since that eventful evening on which so many exciting incidents occurred; and the scene now changes to the dwelling of Dr. Lascelles in Grafton Street.

It was about four in the afternoon and the physician was seated in his study, Lord Ellingham being his companion at the time.

“At length, my dear doctor,” said the nobleman, “you have found leisure to accord me an hour to give me those explanations which my afflicted brother feels himself incapable to enter into at present. The loss of Tamar, whose funeral is to take place the day after to-morrow, has proved almost a mortal blow to his generous heart: but the kindness of Mr. de Medina and Esther, who insisted upon having him with them at Finchley, must in some degree mitigate his grief. And yet, alas! that bereaved father and mourning sister have themselves such bitter need of solace! Just heaven! it was a frightful catastrophe!”

“And the murderer perished in a frightful manner,” added the physician. “But now that the excitement created by these appalling events, and by all the other circumstances which Old Death’s crime was the means of bringing to light, has somewhat subsided,--not only in respect to the public, but likewise with regard to the minds of those persons privately interested in the whole affair,--we may venture to converse upon the topic in the hope of approaching it with some degree of calmness. In the first place, my dear Arthur, tell me how you fared with the Home Secretary--I mean, give me the details of your visit to that Minister.”

“On my arrival at his official residence,” said the Earl, “on the dreadful night in question, I sent up my card with a message soliciting an immediate and private audience; and the favour was instantaneously granted. In as succinct a manner as possible, I explained to the Minister all that it was necessary to communicate. I told him that Thomas Rainford, who had been doomed to death and publicly executed, had survived the frightful ordeal of the scaffold; but relative to the means or the agents of his resuscitation, I proffered no explanation--and none was demanded of me. The Minister instantly recollected the circumstance of having signed a full and complete pardon on behalf of Rainford, some weeks ago, and at the intercession of the King; and, doubtless knowing well the wayward character of George the Fourth, he perhaps thought that the less he enquired into the business, the better. I then gave him as much information relative to the recent proceedings of Rainford as was known to myself; and when the Minister heard that he was the individual who had played so mysterious a part in the affair of Torrens, his brow lowered. But I immediately showed him the document signed by George the Fourth; and I gave him to understand that Rainford was acquainted with such proofs of the King’s profligacy and unprincipled character, as would positively compromise the safety of the throne if they were published. This species of threat I was compelled to hold out, inasmuch as the Home Secretary seemed inclined to permit matters to take their course without any interference on his part. But, when he heard that the King had given that solemn acknowledgment of obligation in order to hush up some affair of which he was ashamed and likewise seriously alarmed, the Minister intimated his readiness to do any thing I required to avoid a scandal that might compromise his royal master. He nevertheless urged that an immense excitement had already been created in the metropolis, and which would of course spread to the provinces, by that sudden discovery that Thomas Rainford had not only escaped the scaffold, but had actually taken upon himself the functions of a judge in disposing of the murderers of Sir Henry Courtenay, according to his own caprice and will. ‘In fact,’ said the Minister, ‘the public will imagine that Rainford himself was an accomplice in the assassination of the baronet; and every one will ask what has been done with the two men, Splint and Pedler, who have thus been spirited away.’--To this I could only reply that I was well assured of Rainford’s complete innocence in respect to the murder of Sir Henry Courtenay; that he had adopted certain opinions relative to the reformation of criminals, and had chosen to test his system by applying it to those men; that the men were no longer in the country, but whither they had been sent I knew full well Rainford would never divulge to the Government; and that the Minister must decide between two alternatives--namely, whether he would dare public opinion in the case, or whether he would have his royal master seriously compromised. I can assure you, my dear doctor, that it gave me great pain and was most repugnant to my feelings to be compelled to hold out any menace of this kind but could I leave a stone unturned that would serve the interest of my generous half-brother?”

“You already to some extent know the motives which induced Rainford to return to England instead of proceeding to America, and adopt the disguise under the cloak of which he broke up Old Death’s gang?” said the physician, enquiringly.

“I gathered a few rapid and broken details from the Medinas, during the ride from Finchley to Red Lion Street, on that fatal evening when Jacob Smith came to the Manor, where I happened to be at the time, to announce the awful event which had occurred,” replied the Earl. “But you may readily believe that both Mr. de Medina and Esther were too profoundly afflicted to be able to give me any very minute explanations. Moreover, I was myself so terribly excited, and so full of serious apprehensions----”

“I understand--’twas quite natural,” interrupted the doctor. “But pray proceed with your narrative of the interview with the Secretary of State.”

“I have little more to say upon that subject,” observed Lord Ellingham. “The Minister balanced for some minutes between the alternatives which I submitted to him, and it was evident that he felt deeply grieved and chagrined at the consequences of the royal indiscretions,--indiscretions which had led the King to sign two important papers, both seriously affecting the proper and legitimate course of justice. But, in the end, he yielded to the alternative which was favourable to our wishes; and, placing himself at his desk, he wrote the order to set Thomas Rainford free, which I delivered to the Bow Street officers on my return to Red Lion Street shortly after midnight.”

“It is therefore certain that no further apprehensions need be entertained on that head?” enquired the physician.

“None,” answered the Earl of Ellingham. “The Coroner’s Inquest, which sate upon the bodies of Tamar and Benjamin Bones yesterday, elicited, as you are well aware, the fact that the old man had been imprisoned by Rainford, and visited first by Esther, and on the last and fatal occasion by her unfortunate sister, merely with a view to his reformation and redemption from a course of crime----”

“And, therefore,” added the physician, “public opinion is actually in favour of Rainford at this moment. But how happened it that Lady Hatfield was enabled to procure that document which conferred a full pardon upon him?”

“That woman possesses a most generous--a most noble heart!” exclaimed the Earl. “The voluptuous monarch sought to render her the victim of his lust; and it suddenly struck her, when his designs became unmistakeably apparent, that she might avail herself of the circumstance to perform an act calculated to exhibit her sincere friendship for me. She accordingly affected to yield in a certain measure to his disgusting overtures: she overcame the natural scruples of a pure soul, so far as to give vague promises and encourage the King’s passion, in order to obtain from him the document which she required. And she succeeded. But, on the occasion of that interview with the King at which he presented her with the precious paper, she was nearly falling a victim to her generous conduct and to his brutal violence. An extraordinary combination of circumstances, however, had led Rainford into the palace on that very evening; and accident enabled him not only to deliver Georgiana from the power of the King, but likewise to extort from his Majesty that written promise of deep obligation which has proved so vitally important to his interests.”

“The entire affair is truly romantic,” observed the doctor. “And now you wish me to give you in detail an explanation of all Rainford’s late proceedings?”

“I am already acquainted with much concerning them, and conjecture enables me to comprehend more,” resumed the nobleman: “at the same time, I should be pleased to hear a connected account from your lips.”

“It is by no means a disagreeable task for me to narrate incidents which prove the existence of so many generous traits in the heart of that man whom I was the means of restoring to life and to the world,” said Dr. Lascelles; “for since that day on which he opened his eyes in my laboratory, I have regarded him almost in the light of a son. I must begin by informing you that Rainford was deeply touched by a conversation which he had with you, relative to the miseries and crimes of the poor and ignorant classes of society----”

“That conversation took place in the evening following his resuscitation,” observed Arthur,--“the same evening on which I captured Benjamin Bones, as he was ascending from the subterranean.”

“The discourse which yourself and your half-brother had together on that occasion,” resumed the doctor, “induced him to reflect profoundly upon the nature of crime--the circumstances which engender, and afterwards encourage it--and the best modes of producing a reformation. That train of thought led him to ponder upon other matters, essentially regarding yourself. For he saw that Benjamin Bones would prove your most implacable enemy: he knew that old man’s character well--and he felt assured that he would devise and carry into effect some atrocious schemes of vengeance against you. These convictions filled Rainford’s mind with the gloomiest apprehensions, although he contrived to veil them from you. He trembled lest you should fall into the snares which that incarnate fiend--God forgive me for speaking ill of the dead--was certain to spread at your feet; and he resolved to adopt some means to counteract the effects of that man’s malignant spite. In a word, he determined, at any sacrifice, to watch over that brother who had acted so generously and nobly towards him. But not to a soul did he communicate his ideas, until he had safely embarked, with Tamar, Jacob Smith, and Charley Watts, on board the American packet-ship at Havre-de-Grace. Then he revealed his intentions to Tamar; and she immediately fell into his views--for she knew no will save his own. The captain of the ship consented, for a reward, to touch at Guernsey; and there Rainford, his wife, the youth, and the boy, were landed in the middle of the night. The next morning, your half-brother and Cæsar appeared in the disguise of blackamoors; and from Saint Peter’s Port, the capital of the island, they sailed for Weymouth--Tamar with Charley Watts proceeding by way of Southampton. The rendezvous was London; and all Rainford’s plans, so far as he could forecast them, were already arranged. On her arrival in the metropolis, Tamar immediately sent for her father and sister to the inn at which she alighted; and to them she communicated her husband’s design. It was of course necessary to keep the entire scheme concealed from yourself; as it was well known that you would never rest until you had persuaded your brother to quit the country again, were you aware of his return. At that time you were not engaged to Esther; and she had therefore no hesitation in maintaining this much of duplicity towards you. Subsequently--I mean, after your engagement together--she felt herself bound still to guard inviolably a secret that had your welfare as its basis. Well, then, Mr. de Medina and Esther lent themselves to the project--and cheerfully too, because they recognised all the importance of allowing Rainford to adopt the necessary measures to ensure your complete safety. Tamar and Charley Watts accordingly took up their abode at Finchley Manor, the proper precautions being taken to enable them to dwell there in the strictest privacy, and the fidelity of the servants being well assured in respect to their presence at that house. So far all proceeded satisfactorily; and in the meantime Rainford, accompanied by Jacob Smith, whom he named Cæsar, arrived in London. You may conceive my surprise when one evening, having been informed by my servant that an East Indian gentleman was waiting to see me in the drawing-room, I proceeded to that apartment and found myself in the presence of Thomas Rainford! I did not recognize him at once; but he speedily made himself known to me; and, when his plans were developed, I readily agreed to aid him in their accomplishment. As he had expected and indeed calculated, I had full and complete control over the houses in Red Lion and Turnmill Streets; and he felt convinced that you would never think of visiting them. You had purchased them merely to deprive Benjamin Bones of the power of plunging his victims into the subterranean cells; and you allowed me the use of the premises for my laboratory. Under all these circumstances, the house in Red Lion Street was the best suited to Rainford’s designs; and it was speedily furnished in a suitable manner. The neighbours believed that a retired East Indian merchant had taken the place; and therefore no surprise--no excitement was occasioned, when they perceived that the new tenant had his private carriage and numerous dependants. But how did Rainford manage to obtain the assistance of several faithful persons, who were blindly obedient to his will, and to one of whom--named Wilton--he entrusted his entire history? They were all poor and deserving persons whom I knew well--men who had at different times been my patients, and in whom I felt an interest. Thus, in a very few days, the most complete arrangements were effected; and just at the moment when Rainford was prepared to commence operations, and when he had succeeded in tracing the abode of Benjamin Bones, chance threw him in the way of a certain John Jeffreys, whom he resolved to render subservient to his purposes in uprooting the atrocious gang.”

The physician then proceeded to relate the manner in which Rainford had drawn Jeffreys into his service,--the revelations made to him by that individual’s unfolding all the dreadful schemes of vengeance contemplated by Old Death, and directed against the happiness of the Earl himself,--the projected exhumation of the coffin in Saint Luke’s church-yard, and the ferocious idea of blinding Lady Hatfield and Esther de Medina,--the mode in which these diabolical aims were frustrated by the arrest of all the members of Old Death’s gang,--and the faithful conduct of Jeffreys. Dr. Lascelles also narrated the proceedings of Rainford in the difficult affair of Mr. Torrens,--how, disguised as an old man, and admirably sustaining that character, he had entrapped Sir Christopher Blunt to the house in Red Lion Street to preside at the examination of the two prisoners,--and how he (Dr. Lascelles) had become a party to that transaction,--all of which particulars are well known to the reader. Finally, the physician made the Earl acquainted with the nature and the results of the system of reformation applied to all the members of the gang,--how it had succeeded in respect to Tidmarsh, the Bunces, Pedler and Splint,--and how Esther de Medina had deputed her unfortunate sister to visit Benjamin Bones on that fatal evening which was characterised by a savage murder!

There was only one point connected with Rainford’s affairs, on which the Earl and the physician did not touch; and this was the parentage of little Charley Watts. The doctor was unacquainted with the fact that Rainford had some years back forcibly violated the person of Lady Hatfield, and that the issue of this crime was the boy who still bore the name by which we have just called him. The Earl of Ellingham naturally veiled the circumstance even from a friend so intimate and sincere as Lascelles; and though the doctor knew that Lady Hatfield had been a mother, he also kept this knowledge to himself, and was very far from suspecting the true history of Charley Watts. Lascelles, it will be remembered, had made the discovery relative to Georgiana on that occasion when he attended her in her severe illness, and when he gave her a soporific, as recorded in the early part of this work: but he had never mentioned that discovery to a soul;--and the Earl of Ellingham was as far from supposing that Lady Hatfield’s loss of chastity was known to the physician, as the physician was from entertaining even the remotest idea relative to the parentage of the boy.

But Rainford was already aware that this boy was his own son--the issue of the outrage which he had perpetrated upon Lady Hatfield! Yes--on the evening before this interview between the Earl of Ellingham and Dr. Lascelles, the former had so far intruded upon his brother’s profound grief, as to make to him a revelation which a sense of duty forbade him to delay. Rainford also learnt, at the same time, that Georgiana was herself acquainted with the fact of her child being in his care--placed under his protection as it were by the inscrutable decrees of Providence! But for the sake of the honour of Lady Hatfield, and of sparing Rainford from the necessity of giving unpleasant and degrading explanations to his friends, it had been determined between Lord Ellingham and himself that the boy should still continue to bear the name of Watts, and that his real parentage should be unacknowledged--at least for the present.

In order not to dwell with tedious minuteness upon this portion of our narrative, we shall briefly state that the funeral of Tamar took place on the day appointed; and if the tears of heart-felt grief streaming from the eyes of true mourners can avail for the souls of the departed, then the spirit of the murdered Jewess must have received ample solace and full propitiation in those regions to which it had taken wing!

But how deep a gloom had fallen upon the family of Medina;--and how poignant was the anguish which the bereaved father and sister experienced for the departed!

Nor less acute was the sorrow of the husband who survived that fair but prematurely crushed flower of Israel;--for immense was thy love for her, Tom Rain!

CXVIII. THE INSOLVENT DEBTORS’ COURT

Passing through Portugal Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, you may perceive a low, dingy-looking building, protected by a row of tall iron railings, and with steps leading to the front entrance. This structure is of so dubious an aspect that it places the stranger in a profound state of uncertainty as to whether it be the lobby of a criminal prison or a Methodist chapel; and the supposed stranger is not a little surprised when he learns, on inquiry, that this architectural mystery is neither more nor less than the Court for the Relief of Insolvent Debtors.

At about nine o’clock in the morning the immediate vicinity of the Court begins to wear a very business-like appearance: that is to say, both sides of the street are thronged with the most curious specimens of human nature which it is possible to encounter outside of Newgate or of the Bench. The wonder is whence such a host of ill-looking fellows can have sprung, or whither they can be going, unless it is to either of the two places just named. Then comes the natural question, “But who are they?” The answer is at hand: some are the turnkeys of the County Prisons and the tipstaves of the Bench, having in their charge prisoners about to be heard at the Court,--others are the usual hangers-on and errand-seekers who are always to be found lurking about such places,--while a third set are the friends or else the opposing creditors of the Insolvents. The public-house opposite the Court, and the one at the side are also filled with persons of those descriptions; and before ten o’clock in the morning many pots of porter are disposed of--many quarterns of gin dispensed in two or three “outs”--and many screws of tobacco puffed off in smoke.

Inside the Court, business commences in somewhat a more serious manner. Four or five barristers take their places in a large box divided into two compartments like pews in a church: a couple of Commissioners seat themselves on a bench made in very humble imitation indeed of those in the Courts at Westminster;--a single reporter lounges into the snug crib so kindly allotted to the representatives of the press;--several attorneys and attorneys’ clerks gather round the table between the counsel’s seats and the bench:--the Insolvents are penned up altogether in a sort of human fold on the right as you go into the tribunal;--and at the back a crowd of unwashed faces rise amphitheatrically in the compartment appropriated to the audience. The Commissioners endeavour to look as much like the Judges of the Land as possible;--the barristers affect all the consequence and airs of Serjeants-at-Law or King’s Counsel;--the Insolvents try to seem as happy as if they had nothing awkward in their schedules to account for;--and the spectators raise heaven and earth to appear respectable: but each and all of these attempts are the most decided failures which it is possible to conceive. A general air of seediness pervades the place: the professional wigs are dirty and out of curl, and the forensic gowns thread-bare;--and the disagreeable impression thus created on the mind of the visitor, is enhanced to no trifling degree by a sickly smell of perspiration combined with the stale odour of tobacco smoke retained in the garments of the audience.

Amongst the Insolvents were two individuals whose appearance formed a most striking contrast. These were Mr. Joshua Sheepshanks and Mr. Frank Curtis.

The former was dressed in deep black, with a white neck-cloth, and black cotton gloves a great deal too large for his hands: he had also put black crape round his hat, in the hope of creating the sympathy of the Commissioners by producing the impression of having sustained some serious and recent family loss. His sallow face was elongated with the awful sanctimoniousness which characterised it: his black hair was combed sleekly down over his forehead;--and he sate bolt upright on the hard bench, every now and then raising his eyes to heaven--or rather to the lanthorn on the roof of the Court--as if in silent prayer.

Mr. Frank Curtis was attired in his habitually flash manner; and as he lolled back in his seat, he now and then bestowed a significant wink upon his attorney at the table, or exchanged a few familiar observations with the tipstaff, whom he had treated to egg-hot at the public-house opposite before they entered the Court.

But where was Captain O’Blunderbuss? Had he deserted his friend on this trying occasion? Gentle reader, do not suppose for an instant that the gallant officer was capable of what he himself would describe to be the “most bastely maneness”--so long as Frank had a shilling left in his pocket, or the ability to raise one! The captain, then, was there--and in the vicinity of Mr. Curtis; for the terrible Irishman had posted himself as near as possible to the box in which the Insolvents stand to be examined--in the first place, that when Frank should mount to that “bad eminence,” he might be close by to encourage him with his looks; and, in the second place, he had taken that particular stand as the one whence he could best dart ferocious glances at the Commissioners, in case these functionaries should take it into their heads to deal harshly with his friend.

And now the business of that day’s proceeding, commenced; and the Clerk of the Court bawled out in a loud tone--“Joshua Sheepshanks!”

“Here, my Christian friend!” groaned the religious gentleman, drawing himself slowly up to his full, thin, lanky height, and beginning to move slowly and solemnly towards the box above-mentioned.

“Now, then--Joshua Sheepshanks!” cried the clerk, in a sharp tone.

“Come--Joshua Sheepshanks--look alive!” grumbled the official who administers the oaths to the Insolvents.

“Cut along, old fellow,” whispered Frank Curtis, giving the sanctimonious dissenter a hearty pinch on the leg as he passed by.

Mr. Sheepshanks uttered a low moan--cast up his eyes towards the lanthorn--muttered something about his having “fallen amongst the ungodly”--and ended by hoisting himself into the box with some degree of alacrity, his slow movements having rendered the Court impatient.

“Does any counsel appear for you, Joshua Sheepshanks?” demanded the clerk.

“None--unless it be the Lord’s will that I should be supported by divine grace,” answered the dissenting minister, in so doleful a tone and with such a solemn shaking of the head that the whole Court was alarmed lest he was about to go off in a fit.

“I appear to oppose on behalf of several creditors,” said Mr. Bulliwell, one of the leading barristers practising in that Court.

“Oh! the persevering bitterness of those rancorous men!” exclaimed Mr. Sheepshanks, clasping his hands together, and turning up the whites of his eyes in an appalling fashion.

“Silence, Insolvent!” cried the clerk, in a sharp tone.

Meantime, the Commissioners had both been taking a long and simultaneous stare at the religious gentleman; and though one was purblind and the other in his dotage, they nevertheless seemed to arrive in the long run at pretty well the same conclusion--which was, that Mr. Sheepshanks was a dreadful humbug. The glances they interchanged through their spectacles expressed to each other this conviction; and the sharper of the two, who rejoiced in the name of Sneesby, forthwith proceeded to examine the schedule.

“I see that you were once a missionary in the South-Sea Islands Bible Circulating Society, Insolvent?” said this learned functionary.

“Under the divine favour, I was such a vessel in the good cause,” answered Mr. Sheepshanks, with the invariable nasal twang of hypocrisy.

“A what?” demanded Mr. Commissioner Sneesby, in an impatient tone.

“He says he was a vessel, sir,” observed Mr. Bulliwell, the barrister. “It is a word much in vogue amongst the religious world.”

“Oh! the Insolvent calls himself a vessel--does he?” exclaimed the Commissioner. “Well--he has come to a pretty anchorage at last.”

“And yet, sir, I can assure you he is no anchorite,” said Mr. Bulliwell.

These were jokes on the part of the Commissioner and the counsel; and therefore the attorneys, the clerks, and the audience tittered, as in duty bound when the wig forgot its wisdom and indulged in wit; and the Insolvents all laughed too--but for another reason. In fact, Mr. Frank Curtis had applied his right hand to his nose, and extended it in a fan-like form--or, in other words, he “took a sight” at the learned Commissioner, and worked an imaginary coffee-mill at the same time with his left hand.

Order being restored, the business proceeded.

“And, having been a missionary, I observe by your schedule, that you turned a Dissenting Minister, Insolvent?” said Mr. Commissioner Sneesby, interrogatively.

“I was a brand snatched from the burning, sir,” replied Mr. Sheepshanks; “and, having sorely wrestled with Satan----”

“Give me a direct answer, man!” cried the Commissioner, sharply. “Did you leave an institution connected with the Established Church and become a dissenter?”

“Heaven so willed it,” responded the sanctimonious insolvent, in a droning voice: “I had a call--and I obeyed it.”

“Who opposes this man?” enquired the Commissioner.

“Jeremiah Chubbley!” vociferated the Clerk of the Court.

“Here!” growled a man dressed as a bricklayer.

“Now, then, Jeremiah Chubbley--stand up in the witness-box,” continued the clerk.

“Come, Mr. Chubbley--make haste,” said Mr. Bulliwell, the barrister, speaking more civilly and using the honorary prefix of Mister, because he had been retained by the individual to whom he applied it.

Mr. Chubbley mounted the witness-box; and while the oath was being administered to him, both the Commissioners inflicted a long stare on his countenance just to satisfy themselves by this physiognomical scrutiny whether he were a trust-worthy person or not;--for Commissioners in the Insolvents’ Court are great physiognomists--very great physiognomists indeed.

“Your name is Jeremiah Chubbley?” said Mr. Bulliwell, rising in a stately manner, and darting a ferocious glance towards Mr. Sheepshanks, as much as to say--“Now, my man, I am going to elicit things against you that will prove you to be the greatest rogue in existence.”

“Yes--my name be Chubbley, sir,” answered the opposing creditor. “But I paid you to tackle that there sneaking-looking chap over there, and not to ke-vestion me.”

“My dear sir,” said Mr. Bulliwell, blandly, “this is the way of conducting an opposition where counsel is employed. Your name is Jeremiah Chubbley; and you are a master-bricklayer, I believe?”

“I told ’ee so a veek ago,” replied the opposing creditor, savagely.

“Yes--yes: but you must tell the learned Commissioners all over again what you told me,” gently remonstrated Mr. Bulliwell. “I believe you are the proprietor of a chapel in the Tottenham Court Road?”

“Yes--I be, sir,” responded Mr. Chubbley. “I built she--and a stronger, better, or more comfortabler place of washup you wouldn’t find in all London--least ways, barrin’ St. Paul’s.”

“Well--and this chapel was to let some three or four months ago, I believe?” continued Mr. Bulliwell.

“Yes--it were, sir: and I had blackguards up at the grocer’s round the corner----”

“Had what, man?” demanded the Commissioners simultaneously, and as it were in the same breath.

“He means that he put placards up at a neighbouring grocer’s, sir,” mildly explained Mr. Bulliwell, then, turning again to the opposing creditor, the learned counsel said, “And I believe that the Insolvent was attracted by the placards, and applied to you in consequence?”

“He come round to my house, sir, jest as me and my missus was a sitting down to dinner,” answered Mr. Chubbley. “It was biled pork and greens we had, I remember; cos says I to my missus, says I----”

“Well--well, Mr. Chubbley,” interrupted the counsel: “we will proceed, if you please. The Insolvent came round to you, and enquired about the chapel that was to let?”

“Yes--he did: and he axed a many ke-vestions about the orgin and the pulpit, and the westry--and so on.”

“And, being satisfied with your replies, he agreed to take the chapel?”

“Yes--and to pay a ke-varter in adwance, which was eleven pound ten,” answered Mr. Chubbley.

“Well--what took place next?” inquired one of the Commissioners, growing impatient, while his brother-judge took a nap.

“Please, my lud, he sits down and pitches into the biled pork and greens,” responded the opposing creditor.

There was a laugh amongst the audience; but as the joke did not arise from either the bench or the bar, the ushers bawled out “Silence!” as loudly as they could.

“The Insolvent, I believe, not only omitted to pay the quarter in advance,” said Mr. Bulliwell, “but succeeded in obtaining from you the loan of forty pounds?”

“In hard cash--and that’s what aggerewates me and my missus so agin him,” replied the opposing creditor.

“But in what manner did he obtain those forty pounds?” asked Mr. Bulliwell. “Tell the learned Commissioners----”

“Vy--one on ’em’s asleep--and so it’s no use a-speaking to he!” exclaimed Mr. Chubbley.

There was another laugh, which the clerks and ushers immediately suppressed; and Captain O’Blunderbuss ran a narrow risk of being ignominiously bundled out of the Court for observing in a tone somewhat above a whisper, “Be Jasus! and that’s as thrue as that every rale Irishman loves potheen!” But the best of the business was that the somnolent Commissioner woke up; and catching the fag end of a laugh accompanied by the loud cries of “Silence!” on the part of the officials of the Court, he immediately fancied that some person had perpetrated a great breach of decorum, and exclaimed in a severe tone, “Whoever is the cause of disturbance must be turned out.” Hereupon there was another laugh; and even Mr. Bulliwell himself was compelled to stoop down and pretend to examine his brief in order to conceal the mobility of his risible muscles.

“Come, come--let the business proceed,” said Commissioner Sneesby, anxious to relieve his brother-functionary from any farther embarrassment; for the latter learned gentleman was quite bewildered by the renewed hilarity which his words had provoked.

“Tell the bench how the Insolvent obtained from you the forty pounds, Mr. Chubbley,” exclaimed Mr. Bulliwell.

“Please, sir--my missus has on’y got von eye----”

“Well--and what has that to do with it?” demanded Mr. Commissioner Sneesby.

“Jest this, my lud--that that ’ere sneaking feller got on the blind side of she, and began a pitching into she all kind of gammon,--calling his-self a chosen wessel, and telling her how she would be sartain sure of going to heaven if we on’y let him have the funds to set up in business as a preacher. He swore that all the airistocracy was a-dying to hear him in the pulpit: and so he persuades my missus to be pew-opener; and he gammons me to call myself a Helder----”

“A what?” exclaimed Commissioner Sneesby.

“An Elder, sir,” observed Mr. Bulliwell: for it is to be remarked that when Judges at Westminster or Commissioners in Portugal Street cannot understand any thing--or affect not to do so--the counsel are always prepared to give them an explanation;--yet when these counsel become Judges or Commissioners in their turn, they grow just as opaque of intellect and as slow of comprehension as those whom they were once accustomed to enlighten.

“Well--go on, man,” said Commissioner Sneesby, addressing himself to the opposing creditor.

“Well, my lud,” proceeded Mr. Chubbley, “that there sniggering feller come over us all in sich a vay vith his blessed insinivations, that we all thought him a perfect saint; and we was glad to vipe off the dust of sich a man’s shoes, as the sayin’ is. So I goes to my friend Cheesewright, the grocer, and I says, says I, ‘Cheesey, my boy, you must be a Helder, too.’ So Cheesewright axes what a Helder is; and when I tells him that it’s to purside over a chapel in which a reglar saint holds forth, and that all Helders is booked for the right place in t’other world, he says, says he, ‘Chubbley, my boy, tip us your fist; and I’m your man for a Helder too.’”

“And now tell the learned Commissioners what this business has to do with your opposition to the Insolvent’s discharge,” said Mr. Bulliwell, seeing that the bench was growing impatient.

“Vy, my luds,” continued Chubbley, scratching his head, “that there insinivating chap gets Cheesey to lend him his acceptance for thirty pounds, and he comes to me and gets me to write my name along the back on it--and so he gets it discounted, and leaves us to pay it.”

Here Mr. Joshua Sheepshanks held up his hands and groaned aloud--as if in horrified dismay at the construction put upon his conduct.

“Silence, Insolvent!” exclaimed the usher, ferociously.

“And now, Mr. Chubbley,” resumed Mr. Bulliwell, “what answer did you obtain from the Insolvent when you stated to him that you had heard certain reports which made you anxious to receive security for the rent of the chapel, the forty pounds, and the amount of the bill for which you were liable?”

“He said as how that the chapel hadn’t succeeded as he thought it would have done--that he’d been disappinted--and that me and Cheesewright must have patience.”

“And when you told him that you and Mr. Cheesewright would not wait any longer--what did he say?”

“He said we was a generation of wipers.”

“And when you put him into prison?”

“He sent for me, and said I mustn’t hope to be paid in this world; but as I’d laid up for myself a treasure in heaven, he expected me to let him out of quod for nothink.”

There was a general titter in which bench and bar joined; and the only demure countenances present were those of the creditor who was done, and Mr. Sheepshanks who had done him. In fact this pious gentleman was so overcome by the unpleasantness of his position, that he compared himself, in the religious anguish of his spirit, to the man who went down to Jericho and fell amongst thieves.

Silence being again restored, two other opposing creditors were examined in their turn; and their evidence went to prove that Mr. Joshua Sheepshanks had obtained from them a quantity of goods under such very questionable pretences, that he might think himself exceedingly fortunate in having been sent to the King’s Bench instead of to Newgate.

The opposition having arrived at this stage, Mr. Bulliwell proceeded to address the Court in a long and furious speech based upon the testimony that had been given against the Insolvent. The agreeable appellations of “sanctimonious hypocrite,” “double-faced ranter,” “unprincipled trader in pious duplicities,” and such like terms, were freely applied to Mr. Joshua Sheepshanks in the course of this oration. The learned gentleman dwelt bitterly--but not one atom more severely than the subject deserved--upon the rascally scoundrelism which is practised by those persons who are denominated “saints;” and he concluded a rather eloquent speech by praying the Court to express its sense of the Insolvent’s criminality by remanding him for as long a period as the Act of Parliament would allow.

When called upon for any thing he might have to say in his defence, Mr. Sheepshanks applied a white handkerchief to his eyes; and, after shaking his head solemnly for several moments, he revealed his lugubrious countenance once more--purposely elongating it until he fancied he had tortured himself into as impressive a pitch of misery as one could wish to behold. He then began a tedious and doleful dissertation upon the “vanity of earthly things”--marvelled that his opposing creditors should “prefer the filthy lucre to the welfare of their immortal souls”--declared that when he first went amongst them he found them “lamentably benighted,” but that he had “at one time brought them to a state of grace”--complained that they had treated him as if he had been “a vessel of wrath,” whereas he flattered himself that he was in “a most savoury state of godliness”--hinted rather significantly that he looked upon his present predicament as a “glorious martyrdom in the good cause”--and wound up with an earnest prayer to the Commissioners that they would not be “moved by the men of Belial against him,” but that even as “heaven tempered the wind to the shorn lamb,” they would modify their judgment according to his lamentable condition.

To this speech, delivered in the most approved nasal twang of the dissenting pulpit, and with many doleful moans and frightful contortions, Commissioner Sneesby listened with exemplary patience: so, indeed, did his learned brother-judge--but in this latter case it was with the eyes shut. The moment, however, the harangue was brought to an end, the eyes alluded to opened slowly and gazed rather vacantly around: but with judicial keenness, they speedily comprehended the exact stage of the proceedings; and the possessor of the sleepy optics forthwith began to consult with his coadjutor in solemn whispers. Their conversation ran somewhat in the ensuing manner:--

“It is getting on for one o’clock, and I begin to feel quite faint,” said the somniferous Commissioner.

“A chop and a glass of sherry will do us each good,” observed Mr. Sneesby.

“Bulliwell does make such long-winded speeches!”

“Well--so he does: but I always pretend to listen to them--and thus he enjoys the reputation of having the ear of the Court.”

“I am going to dine with Serjeant Splutterby this evening--and so I shall leave at about four o’clock.”

“Very well,” said Mr. Commissioner Sneesby. “I shall sit till six. But what are we to do with this canting hypocrite of an Insolvent?”

“Six months, I suppose: he is a dreadful villain.”

“Yes--and while you were asleep he made a frightful long speech----”

“Oh! in that case, then, let us give him a twelvemonth--and then for the chops and the sherry.”

“Good: a twelvemonth--and then the chops and the sherry.”

Mr. Commissioner Sneesby, having thus assented to the suggestions of his sleepy coadjutor, turned in a solemn manner towards Mr. Joshua Sheepshanks and addressed that miserable-looking creature in the following terms:--

“Insolvent, the Court has maturely deliberated upon your case. We have listened with deep attention to the evidence of the opposing creditors and the address of the learned counsel on their behalf. We have likewise followed you with equal care throughout your defence; and we feel ourselves bound to pronounce an adverse judgment. Your conduct has been most reprehensible--aggravated, too, by the fact that your offences have been committed under the cloak of religion. My learned brother agrees with me in the opinion that your proceedings have been most fraudulent. We might even use harsher terms; but we will forbear. The judgment of the Court is that you, Joshua Sheepshanks, be remanded at the suit of your three opposing creditors for the period of twelve calendar months from the date of your vesting order.”

“Stand down, Insolvent!” cried the clerk.

The discomfitted Mr. Sheepshanks raised his eyes and hands upwards, and gave vent to a hollow groan, which made the audience think for a moment that it was a ghost from the tomb who was passing through the Insolvents’ Court.

“Silence, Insolvent!” vociferated an official, making much more noise to enforce his command than the pious gentleman did in provoking the injunction.

“You must swear to your schedule,” said the usher, as Mr. Sheepshanks was descending from the box.

“Damn the schedule!” muttered the reverend Insolvent, in a savage whisper.

“What do you say?” demanded the usher.

“I pray to heaven to have mercy upon my relentless persecutors, even as I forgive them!” answered Mr. Sheepshanks, with a solemn shake of the head.

He then quitted the box, and forthwith accompanied the tipstaff who had charge of him to the public-house opposite, where he drowned his cares in such a quantity of hot brandy-and-water, that the tipstaff aforesaid was compelled to put him into a cab and convey him back to the King’s Bench in a desperate state of intoxication.

In the meantime the two Commissioners retired to partake of their chops and sherry: the learned counsel likewise withdrew to their private room, where they also refreshed themselves;--the attorneys stole away for a quarter of an hour:--and the audience took little portable dinners of saveloys and biscuits from their pocket-handkerchiefs, so that the compartment of the Court allotted to spectators suddenly appeared to have been transformed into a slap-bang shop on an inferior scale.

The fifteen minutes’ grace having expired, Commissioners, counsel, and lawyers returned to their places--the audience wiped their mouths--and the Clerk of the Court called forth the name of “FRANCIS CURTIS!”