d, figuratively speaking, pat him on the back one moment, and kick
him to the scaffold the next. He thought, dejectedly, what a fool he
was ever to have come back; or even having come back, not to have
taken greater pains to stay up aloft, instead of pitching abruptly
head-foremost into such a select company without an invitation. He
thought, too, what a cold, damp, unwholesome chamber they had lodged him
in, and how apt he would be to have a bad attack of ague and miasmatic
fever, if they would only let him live long enough to enjoy those
blessings. And this having brought him to the end of his melancholy
meditation, he began to reflect how he could best amuse himself in
the interim, before quitting this vale of tears. The candle was still
blinking feebly on the floor, shedding tears of wax in its feeble
prostration, and it suddenly reminded him of the dwarf's advice to
examine his dark bower of repose. So he picked it up and snuffed it with
his fingers, and held it aloof, much as Robinson Crusoe held the brand
in the dark cavern with the dead goat.

In the velvet pall of blackness before alluded to, its small, wan ray
pierced but a few inches, and only made the darkness visible. But Sir
Norman groped his way to the wall, which he found to be all over green
and noisome slime, and broken out into a cold, clammy perspiration, as
though it were at its last gasp. By the aid of his friendly light, for
which he was really much obliged--a fact which, had his little friend
known, he would not have left it--he managed to make the circuit of his
prison, which he found rather spacious, and by no means uninhabited; for
the walls and floor were covered with fat, black beetles, whole
families of which interesting specimens of the insect-world he crunched
remorselessly under foot, and massacred at every step; and great,
depraved-looking rats, with flashing eyes and sinister-teeth, who made
frantic dives and rushes at him, and bit at his jack-boots with fierce,
fury. These small quadrupeds reminded him forcibly of the dwarf,
especially in the region of the eyes and the general expression of
countenance; and he began to reflect that if the dwarf's soul (supposing
him to possess such an article as that, which seemed open to debate)
passed after death into the body of any other animal, it would certainly
be into that of a rat.

He had just come to this conclusion, and was applying the flame of the
candle to the nose of an inquisitive be