, you have created an enemy and an avenger of the outraged laws.
I shall be in London in the course of eight-and-forty hours--you cannot
escape me--if it cost me a hundred pounds, I will loose the bloodhounds
of justice after you--you shall be made, in chains, to give up your
hateful secret. I am no longer a boy; nor you, nor the lawyer that
administers my affairs, shall longer make a plaything of me. I will
know who I am. Thank God, I can always ask Mrs Cherfeuil."

At that name, a smile, no longer bitter, but deeply melancholy, and
almost sweet, came over his effeminate features. But it lasted not
long. That smile, like a few tones of his voice, seemed so familiar to
me. Was I one of two existences, the consciousness of the one nearly,
but not quite, blotting out the other? I looked upon him again, and the
smile was gone; but a look of grief, solemn and heartrending, had
supplied its place--and then the big and involuntary tear stood in his
eye. I know not whether it fell, for he held down his arm to the
concealment of his face, and spoke not.

Had the wretch a heart, after all?

As I turned to depart he lifted up his face, and all that was amiable in
its expression had fled. With a calm sneer he said, "May I trouble you,
Mr Rattlin, for those letters which I handed over to you for your
perusal?"

"I shall keep them."

"Is your code of equity as low as mine? They are my property; I paid
dearly enough for them. And what says your code of honour to such
conduct?"

"There, take your detested forgeries! We shall meet in London."

"Mr Rattlin forgets that he is a prisoner."

"Absurd! The charge cannot be sustained for a moment."

"Be it so. Peradventure, I shall be in London before you."

CHAPTER FIFTY NINE.

LISTENERS SELDOM HEAR GOOD THINGS OF THEMSELVES--RALPH AT A DREADFUL
DISCOUNT WITH HIS MESSMATES, BUT CONTRIVES TO SETTLE HIS ACCOUNTS WITH
HIS PRINCIPAL DEBTOR.

I left him, with a strong foreboding that he would work me some direful
mischief.

For the long day I sat, with my head buried in my hands on the sordid
table of our berth. I ate not, I spoke not. The ribaldry of my coarse
associates moved me not; their boisterous and vulgar mirth aroused me
not. They thought me, owing to my arrest, and my anticipations of its
consequences, torpid with fear. They were deceived. I was never more
alive. My existence was--if I may so speak--glowing and fiery hot; my
sense of being was in