which I could collect in
what he imagined it to consist. He had talked of misery, but had not
dropped a syllable respecting the nature of the misery to be inflicted.

I sat still for some time, ruminating on these thoughts. Neither Mr.
Falkland nor any other person appeared to disturb my meditations. I
rose, went out of the room, and from the inn into the street. No one
offered to molest me. It was strange! What was the nature of this
power, from which I was to apprehend so much, yet which seemed to leave
me at perfect liberty? I began to imagine that all I had heard from this
dreadful adversary was mere madness and extravagance, and that he was at
length deprived of the use of reason, which had long served him only as
a medium of torment. Yet was it likely in that case that he should be
able to employ Gines and his associate, who had just been his
instruments of violence upon my person?

I proceeded along the streets with considerable caution. I looked before
me and behind me, as well as the darkness would allow me to do, that I
might not again be hunted in sight by some men of stratagem and violence
without my perceiving it. I went not, as before, beyond the limits of
the town, but considered the streets, the houses, and the inhabitants,
as affording some degree of security. I was still walking with my mind
thus full of suspicion and forecast, when I discovered Thomas, that
servant of Mr. Falkland whom I have already more than once had occasion
to mention. He advanced towards me with an air so blunt and direct, as
instantly to remove from me the idea of any thing insidious in his
purpose; besides that I had always felt the character of Thomas, rustic
and uncultivated as it was, to be entitled to a more than common portion
of esteem.

"Thomas," said I, as he advanced, "I hope you are willing to give me
joy, that I am at length delivered from the dreadful danger which for
many months haunted me so unmercifully."

"No," rejoined Thomas, roughly; "I be not at all willing. I do not know
what to make of myself in this affair. While you were in prison in that
miserable fashion, I felt all at one almost as if I loved you: and now
that that is over, and you are turned out loose in the world to do your
worst, my blood rises at the very sight of you. To look at you, you are
almost that very lad Williams for whom I could with pleasure, as it
were, have laid down my life; and yet, behind that smiling face there
lie robbery, an