ble? That being the case, I had better take my leave. I am not
good enough to be company for you.'

'Have I not told you,' said the other fiercely, 'that I have striven
and wrestled with the power that brought me here? Has my whole life, for
eight-and-twenty years, been one perpetual struggle and resistance, and
do you think I want to lie down and die? Do all men shrink from death--I
most of all!'

'That's better said. That's better spoken, Rudge--but I'll not call you
that again--than anything you have said yet,' returned the blind man,
speaking more familiarly, and laying his hands upon his arm. 'Lookye,--I
never killed a man myself, for I have never been placed in a position
that made it worth my while. Farther, I am not an advocate for killing
men, and I don't think I should recommend it or like it--for it's very
hazardous--under any circumstances. But as you had the misfortune to get
into this trouble before I made your acquaintance, and as you have been
my companion, and have been of use to me for a long time now, I overlook
that part of the matter, and am only anxious that you shouldn't die
unnecessarily. Now, I do not consider that, at present, it is at all
necessary.'

'What else is left me?' returned the prisoner. 'To eat my way through
these walls with my teeth?'

'Something easier than that,' returned his friend. 'Promise me that you
will talk no more of these fancies of yours--idle, foolish things, quite
beneath a man--and I'll tell you what I mean.'

'Tell me,' said the other.

'Your worthy lady with the tender conscience; your scrupulous, virtuous,
punctilious, but not blindly affectionate wife--'

'What of her?'

'Is now in London.'

'A curse upon her, be she where she may!'

'That's natural enough. If she had taken her annuity as usual, you would
not have been here, and we should have been better off. But that's apart
from the business. She's in London. Scared, as I suppose, and have no
doubt, by my representation when I waited upon her, that you were close
at hand (which I, of course, urged only as an inducement to compliance,
knowing that she was not pining to see you), she left that place, and
travelled up to London.'

'How do you know?'

'From my friend the noble captain--the illustrious general--the bladder,
Mr Tappertit. I learnt from him the last time I saw him, which was
yesterday, that your son who is called Barnaby--not after his father, I
suppose--'

'Death! does that matter