ver meet again?"
"P'r'aps in the fields, p'r'aps on the road, p'r'aps at the Old Bailey,
p'r'aps at the gallows, p'r'aps in the convict-ship. I knows what that
is! I was chained night and day once to a chap jist like you. Didn't I
break his spurit; didn't I spile his sleep! Ho, ho! you looks a bit less
varmently howdacious now, my flash cove!"
Varney hitherto had not known one pang of fear, one quicker beat of the
heart before. But the image presented to his irritable fancy (always
prone to brood over terrors),--the image of that companion chained to
him night and day,--suddenly quelled his courage; the image stood before
him palpably like the Oulos Oneiros,--the Evil Dream of the Greeks.
He breathed loud. The body-stealer's stupid sense saw that he had
produced the usual effect of terror, which gratified his brutal
self-esteem; he retreated slowly, inch by inch, to the door, followed by
Varney's appalled and staring eye, and closed it with such violence that
the candle was extinguished.
Varney, not daring,--yes, literally not daring,--to call aloud to
Grabman for another light, crept down the dark stairs with hurried,
ghostlike steps; and after groping at the door-handle with one hand,
while the other grasped his pistol with a strain of horror, he succeeded
at last in winning access to the street, and stood a moment to collect
himself in the open air,--the damps upon his forehead, and his limbs
trembling like one who has escaped by a hairbreadth the crash of a
falling house.
CHAPTER VII. THE RAPE OF THE MATTRESS.
That Mr. Grabman slept calmly that night is probable enough, for his
gin-bottle was empty the next morning; and it was with eyes more than
usually heavy that he dozily followed the movements of Beck, who,
according to custom, opened the shutters of the little den adjoining his
sitting-room, brushed his clothes, made his fire, set on the kettle to
boil, and laid his breakfast things, preparatory to his own departure
to the duties of the day. Stretching himself, however, and shaking off
slumber, as the remembrance of the enterprise he had undertaken glanced
pleasantly across him, Grabman sat up in his bed and said, in a voice
that, if not maudlin, was affectionate, and if not affectionate, was
maudlin,--
"Beck, you are a good fellow. You have faults, you are human,--humanism
est errare; which means that you some times scorch my muffins. But,
take you all in all, you are a kind creature. Beck
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