crime) had necessarily
often thrilled the ear of the vagrant fellow-lodger with burglars and
outlaws. But poison to whom? Could it be meant for his benefactor? Could
St. John sleep in that room? Why not? The woman had sought the chamber
before her young host had retired to rest, and mingled her potion with
some medicinal draught. All fear vanished before the notion of danger
to his employer. He stole at once through the doorway, and noiselessly
approached the table on which yet lay the phial. His hand closed on it
firmly. He resolved to carry it away, and consider next morning what
next to do. At all events, it might contain some proof to back his tale
and justify his suspicions. When he came once more into the corridor, he
made a quick rush onwards, and luckily arrived at the staircase. There
the blood-red stains reflected on the stone floors from the blazoned
casements daunted him little less than the sight at which his hair still
bristled. He scarcely drew breath till he had got into his own little
crib, in the wing set apart for the stable-men, when, at length, he
fell into broken and agitated sleep,--the visions of all that had
successively disturbed him waking, united confusedly, as in one picture
of gloom and terror. He thought that he was in his old loft in St.
Giles's, that the Gravestealer was wrestling with Varney for his body,
while he himself, lying powerless on his pallet, fancied he should be
safe as long as he could retain, as a talisman, his child's coral, which
he clasped to his heart. Suddenly, in that black, shapeless garb, in
which he had beheld her, Madame Dalibard bent over him with her stern,
colourless face, and wrenched from him his charm. Then, ceasing his
struggle with his horrible antagonist, Varney laughed aloud, and the
Gravestealer seized him in his deadly arms.

CHAPTER XXII. THE TAPESTRY CHAMBER.

When Beck woke the next morning, and gradually recalled all that had
so startled and appalled him the previous night, the grateful creature
felt, less by the process of reason than by a brute instinct, that in
the mysterious resuscitation and nocturnal wanderings of the pretended
paralytic, some danger menaced his master; he became anxious to learn
whether it was really St. John's room Madame Dalibard stealthily
visited. A bright idea struck him; and in the course of the day, at
an hour when the family were out of doors, he contrived to coax the
good-natured valet, who had taken him un