; wild, ungovernable, raging
despair, for the uselessness of the peril into which he had plunged;
despair that hardened him and maddened him, and set his teeth a-grinding
in a moment of his exultation.

'My good friend!' said old Martin, laying his hand on Chuffey's sleeve.
'This is no place for you to remain in. Come with me.'

'Just his old way!' cried Chuffey, looking up into his face. 'I almost
believe it's Mr Chuzzlewit alive again. Yes! Take me with you! Stay,
though, stay.'

'For what?' asked old Martin.

'I can't leave her, poor thing!' said Chuffey. 'She has been very good
to me. I can't leave her, Mr Chuzzlewit. Thank you kindly. I'll remain
here. I haven't long to remain; it's no great matter.'

As he meekly shook his poor, grey head, and thanked old Martin in these
words, Mrs Gamp, now entirely in the room, was affected to tears.

'The mercy as it is!' she said, 'as sech a dear, good, reverend creetur
never got into the clutches of Betsey Prig, which but for me he would
have done, undoubted; facts bein' stubborn and not easy drove!'

'You heard me speak to you just now, old man,' said Jonas to his uncle.
'I'll have no more tampering with my people, man or woman. Do you see
the door?'

'Do YOU see the door?' returned the voice of Mark, coming from that
direction. 'Look at it!'

He looked, and his gaze was nailed there. Fatal, ill-omened blighted
threshold, cursed by his father's footsteps in his dying hour, cursed by
his young wife's sorrowing tread, cursed by the daily shadow of the old
clerk's figure, cursed by the crossing of his murderer's feet--what men
were standing in the door way!

Nadgett foremost.

Hark! It came on, roaring like a sea! Hawkers burst into the street,
crying it up and down; windows were thrown open that the inhabitants
might hear it; people stopped to listen in the road and on the pavement;
the bells, the same bells, began to ring; tumbling over one another in a
dance of boisterous joy at the discovery (that was the sound they had in
his distempered thoughts), and making their airy play-ground rock.

'That is the man,' said Nadgett. 'By the window!'

Three others came in, laid hands upon him, and secured him. It was so
quickly done, that he had not lost sight of the informer's face for an
instant when his wrists were manacled together.

'Murder,' said Nadgett, looking round on the astonished group. 'Let no
one interfere.'

The sounding street repeated Murder; barbar