ous and dreadful Murder.
Murder, Murder, Murder. Rolling on from house to house, and echoing from
stone to stone, until the voices died away into the distant hum, which
seemed to mutter the same word!

They all stood silent: listening, and gazing in each other's faces, as
the noise passed on.

Old Martin was the first to speak. 'What terrible history is this?' he
demanded.

'Ask HIM,' said Nadgett. 'You're his friend, sir. He can tell you, if he
will. He knows more of it than I do, though I know much.'

'How do you know much?'

'I have not been watching him so long for nothing,' returned Nadgett. 'I
never watched a man so close as I have watched him.'

Another of the phantom forms of this terrific Truth! Another of the many
shapes in which it started up about him, out of vacancy. This man, of
all men in the world, a spy upon him; this man, changing his identity;
casting off his shrinking, purblind, unobservant character, and
springing up into a watchful enemy! The dead man might have come out of
his grave, and not confounded and appalled him more.

The game was up. The race was at an end; the rope was woven for his
neck. If, by a miracle, he could escape from this strait, he had but to
turn his face another way, no matter where, and there would rise some
new avenger front to front with him; some infant in an hour grown old,
or old man in an hour grown young, or blind man with his sight restored,
or deaf man with his hearing given him. There was no chance. He sank
down in a heap against the wall, and never hoped again from that moment.

'I am not his friend, although I have the honour to be his relative,'
said Mr Chuzzlewit. 'You may speak to me. Where have you watched, and
what have you seen?'

'I have watched in many places,' returned Nadgett, 'night and day. I
have watched him lately, almost without rest or relief;' his anxious
face and bloodshot eyes confirmed it. 'I little thought to what my
watching was to lead. As little as he did when he slipped out in the
night, dressed in those clothes which he afterwards sunk in a bundle at
London Bridge!'

Jonas moved upon the ground like a man in bodily torture. He uttered a
suppressed groan, as if he had been wounded by some cruel weapon; and
plucked at the iron band upon his wrists, as though (his hands being
free) he would have torn himself.

'Steady, kinsman!' said the chief officer of the party. 'Don't be
violent.'

'Whom do you call kinsman?' asked old