dge, and hangman,
could have done no more, and could do nothing now. Dead, dead, dead.

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

IN WHICH THE TABLES ARE TURNED, COMPLETELY UPSIDE DOWN

Old Martin's cherished projects, so long hidden in his own breast, so
frequently in danger of abrupt disclosure through the bursting forth
of the indignation he had hoarded up during his residence with Mr
Pecksniff, were retarded, but not beyond a few hours, by the occurrences
just now related. Stunned, as he had been at first by the intelligence
conveyed to him through Tom Pinch and John Westlock, of the supposed
manner of his brother's death; overwhelmed as he was by the subsequent
narratives of Chuffey and Nadgett, and the forging of that chain of
circumstances ending in the death of Jonas, of which catastrophe he was
immediately informed; scattered as his purposes and hopes were for the
moment, by the crowding in of all these incidents between him and his
end; still their very intensity and the tumult of their assemblage
nerved him to the rapid and unyielding execution of his scheme. In every
single circumstance, whether it were cruel, cowardly, or false, he
saw the flowering of the same pregnant seed. Self; grasping, eager,
narrow-ranging, overreaching self; with its long train of suspicions,
lusts, deceits, and all their growing consequences; was the root of the
vile tree. Mr Pecksniff had so presented his character before the old
man's eyes, that he--the good, the tolerant, enduring Pecksniff--had
become the incarnation of all selfishness and treachery; and the more
odious the shapes in which those vices ranged themselves before him now,
the sterner consolation he had in his design of setting Mr Pecksniff
right and Mr Pecksniff's victims too.

To this work he brought, not only the energy and determination natural
to his character (which, as the reader may have observed in the
beginning of his or her acquaintance with this gentleman, was remarkable
for the strong development of those qualities), but all the forced and
unnaturally nurtured energy consequent upon their long suppression. And
these two tides of resolution setting into one and sweeping on, became
so strong and vigorous, that, to prevent themselves from being carried
away before it, Heaven knows where, was as much as John Westlock and
Mark Tapley together (though they were tolerably energetic too) could
manage to effect.

He had sent for John Westlock immediately on his arrival; and