mean you?" said Foster--"run away--fled with my forty
pounds, that should have been multiplied a thousand-fold? I will have
Hue and Cry!"

"I will tell thee a surer way," said Varney.

"How!--which way?" exclaimed Foster; "I will have back my forty
pounds--I deemed them as surely a thousand times multiplied--I will have
back my in-put, at the least."

"Go hang thyself, then, and sue Alasco in the Devil's Court of Chancery,
for thither he has carried the cause."

"How!--what dost thou mean is he dead?"

"Ay, truly is he," said Varney; "and properly swollen already in the
face and body. He had been mixing some of his devil's medicines, and the
glass mask which he used constantly had fallen from his face, so that
the subtle poison entered the brain, and did its work."

"SANCTA MARIA!" said Foster--"I mean, God in His mercy preserve us from
covetousness and deadly sin!--Had he not had projection, think you? Saw
you no ingots in the crucibles?"

"Nay, I looked not but at the dead carrion," answered Varney; "an ugly
spectacle--he was swollen like a corpse three days exposed on the wheel.
Pah! give me a cup of wine."

"I will go," said Foster, "I will examine myself--" He took the lamp,
and hastened to the door, but there hesitated and paused. "Will you not
go with me?" said he to Varney.

"To what purpose?" said Varney; "I have seen and smelled enough to spoil
my appetite. I broke the window, however, and let in the air; it reeked
of sulphur, and such like suffocating steams, as if the very devil had
been there."

"And might it not be the act of the demon himself?" said Foster, still
hesitating; "I have heard he is powerful at such times, and with such
people."

"Still, if it were that Satan of thine," answered Varney, "who thus
jades thy imagination, thou art in perfect safety, unless he is a most
unconscionable devil indeed. He hath had two good sops of late."

"How TWO sops--what mean you?" said Foster--"what mean you?"

"You will know in time," said Varney;--"and then this other banquet--but
thou wilt esteem Her too choice a morsel for the fiend's tooth--she must
have her psalms, and harps, and seraphs."

Anthony Foster heard, and came slowly back to the table. "God! Sir
Richard, and must that then be done?"

"Ay, in very truth, Anthony, or there comes no copyhold in thy way,"
replied his inflexible associate.

"I always foresaw it would land there!" said Foster. "But how, Sir
Richard, how?--for not