week, and my nerves are shaky."

The imp lighted a candle-end at the gas-lamp, and conducted Losely up
the stairs to his own sleeping-room, which was less comfortless than
might be supposed. He resigned his bed to the wanderer, who flung
himself on it, rags and all. But sleep was no more at his command than
it is at a king's.

"Why the ---- did you talk of that witch?" he cried peevishly to Cutts,
who was composing himself to rest on the floor. "I swear I fancy I feel
her sitting on my chest like a nightmare."

He turned with a vehemence which shook the walls, and wrapped the
coverlet round him, plunging his head into its folds. Strange though it
seem to the novice in human nature, to Jasper Losely the woman who
had so long lived but for one object--namely, to save him from the
gibbet--was as his evil genius, his haunting fiend. He had conceived
a profound terror of her from the moment he perceived that she was
resolutely bent upon making him honest. He had broken from her years
ago, fled, resumed his evil courses, hid himself from her,--in vain.
Wherever he went, there went she. He might baffle the police, not her.
Hunger had often forced him to accept her aid. As soon as he received
it, he hid from her again, burying himself deeper and deeper in the mud,
like a persecuted tench. He associated her idea with all the ill-luck
that had befallen him. Several times some villanous scheme on which he
had counted to make his fortune had been baffled in the most mysterious
way; and just when baffled, and there seemed no choice but to cut his
own throat or some one else's, up turned grim Arabella Crane, in the
iron-gray gown, and with the iron-gray ringlets,--hatefully, awfully
beneficent,--offering food, shelter, gold,--and some demoniacal,
honourable work. Often had he been in imminent peril from watchful law
or treacherous accomplice. She had warned and saved him, as she had
saved him from the fell Gabrielle Desmarets, who, unable to bear
the sentence of penal servitude, after a long process, defended with
astonishing skill and enlisting the romantic sympathies of young France,
had contrived to escape into another world by means of a subtle poison
concealed about her _distinguee_ person, and which she had prepared
years ago with her own bloodless hands, and no doubt scientifically
tested its effects on others. The cobra di capella is gone at last!
"_Souviens-toi de ta Gabrielle_," O Jasper Losely! But why Arabella
Crane sh