my fellow passengers, the coachman--who was just preparing
to mount, after having changed horses at Dartford--abruptly opened the
door, on which I as abruptly jumped out; and after paying my fare the
whole way to town, and casting on the fiend a look of "inextinguishable
hatred," made an instant retreat into the inn. About the middle of the
next day I reached London, and without a moment's pause hurried to the
lodgings of my beforementioned friend C----. Luckily he was at home, but
started at the strange forlorn figure that presented itself. And well
indeed he might. My eye-balls were glazed and bloody, my cheeks white as
a shroud, my mouth a-jar, my lips blue and quivering. "For God's sake,
C----," I began, vouchsafing no further explanation, "lend me--(I
specified the sum)--or I am ruined; that infernal, inconceivable Tailor
has--." C----smilingly interrupted me by an instant compliance with my
demand; on which, without a moment's delay, I bounded off, breathless
and semi-frantic, towards my arch fiend's Pandaemonium at High Holborn.
I cannot--cannot say what I felt as I crossed over from Drury-lane
towards his den, more particularly when, on entering, I beheld the demon
himself behind his counter--calm, moveless, and sepulchral, as if
nothing of moment had occurred; as if he were an every-day dun, or I an
every-day debtor. The instant he espied me, a sardonic smile, together
with that appalling dissyllable, "touching" (which I never to this day
hear, see, or write without a shudder) escaped him; but before he could
close his oration, I had approached, trembling with rage and reverence,
towards him, and, thrusting forth the exact sum, was rushing from his
presence, when he beckoned me back for a receipt. A receipt, and from
him too! It was like taking a receipt for one's soul from Satan!!

The reader will doubtless conclude that, now at least, having
satisfactorily settled his demands, I had done with my Tormentor for
ever. This inference is in part correct. I followed up my vocation with
an energy strangely contrasted with my recent indifference, was early
and late in the schools, and for three months pursued this course with
such ardour, that my adventures with the Mysterious Tailor, though not
forgotten, were yet gradually losing their once powerful hold on my
imagination. This was precisely the state of my feelings, when early one
autumnal morning, just seven months from the date of my last visit to
High Holborn,