Jolly Knights of the Round Table_,' replied the boy, mechanically.

'By heavens, 'tis as I suspected!' thought Frank--'the child's answers
to my questions prove him to be the son of the Dead Man; the voice which
I heard while listening in the passage, and which seemed familiar to me,
was the voice of that infernal miscreant himself: and the woman whom I
accompanied hither, and whom I half fancied I had seen before--that
woman is his wife.'

The boy, probably fearing a return of his mother, left the room; and
Frank continued his meditations in the following strain:--

'The mystery begins to clear up. This house is probably the one that
communicates with the _secret outlet_ of the Dark Vaults, through which
I passed, blindfolded, accompanied by those two villains, Fred Archer,
and the Dead Man. The woman, no doubt, entices unsuspecting men into
this devil's trap, and after _drugging_ them into a state of
insensibility, hands them over to the tender mercies of her hideous
husband, who, after robbing them, casts them, perhaps, into some
infernal pit beneath this house, there to die and rot!--Good God, what
terrible iniquities are perpetrated in the very heart of this great
city--iniquities which are unsuspected and unknown! And yet the
perpetrators of them often escape their merited punishment, while I, an
innocent man, came within a hair's breadth of perishing upon the
scaffold for another's crime! But I will not question the divine justice
of the Almighty; the guilty may elude the punishment due their crimes,
in this world, but vengeance will overtake them in the next. It shall,
however, henceforth be the great object of my life, to bring one
stupendous miscreant to the bar of human justice--the Dead Man whose
escape from the State Prison was followed by his outrage upon Clinton
Romaine, by which the poor boy was forever deprived of the faculty of
speech; and 'tis my firm belief that 'twas by his accursed hand my aunt
was murdered; she was too elevated in character, and too good a
Christian, to commit suicide, and _he_ is the only man in existence who
could slay such an excellent and honorable woman! Yes--something tells
me that the Dead Man is the murderer of my beloved relative, and never
will I rest till he is in my power, that I may wreak upon him my deadly
vengeance!'

Hearing a footstep on the stairs, he assumed an attitude and expression
of countenance indicative of drowsiness and stupidity. A moment
afterwards