beseeching pardon, as I did, of Heaven; melted
at heart, as I was, by the thought that I had
taken no farewell, and never never now could
take farewell of those who were dear to me,
or could explain myself to them, or ask for
their compassion on my miserable errors; still,
if I could have killed him, even in dying, I
would have done it.

He had been drinking, and his eyes were red
and bloodshot. Around his neck was slung a
tin bottle, as I had often seen his meat and
drink slung about him in other days. He
brought the bottle to his lips, and took a fiery
drink from it; and I smelt the strong spirits
that I saw flare into his face.

"Wolf!" said he, folding his arms again,
"Old Orlick's a going to tell you somethink. It
was you as did for your shrew sister."

Again my mind, with its former inconceivable
rapidity, had exhausted the whole subject of the
attack upon my sister, her illness, and her
death, before his slow and hesitating speech had
formed these words.

"It was you, villain!" said I.

"I tell you it was your doing—I tell you it
was done through you," he retorted, catching up
the gun, and making a blow with the stock at
the vacant air between us. " I come upon her
from behind, as I come upon you to-night. /
giv' it her! I left her for dead, and if there
had been a limekiln as nigh her as there is now
nigh you, she shouldn't have come to life again.
But it warn't Old Orlick as did it; it was you.
You was favoured, and he was bullied and
beat. Old Orlick bullied and beat, eh? Now
you pays for it. You done it; now you pays
for it."

He drank again, and became more ferocious.
I saw by his tilting of the bottle that there was
no great quantity left in it. I distinctly understood
that he was working himself up with its
contents to make an end of me. I knew that
every drop it held, was a drop of my life. I
knew that when I was changed into a part of
the vapour that had crept towards me but a
little while before, like my own warning ghost,
he would do as he had done in my sister's case—
make all haste to the town, and be seen slouching
about there, drinking at the ale-houses. My
rapid mind pursued him to the town, made a
picture of the street with him in it, and
contrasted its lights and life with the lonely marsh
and the white vapour creeping over it, into
which I should have dissolved.

It was not only that I could have summed up
years and years and years while he said a dozen
words, but that what he did say presented
pictures to me, and not mere words. In the excited
and exalted state of my brain, I could not think
of a place without seeing it, or of persons without
seeing them. It is impossible to over-state the
vividness of these images, and yet I was so
intent, all the time, upon him himself—who would
not be intent on the tiger crouching to spring!
—that I knew of the slightest action of his
fingers.

When he had drunk this second time, he rose
from the bench on which he sat, and pushed the
table aside. Then he took up the candle, and
shading it with his murderous hand so as to
throw its light on me, stood before me, looking
at me and enjoying the sight.

"Wolf, I'll tell you something more. It was
Old Orlick as you tumbled over on your stairs
that night."

I saw the staircase with its extinguished
lamps. I saw the shadows of the heavy stair-
rails, thrown by the watchman's lantern on the
wall. I saw the rooms that I was never to see
again; here, a door half open; there, a door
closed; all the articles of furniture around.

"And why was Old Orlick there? I'll tell
you something more, wolf. You and her have
pretty well hunted me out of this country, so
far as getting a easy living in it goes, and I've
took up with new companions, and new masters.
Some of 'em writes my letters when I wants 'em
wrote—do you mind?—writes my letters, wolf!
They writes fifty hands; they're not like sneaking
you, as writes but one. I've had a firm mind and
a firm will to have your life, since you was down
here at your sister's burying. I han't seen a
way to get you safe, and I've looked arter you
to know your ins and outs. For, says Old Orlick
to himself, ' Somehow or another I'll have him!'
What! When I looks for you, I finds your
uncle Provis, eh?"

Mill Pond Bank, and Chinks's Basin, and the
Old Green Copper Rope Walk, all so clear and
plain! Provis in his rooms, and the signal
whose use was over, pretty Clara, the good
motherly woman, old Bill Barley on his back, all
drifting by, as on the swift stream of my life fast
running out to sea!

"You with a uncle too! Why, I know'd you
at Gargery's when you was so small a wolf that
I could have took your weazen betwixt this
finger and thumb and chucked you away dead
(as I'd thoughts o' doing, odd times, when I see
you loitering amongst the pollards on a Sunday),
and you hadn't found no uncles then. No, not
you! But when Old Orlick come for to hear
that your uncle Provis had mostlike wore the leg-
iron wot Old Orlick had picked up, filed asunder,
on these meshes ever so many year ago, and
wot he kep by him till he dropped your sister
with it, like a bullock, as he means to drop
you—hey?—when he come for to hear that—
hey?"——

In his savage taunting, he flared the candle
so close at me, that I turned my face aside, to
save it from the flame.

"Ah!" he cried, laughing, after doing it
again, "the burnt child dreads the fire! Old
Orlick knowed you was burnt, Old Orlick
knowed you was a smuggling your uncle Provis
away, Old Orlick's a match for you and knowed
you'd come to-night! Now I'll tell you some-
thing more, wolf, and this ends it. There's
them that's as good a match for your uncle
Provis as Old Orlick has been for you. Let him
'ware them, when he's lost his nevvy! Let him
'ware them, when no man can't find a rag of his
dear relation's clothes, nor yet a bone of his