her safe within such walls as them. When one
delay came after another, and with all their
inquests and adjournments they failed to make
sure of her, what would I have given to have
had her shut up here. But it came at last, the
end and the verdict, which I heard—'Wilful
murder,' 'Wilful murder,' 'Wilful murder.'"

As Jane Cantanker uttered these terrible
words, a man who had approached without her
hearing him, so absorbed was she in her own
vindictive joy, came suddenly upon her, and,
startled by the sounds, looked hard into her
face, as if to see what sort of woman this could
be who awoke the neighbouring echoes with
such awful words.

He was a tall stout man this, with a florid
happy countenance, and that peculiar light
elastic tread which is so often observable in fat
people. He looked like the embodiment of
health and contentment, as he stood in the light
of the adjacent gas-lamp, and formed a striking
contrast to the grim malignant-looking woman
by his side.

Cornelius Vampi, whom the reader has no
doubt recognised from this description, was just
returning from a long expedition into the
Borough. He had been obliged to make this
journey in search of some rare drugs which were
required for the exigencies of the art mystic,
and which he was in the habit of getting from
a certain Jewish gentleman of his acquaintance,
who resided in a very obscure back street in
Southwark. Our astrologer had got what he
required, and was working his way back to his
own abode, when, passing through the Old
Bailey, he came suddenly, as we have seen,
upon Jane Cantanker, and recognised in her the
woman who applied to him for such assistance
of a supernatural sort as he was neither able
nor willing to afford. This person, and
everything connected with her, was so far from his
thoughts at the time, that for the moment
he was completely bewildered by the encounter.
Jane Cantanker, on her side, was equally
unprepared for such a meeting, and so the two
remained for some time staring at each other in
silence. Cantanker was the first to speak.

"Well," she said, with an air of triumph, "I
have done without your help, you see."

"'See,'" echoed Vampi. "I see nothing,
except that you are here at midnight, outside
the jail of Newgate, and talking about wilful
murder. What do you mean by 'having done
without my help?'"

"I mean, that she is here, safe and sound
within these walls;" and she laid her hand upon
the stones as she spoke.

"And who is 'she?'" asked Cornelius.

"The woman against whom your faint heart
refused to work a spell—Gabrielle Penmore."

"'Penmore?' Why, that was the name I was
trying to remember. And who is Gabrielle
Penmore? I have never heard the name except
from you."

"What! have you not heard?" asked the
woman, with something of contempt. "Do
you never read the newspapers?"

"Seldom, if ever."

"Well then, read them now—or may be in a
week from this time—and then you'll see who
Gabrielle Penmore is, and how she comes to be
here shut up in Newgate, and you'll see how
she will be tried for murder—yes, and found
guilty, too—and hanged in this very street in
which we are standing."

"This is horrible," said our harmless
philosopher, shrinking back mechanically from this
tigress of a woman, "most horrible."

"What's horrible?" she asked.

"Why, to hear the vindictive spirit in which
you talk. It is revengeful, malignant—horrible,
I say again."

"It's nothing of the kind," the woman
answered. "It's justice, that's what it is. She's
committed a crime, and it's only justice that she
should suffer for it."

"Yes, but justice doesn't demand-that you
should show this fiendish glee. If even what
you say is true, and some poor wretch, stained
with such crimes as you have been talking of,
does lie imprisoned within these mighty walls,
that is no reason why you should triumph,
should actually seem to gloat over the misery
of one who should now, at any rate, be an
object for your pity rather than your hatred."

The woman came close up to Cornelius:
"You talk of 'gloating,'" she said, "that is a
good word. I do gloat, and I mean to do so.
I tell you that, since she's been in confinement,
I come here every night to gloat. Why, I've
been round to all the different jails in London,
and about it, to compare 'em with this one, and
to see whether I'd have liked any one of 'em
better for her prison, and they're none of them
to compare to this. There's some of 'em are
built slighter, and some of them are too light
and airy, and some too handsome, and not looking
like prisons at all—but this—ah, this is
something like a prison. This looks hard, and
cold, and pitiless, and strong; a great bare wall,
with no windows to break it up, or make you
think there's pleasant rooms inside. It is a
prison, and it looks like a prison, with fetters,
iron fetters, hanging up above the door, and a
gallows, as I am told," here she whispered,
"shut up in an inner court, and ready at an
hour's notice. Something like a prison that."

Cornelius again drew back, and gazed upon
this terrible creature with a mixed wonder and
dismay.

"Stop!" he cried, "I will hear no more of
this. What have I done that you select me to
listen to these monstrous ravings. First of all,
you come to me to ask me to give you a charm
against your enemy, to curse her, to inflict some
supernatural evil upon her; and now you bid
me listen to words so cruel, so unwomanly, that
the sound of them makes me shrink from you
as I never thought to shrink from any human
being."

Cornelius Vampi spoke with horror in his
tones, for he was a man, as we have seen, of a
benevolent disposition, and possessed of a kind
and gentle heart, and the violence of this woman