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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Hunted Down, by Charles Dickens
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at 
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+
+Title: Hunted Down
+       [1860]
+
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+
+
+Release Date: December 25, 2014  [eBook #807]
+[This file was first posted on February 7, 1997]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HUNTED DOWN***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1905 Chapman and Hall “Hard Times and Reprinted
+Pieces” edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+
+
+
+
+                            HUNTED DOWN [1860]
+
+
+I.
+
+
+MOST of us see some romances in life.  In my capacity as Chief Manager of
+a Life Assurance Office, I think I have within the last thirty years seen
+more romances than the generality of men, however unpromising the
+opportunity may, at first sight, seem.
+
+As I have retired, and live at my ease, I possess the means that I used
+to want, of considering what I have seen, at leisure.  My experiences
+have a more remarkable aspect, so reviewed, than they had when they were
+in progress.  I have come home from the Play now, and can recall the
+scenes of the Drama upon which the curtain has fallen, free from the
+glare, bewilderment, and bustle of the Theatre.
+
+Let me recall one of these Romances of the real world.
+
+There is nothing truer than physiognomy, taken in connection with manner.
+The art of reading that book of which Eternal Wisdom obliges every human
+creature to present his or her own page with the individual character
+written on it, is a difficult one, perhaps, and is little studied.  It
+may require some natural aptitude, and it must require (for everything
+does) some patience and some pains.  That these are not usually given to
+it,—that numbers of people accept a few stock commonplace expressions of
+the face as the whole list of characteristics, and neither seek nor know
+the refinements that are truest,—that You, for instance, give a great
+deal of time and attention to the reading of music, Greek, Latin, French,
+Italian, Hebrew, if you please, and do not qualify yourself to read the
+face of the master or mistress looking over your shoulder teaching it to
+you,—I assume to be five hundred times more probable than improbable.
+Perhaps a little self-sufficiency may be at the bottom of this; facial
+expression requires no study from you, you think; it comes by nature to
+you to know enough about it, and you are not to be taken in.
+
+I confess, for my part, that I _have_ been taken in, over and over again.
+I have been taken in by acquaintances, and I have been taken in (of
+course) by friends; far oftener by friends than by any other class of
+persons.  How came I to be so deceived?  Had I quite misread their faces?
+
+No.  Believe me, my first impression of those people, founded on face and
+manner alone, was invariably true.  My mistake was in suffering them to
+come nearer to me and explain themselves away.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+THE partition which separated my own office from our general outer office
+in the City was of thick plate-glass.  I could see through it what passed
+in the outer office, without hearing a word.  I had it put up in place of
+a wall that had been there for years,—ever since the house was built.  It
+is no matter whether I did or did not make the change in order that I
+might derive my first impression of strangers, who came to us on
+business, from their faces alone, without being influenced by anything
+they said.  Enough to mention that I turned my glass partition to that
+account, and that a Life Assurance Office is at all times exposed to be
+practised upon by the most crafty and cruel of the human race.
+
+It was through my glass partition that I first saw the gentleman whose
+story I am going to tell.
+
+He had come in without my observing it, and had put his hat and umbrella
+on the broad counter, and was bending over it to take some papers from
+one of the clerks.  He was about forty or so, dark, exceedingly well
+dressed in black,—being in mourning,—and the hand he extended with a
+polite air, had a particularly well-fitting black-kid glove upon it.  His
+hair, which was elaborately brushed and oiled, was parted straight up the
+middle; and he presented this parting to the clerk, exactly (to my
+thinking) as if he had said, in so many words: ‘You must take me, if you
+please, my friend, just as I show myself.  Come straight up here, follow
+the gravel path, keep off the grass, I allow no trespassing.’
+
+I conceived a very great aversion to that man the moment I thus saw him.
+
+He had asked for some of our printed forms, and the clerk was giving them
+to him and explaining them.  An obliged and agreeable smile was on his
+face, and his eyes met those of the clerk with a sprightly look.  (I have
+known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in
+the face.  Don’t trust that conventional idea.  Dishonesty will stare
+honesty out of countenance, any day in the week, if there is anything to
+be got by it.)
+
+I saw, in the corner of his eyelash, that he became aware of my looking
+at him.  Immediately he turned the parting in his hair toward the glass
+partition, as if he said to me with a sweet smile, ‘Straight up here, if
+you please.  Off the grass!’
+
+In a few moments he had put on his hat and taken up his umbrella, and was
+gone.
+
+I beckoned the clerk into my room, and asked, ‘Who was that?’
+
+He had the gentleman’s card in his hand.  ‘Mr. Julius Slinkton, Middle
+Temple.’
+
+‘A barrister, Mr. Adams?’
+
+‘I think not, sir.’
+
+‘I should have thought him a clergyman, but for his having no Reverend
+here,’ said I.
+
+‘Probably, from his appearance,’ Mr. Adams replied, ‘he is reading for
+orders.’
+
+I should mention that he wore a dainty white cravat, and dainty linen
+altogether.
+
+‘What did he want, Mr. Adams?’
+
+‘Merely a form of proposal, sir, and form of reference.’
+
+‘Recommended here?  Did he say?’
+
+‘Yes, he said he was recommended here by a friend of yours.  He noticed
+you, but said that as he had not the pleasure of your personal
+acquaintance he would not trouble you.’
+
+‘Did he know my name?’
+
+‘O yes, sir!  He said, “There _is_ Mr. Sampson, I see!”’
+
+‘A well-spoken gentleman, apparently?’
+
+‘Remarkably so, sir.’
+
+‘Insinuating manners, apparently?’
+
+‘Very much so, indeed, sir.’
+
+‘Hah!’ said I.  ‘I want nothing at present, Mr. Adams.’
+
+Within a fortnight of that day I went to dine with a friend of mine, a
+merchant, a man of taste, who buys pictures and books, and the first man
+I saw among the company was Mr. Julius Slinkton.  There he was, standing
+before the fire, with good large eyes and an open expression of face; but
+still (I thought) requiring everybody to come at him by the prepared way
+he offered, and by no other.
+
+I noticed him ask my friend to introduce him to Mr. Sampson, and my
+friend did so.  Mr. Slinkton was very happy to see me.  Not too happy;
+there was no over-doing of the matter; happy in a thoroughly well-bred,
+perfectly unmeaning way.
+
+‘I thought you had met,’ our host observed.
+
+‘No,’ said Mr. Slinkton.  ‘I did look in at Mr. Sampson’s office, on your
+recommendation; but I really did not feel justified in troubling Mr.
+Sampson himself, on a point in the everyday routine of an ordinary
+clerk.’
+
+I said I should have been glad to show him any attention on our friend’s
+introduction.
+
+‘I am sure of that,’ said he, ‘and am much obliged.  At another time,
+perhaps, I may be less delicate.  Only, however, if I have real business;
+for I know, Mr. Sampson, how precious business time is, and what a vast
+number of impertinent people there are in the world.’
+
+I acknowledged his consideration with a slight bow.  ‘You were thinking,’
+said I, ‘of effecting a policy on your life.’
+
+‘O dear no!  I am afraid I am not so prudent as you pay me the compliment
+of supposing me to be, Mr. Sampson.  I merely inquired for a friend.  But
+you know what friends are in such matters.  Nothing may ever come of it.
+I have the greatest reluctance to trouble men of business with inquiries
+for friends, knowing the probabilities to be a thousand to one that the
+friends will never follow them up.  People are so fickle, so selfish, so
+inconsiderate.  Don’t you, in your business, find them so every day, Mr.
+Sampson?’
+
+I was going to give a qualified answer; but he turned his smooth, white
+parting on me with its ‘Straight up here, if you please!’ and I answered
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘I hear, Mr. Sampson,’ he resumed presently, for our friend had a new
+cook, and dinner was not so punctual as usual, ‘that your profession has
+recently suffered a great loss.’
+
+‘In money?’ said I.
+
+He laughed at my ready association of loss with money, and replied, ‘No,
+in talent and vigour.’
+
+Not at once following out his allusion, I considered for a moment.
+‘_Has_ it sustained a loss of that kind?’ said I.  ‘I was not aware of
+it.’
+
+‘Understand me, Mr. Sampson.  I don’t imagine that you have retired.  It
+is not so bad as that.  But Mr. Meltham—’
+
+‘O, to be sure!’ said I.  ‘Yes!  Mr. Meltham, the young actuary of the
+“Inestimable.”’
+
+‘Just so,’ he returned in a consoling way.
+
+‘He is a great loss.  He was at once the most profound, the most
+original, and the most energetic man I have ever known connected with
+Life Assurance.’
+
+I spoke strongly; for I had a high esteem and admiration for Meltham; and
+my gentleman had indefinitely conveyed to me some suspicion that he
+wanted to sneer at him.  He recalled me to my guard by presenting that
+trim pathway up his head, with its internal ‘Not on the grass, if you
+please—the gravel.’
+
+‘You knew him, Mr. Slinkton.’
+
+‘Only by reputation.  To have known him as an acquaintance or as a
+friend, is an honour I should have sought if he had remained in society,
+though I might never have had the good fortune to attain it, being a man
+of far inferior mark.  He was scarcely above thirty, I suppose?’
+
+‘About thirty.’
+
+‘Ah!’ he sighed in his former consoling way.  ‘What creatures we are!  To
+break up, Mr. Sampson, and become incapable of business at that time of
+life!—Any reason assigned for the melancholy fact?’
+
+(‘Humph!’ thought I, as I looked at him.  ‘But I WON’T go up the track,
+and I WILL go on the grass.’)
+
+‘What reason have you heard assigned, Mr. Slinkton?’ I asked,
+point-blank.
+
+‘Most likely a false one.  You know what Rumour is, Mr. Sampson.  I never
+repeat what I hear; it is the only way of paring the nails and shaving
+the head of Rumour.  But when _you_ ask me what reason I have heard
+assigned for Mr. Meltham’s passing away from among men, it is another
+thing.  I am not gratifying idle gossip then.  I was told, Mr. Sampson,
+that Mr. Meltham had relinquished all his avocations and all his
+prospects, because he was, in fact, broken-hearted.  A disappointed
+attachment I heard,—though it hardly seems probable, in the case of a man
+so distinguished and so attractive.’
+
+‘Attractions and distinctions are no armour against death,’ said I.
+
+‘O, she died?  Pray pardon me.  I did not hear that.  That, indeed, makes
+it very, very sad.  Poor Mr. Meltham!  She died?  Ah, dear me!
+Lamentable, lamentable!’
+
+I still thought his pity was not quite genuine, and I still suspected an
+unaccountable sneer under all this, until he said, as we were parted,
+like the other knots of talkers, by the announcement of dinner:
+
+‘Mr. Sampson, you are surprised to see me so moved on behalf of a man
+whom I have never known.  I am not so disinterested as you may suppose.
+I have suffered, and recently too, from death myself.  I have lost one of
+two charming nieces, who were my constant companions.  She died
+young—barely three-and-twenty; and even her remaining sister is far from
+strong.  The world is a grave!’
+
+He said this with deep feeling, and I felt reproached for the coldness of
+my manner.  Coldness and distrust had been engendered in me, I knew, by
+my bad experiences; they were not natural to me; and I often thought how
+much I had lost in life, losing trustfulness, and how little I had
+gained, gaining hard caution.  This state of mind being habitual to me, I
+troubled myself more about this conversation than I might have troubled
+myself about a greater matter.  I listened to his talk at dinner, and
+observed how readily other men responded to it, and with what a graceful
+instinct he adapted his subjects to the knowledge and habits of those he
+talked with.  As, in talking with me, he had easily started the subject I
+might be supposed to understand best, and to be the most interested in,
+so, in talking with others, he guided himself by the same rule.  The
+company was of a varied character; but he was not at fault, that I could
+discover, with any member of it.  He knew just as much of each man’s
+pursuit as made him agreeable to that man in reference to it, and just as
+little as made it natural in him to seek modestly for information when
+the theme was broached.
+
+As he talked and talked—but really not too much, for the rest of us
+seemed to force it upon him—I became quite angry with myself.  I took his
+face to pieces in my mind, like a watch, and examined it in detail.  I
+could not say much against any of his features separately; I could say
+even less against them when they were put together.  ‘Then is it not
+monstrous,’ I asked myself, ‘that because a man happens to part his hair
+straight up the middle of his head, I should permit myself to suspect,
+and even to detest him?’
+
+(I may stop to remark that this was no proof of my sense.  An observer of
+men who finds himself steadily repelled by some apparently trifling thing
+in a stranger is right to give it great weight.  It may be the clue to
+the whole mystery.  A hair or two will show where a lion is hidden.  A
+very little key will open a very heavy door.)
+
+I took my part in the conversation with him after a time, and we got on
+remarkably well.  In the drawing-room I asked the host how long he had
+known Mr. Slinkton.  He answered, not many months; he had met him at the
+house of a celebrated painter then present, who had known him well when
+he was travelling with his nieces in Italy for their health.  His plans
+in life being broken by the death of one of them, he was reading with the
+intention of going back to college as a matter of form, taking his
+degree, and going into orders.  I could not but argue with myself that
+here was the true explanation of his interest in poor Meltham, and that I
+had been almost brutal in my distrust on that simple head.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+ON the very next day but one I was sitting behind my glass partition, as
+before, when he came into the outer office, as before.  The moment I saw
+him again without hearing him, I hated him worse than ever.
+
+It was only for a moment that I had this opportunity; for he waved his
+tight-fitting black glove the instant I looked at him, and came straight
+in.
+
+‘Mr. Sampson, good-day!  I presume, you see, upon your kind permission to
+intrude upon you.  I don’t keep my word in being justified by business,
+for my business here—if I may so abuse the word—is of the slightest
+nature.’
+
+I asked, was it anything I could assist him in?
+
+‘I thank you, no.  I merely called to inquire outside whether my dilatory
+friend had been so false to himself as to be practical and sensible.
+But, of course, he has done nothing.  I gave him your papers with my own
+hand, and he was hot upon the intention, but of course he has done
+nothing.  Apart from the general human disinclination to do anything that
+ought to be done, I dare say there is a specialty about assuring one’s
+life.  You find it like will-making.  People are so superstitious, and
+take it for granted they will die soon afterwards.’
+
+‘Up here, if you please; straight up here, Mr. Sampson.  Neither to the
+right nor to the left.’  I almost fancied I could hear him breathe the
+words as he sat smiling at me, with that intolerable parting exactly
+opposite the bridge of my nose.
+
+‘There is such a feeling sometimes, no doubt,’ I replied; ‘but I don’t
+think it obtains to any great extent.’
+
+‘Well,’ said he, with a shrug and a smile, ‘I wish some good angel would
+influence my friend in the right direction.  I rashly promised his mother
+and sister in Norfolk to see it done, and he promised them that he would
+do it.  But I suppose he never will.’
+
+He spoke for a minute or two on indifferent topics, and went away.
+
+I had scarcely unlocked the drawers of my writing-table next morning,
+when he reappeared.  I noticed that he came straight to the door in the
+glass partition, and did not pause a single moment outside.
+
+‘Can you spare me two minutes, my dear Mr. Sampson?’
+
+‘By all means.’
+
+‘Much obliged,’ laying his hat and umbrella on the table; ‘I came early,
+not to interrupt you.  The fact is, I am taken by surprise in reference
+to this proposal my friend has made.’
+
+‘Has he made one?’ said I.
+
+‘Ye-es,’ he answered, deliberately looking at me; and then a bright idea
+seemed to strike him—‘or he only tells me he has.  Perhaps that may be a
+new way of evading the matter.  By Jupiter, I never thought of that!’
+
+Mr. Adams was opening the morning’s letters in the outer office.  ‘What
+is the name, Mr. Slinkton?’ I asked.
+
+‘Beckwith.’
+
+I looked out at the door and requested Mr. Adams, if there were a
+proposal in that name, to bring it in.  He had already laid it out of his
+hand on the counter.  It was easily selected from the rest, and he gave
+it me.  Alfred Beckwith.  Proposal to effect a policy with us for two
+thousand pounds.  Dated yesterday.
+
+‘From the Middle Temple, I see, Mr. Slinkton.’
+
+‘Yes.  He lives on the same staircase with me; his door is opposite.  I
+never thought he would make me his reference though.’
+
+‘It seems natural enough that he should.’
+
+‘Quite so, Mr. Sampson; but I never thought of it.  Let me see.’  He took
+the printed paper from his pocket.  ‘How am I to answer all these
+questions?’
+
+‘According to the truth, of course,’ said I.
+
+‘O, of course!’ he answered, looking up from the paper with a smile; ‘I
+meant they were so many.  But you do right to be particular.  It stands
+to reason that you must be particular.  Will you allow me to use your pen
+and ink?’
+
+‘Certainly.’
+
+‘And your desk?’
+
+‘Certainly.’
+
+He had been hovering about between his hat and his umbrella for a place
+to write on.  He now sat down in my chair, at my blotting-paper and
+inkstand, with the long walk up his head in accurate perspective before
+me, as I stood with my back to the fire.
+
+Before answering each question he ran over it aloud, and discussed it.
+How long had he known Mr. Alfred Beckwith?  That he had to calculate by
+years upon his fingers.  What were his habits?  No difficulty about them;
+temperate in the last degree, and took a little too much exercise, if
+anything.  All the answers were satisfactory.  When he had written them
+all, he looked them over, and finally signed them in a very pretty hand.
+He supposed he had now done with the business.  I told him he was not
+likely to be troubled any farther.  Should he leave the papers there? If
+he pleased.  Much obliged.  Good-morning.
+
+I had had one other visitor before him; not at the office, but at my own
+house.  That visitor had come to my bedside when it was not yet daylight,
+and had been seen by no one else but by my faithful confidential servant.
+
+A second reference paper (for we required always two) was sent down into
+Norfolk, and was duly received back by post.  This, likewise, was
+satisfactorily answered in every respect.  Our forms were all complied
+with; we accepted the proposal, and the premium for one year was paid.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+FOR six or seven months I saw no more of Mr. Slinkton.  He called once at
+my house, but I was not at home; and he once asked me to dine with him in
+the Temple, but I was engaged.  His friend’s assurance was effected in
+March.  Late in September or early in October I was down at Scarborough
+for a breath of sea-air, where I met him on the beach.  It was a hot
+evening; he came toward me with his hat in his hand; and there was the
+walk I had felt so strongly disinclined to take in perfect order again,
+exactly in front of the bridge of my nose.
+
+He was not alone, but had a young lady on his arm.
+
+She was dressed in mourning, and I looked at her with great interest.
+She had the appearance of being extremely delicate, and her face was
+remarkably pale and melancholy; but she was very pretty.  He introduced
+her as his niece, Miss Niner.
+
+‘Are you strolling, Mr. Sampson?  Is it possible you can be idle?’
+
+It _was_ possible, and I _was_ strolling.
+
+‘Shall we stroll together?’
+
+‘With pleasure.’
+
+The young lady walked between us, and we walked on the cool sea sand, in
+the direction of Filey.
+
+‘There have been wheels here,’ said Mr. Slinkton.  ‘And now I look again,
+the wheels of a hand-carriage!  Margaret, my love, your shadow without
+doubt!’
+
+‘Miss Niner’s shadow?’ I repeated, looking down at it on the sand.
+
+‘Not that one,’ Mr. Slinkton returned, laughing.  ‘Margaret, my dear,
+tell Mr. Sampson.’
+
+‘Indeed,’ said the young lady, turning to me, ‘there is nothing to
+tell—except that I constantly see the same invalid old gentleman at all
+times, wherever I go.  I have mentioned it to my uncle, and he calls the
+gentleman my shadow.’
+
+‘Does he live in Scarborough?’ I asked.
+
+‘He is staying here.’
+
+‘Do you live in Scarborough?’
+
+‘No, I am staying here.  My uncle has placed me with a family here, for
+my health.’
+
+‘And your shadow?’ said I, smiling.
+
+‘My shadow,’ she answered, smiling too, ‘is—like myself—not very robust,
+I fear; for I lose my shadow sometimes, as my shadow loses me at other
+times.  We both seem liable to confinement to the house.  I have not seen
+my shadow for days and days; but it does oddly happen, occasionally, that
+wherever I go, for many days together, this gentleman goes.  We have come
+together in the most unfrequented nooks on this shore.’
+
+‘Is this he?’ said I, pointing before us.
+
+The wheels had swept down to the water’s edge, and described a great loop
+on the sand in turning.  Bringing the loop back towards us, and spinning
+it out as it came, was a hand-carriage, drawn by a man.
+
+‘Yes,’ said Miss Niner, ‘this really is my shadow, uncle.’
+
+As the carriage approached us and we approached the carriage, I saw
+within it an old man, whose head was sunk on his breast, and who was
+enveloped in a variety of wrappers.  He was drawn by a very quiet but
+very keen-looking man, with iron-gray hair, who was slightly lame.  They
+had passed us, when the carriage stopped, and the old gentleman within,
+putting out his arm, called to me by my name.  I went back, and was
+absent from Mr. Slinkton and his niece for about five minutes.
+
+When I rejoined them, Mr. Slinkton was the first to speak.  Indeed, he
+said to me in a raised voice before I came up with him:
+
+‘It is well you have not been longer, or my niece might have died of
+curiosity to know who her shadow is, Mr. Sampson.’
+
+‘An old East India Director,’ said I.  ‘An intimate friend of our
+friend’s, at whose house I first had the pleasure of meeting you.  A
+certain Major Banks.  You have heard of him?’
+
+‘Never.’
+
+‘Very rich, Miss Niner; but very old, and very crippled.  An amiable man,
+sensible—much interested in you.  He has just been expatiating on the
+affection that he has observed to exist between you and your uncle.’
+
+Mr. Slinkton was holding his hat again, and he passed his hand up the
+straight walk, as if he himself went up it serenely, after me.
+
+‘Mr. Sampson,’ he said, tenderly pressing his niece’s arm in his, ‘our
+affection was always a strong one, for we have had but few near ties.  We
+have still fewer now.  We have associations to bring us together, that
+are not of this world, Margaret.’
+
+‘Dear uncle!’ murmured the young lady, and turned her face aside to hide
+her tears.
+
+‘My niece and I have such remembrances and regrets in common, Mr.
+Sampson,’ he feelingly pursued, ‘that it would be strange indeed if the
+relations between us were cold or indifferent.  If I remember a
+conversation we once had together, you will understand the reference I
+make.  Cheer up, dear Margaret.  Don’t droop, don’t droop.  My Margaret!
+I cannot bear to see you droop!’
+
+The poor young lady was very much affected, but controlled herself.  His
+feelings, too, were very acute.  In a word, he found himself under such
+great need of a restorative, that he presently went away, to take a bath
+of sea-water, leaving the young lady and me sitting by a point of rock,
+and probably presuming—but that you will say was a pardonable indulgence
+in a luxury—that she would praise him with all her heart.
+
+She did, poor thing!  With all her confiding heart, she praised him to
+me, for his care of her dead sister, and for his untiring devotion in her
+last illness.  The sister had wasted away very slowly, and wild and
+terrible fantasies had come over her toward the end, but he had never
+been impatient with her, or at a loss; had always been gentle, watchful,
+and self-possessed.  The sister had known him, as she had known him, to
+be the best of men, the kindest of men, and yet a man of such admirable
+strength of character, as to be a very tower for the support of their
+weak natures while their poor lives endured.
+
+‘I shall leave him, Mr. Sampson, very soon,’ said the young lady; ‘I know
+my life is drawing to an end; and when I am gone, I hope he will marry
+and be happy.  I am sure he has lived single so long, only for my sake,
+and for my poor, poor sister’s.’
+
+The little hand-carriage had made another great loop on the damp sand,
+and was coming back again, gradually spinning out a slim figure of eight,
+half a mile long.
+
+‘Young lady,’ said I, looking around, laying my hand upon her arm, and
+speaking in a low voice, ‘time presses.  You hear the gentle murmur of
+that sea?’
+
+ [Picture: “Young Lady,” said I, laying my Hand upon her Arm . . . “Time
+                                presses”]
+
+She looked at me with the utmost wonder and alarm, saying, ‘Yes!’
+
+‘And you know what a voice is in it when the storm comes?’
+
+‘Yes!’
+
+‘You see how quiet and peaceful it lies before us, and you know what an
+awful sight of power without pity it might be, this very night!’
+
+‘Yes!’
+
+‘But if you had never heard or seen it, or heard of it in its cruelty,
+could you believe that it beats every inanimate thing in its way to
+pieces, without mercy, and destroys life without remorse?’
+
+‘You terrify me, sir, by these questions!’
+
+‘To save you, young lady, to save you!  For God’s sake, collect your
+strength and collect your firmness!  If you were here alone, and hemmed
+in by the rising tide on the flow to fifty feet above your head, you
+could not be in greater danger than the danger you are now to be saved
+from.’
+
+The figure on the sand was spun out, and straggled off into a crooked
+little jerk that ended at the cliff very near us.
+
+‘As I am, before Heaven and the Judge of all mankind, your friend, and
+your dead sister’s friend, I solemnly entreat you, Miss Niner, without
+one moment’s loss of time, to come to this gentleman with me!’
+
+If the little carriage had been less near to us, I doubt if I could have
+got her away; but it was so near that we were there before she had
+recovered the hurry of being urged from the rock.  I did not remain there
+with her two minutes.  Certainly within five, I had the inexpressible
+satisfaction of seeing her—from the point we had sat on, and to which I
+had returned—half supported and half carried up some rude steps notched
+in the cliff, by the figure of an active man.  With that figure beside
+her, I knew she was safe anywhere.
+
+I sat alone on the rock, awaiting Mr. Slinkton’s return.  The twilight
+was deepening and the shadows were heavy, when he came round the point,
+with his hat hanging at his button-hole, smoothing his wet hair with one
+of his hands, and picking out the old path with the other and a
+pocket-comb.
+
+‘My niece not here, Mr. Sampson?’ he said, looking about.
+
+‘Miss Niner seemed to feel a chill in the air after the sun was down, and
+has gone home.’
+
+He looked surprised, as though she were not accustomed to do anything
+without him; even to originate so slight a proceeding.
+
+‘I persuaded Miss Niner,’ I explained.
+
+‘Ah!’ said he.  ‘She is easily persuaded—for her good.  Thank you, Mr.
+Sampson; she is better within doors.  The bathing-place was farther than
+I thought, to say the truth.’
+
+‘Miss Niner is very delicate,’ I observed.
+
+He shook his head and drew a deep sigh.  ‘Very, very, very.  You may
+recollect my saying so.  The time that has since intervened has not
+strengthened her.  The gloomy shadow that fell upon her sister so early
+in life seems, in my anxious eyes, to gather over her, ever darker, ever
+darker.  Dear Margaret, dear Margaret!  But we must hope.’
+
+The hand-carriage was spinning away before us at a most indecorous pace
+for an invalid vehicle, and was making most irregular curves upon the
+sand.  Mr. Slinkton, noticing it after he had put his handkerchief to his
+eyes, said:
+
+‘If I may judge from appearances, your friend will be upset, Mr.
+Sampson.’
+
+‘It looks probable, certainly,’ said I.
+
+‘The servant must be drunk.’
+
+‘The servants of old gentlemen will get drunk sometimes,’ said I.
+
+‘The major draws very light, Mr. Sampson.’
+
+‘The major does draw light,’ said I.
+
+By this time the carriage, much to my relief, was lost in the darkness.
+We walked on for a little, side by side over the sand, in silence.  After
+a short while he said, in a voice still affected by the emotion that his
+niece’s state of health had awakened in him,
+
+‘Do you stay here long, Mr. Sampson?’
+
+‘Why, no.  I am going away to-night.’
+
+‘So soon?  But business always holds you in request.  Men like Mr.
+Sampson are too important to others, to be spared to their own need of
+relaxation and enjoyment.’
+
+‘I don’t know about that,’ said I.  ‘However, I am going back.’
+
+‘To London?’
+
+‘To London.’
+
+‘I shall be there too, soon after you.’
+
+I knew that as well as he did.  But I did not tell him so.  Any more than
+I told him what defensive weapon my right hand rested on in my pocket, as
+I walked by his side.  Any more than I told him why I did not walk on the
+sea side of him with the night closing in.
+
+We left the beach, and our ways diverged.  We exchanged good-night, and
+had parted indeed, when he said, returning,
+
+‘Mr. Sampson, _may_ I ask?  Poor Meltham, whom we spoke of,—dead yet?’
+
+‘Not when I last heard of him; but too broken a man to live long, and
+hopelessly lost to his old calling.’
+
+‘Dear, dear, dear!’ said he, with great feeling.  ‘Sad, sad, sad!  The
+world is a grave!’  And so went his way.
+
+It was not his fault if the world were not a grave; but I did not call
+that observation after him, any more than I had mentioned those other
+things just now enumerated.  He went his way, and I went mine with all
+expedition.  This happened, as I have said, either at the end of
+September or beginning of October.  The next time I saw him, and the last
+time, was late in November.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+
+I HAD a very particular engagement to breakfast in the Temple.  It was a
+bitter north-easterly morning, and the sleet and slush lay inches deep in
+the streets.  I could get no conveyance, and was soon wet to the knees;
+but I should have been true to that appointment, though I had to wade to
+it up to my neck in the same impediments.
+
+The appointment took me to some chambers in the Temple.  They were at the
+top of a lonely corner house overlooking the river.  The name, MR. ALFRED
+BECKWITH, was painted on the outer door.  On the door opposite, on the
+same landing, the name MR. JULIUS SLINKTON.  The doors of both sets of
+chambers stood open, so that anything said aloud in one set could be
+heard in the other.
+
+I had never been in those chambers before.  They were dismal, close,
+unwholesome, and oppressive; the furniture, originally good, and not yet
+old, was faded and dirty,—the rooms were in great disorder; there was a
+strong prevailing smell of opium, brandy, and tobacco; the grate and
+fire-irons were splashed all over with unsightly blotches of rust; and on
+a sofa by the fire, in the room where breakfast had been prepared, lay
+the host, Mr. Beckwith, a man with all the appearances of the worst kind
+of drunkard, very far advanced upon his shameful way to death.
+
+‘Slinkton is not come yet,’ said this creature, staggering up when I went
+in; ‘I’ll call him.—Halloa!  Julius Cæsar!  Come and drink!’  As he
+hoarsely roared this out, he beat the poker and tongs together in a mad
+way, as if that were his usual manner of summoning his associate.
+
+The voice of Mr. Slinkton was heard through the clatter from the opposite
+side of the staircase, and he came in.  He had not expected the pleasure
+of meeting me.  I have seen several artful men brought to a stand, but I
+never saw a man so aghast as he was when his eyes rested on mine.
+
+‘Julius Cæsar,’ cried Beckwith, staggering between us, ‘Mist’ Sampson!
+Mist’ Sampson, Julius Cæsar!  Julius, Mist’ Sampson, is the friend of my
+soul.  Julius keeps me plied with liquor, morning, noon, and night.
+Julius is a real benefactor. Julius threw the tea and coffee out of
+window when I used to have any.  Julius empties all the water-jugs of
+their contents, and fills ’em with spirits.  Julius winds me up and keeps
+me going.—Boil the brandy, Julius!’
+
+There was a rusty and furred saucepan in the ashes,—the ashes looked like
+the accumulation of weeks,—and Beckwith, rolling and staggering between
+us as if he were going to plunge headlong into the fire, got the saucepan
+out, and tried to force it into Slinkton’s hand.
+
+‘Boil the brandy, Julius Cæsar!  Come!  Do your usual office.  Boil the
+brandy!’
+
+He became so fierce in his gesticulations with the saucepan, that I
+expected to see him lay open Slinkton’s head with it.  I therefore put
+out my hand to check him.  He reeled back to the sofa, and sat there
+panting, shaking, and red-eyed, in his rags of dressing-gown, looking at
+us both.  I noticed then that there was nothing to drink on the table but
+brandy, and nothing to eat but salted herrings, and a hot, sickly,
+highly-peppered stew.
+
+‘At all events, Mr. Sampson,’ said Slinkton, offering me the smooth
+gravel path for the last time, ‘I thank you for interfering between me
+and this unfortunate man’s violence.  However you came here, Mr. Sampson,
+or with whatever motive you came here, at least I thank you for that.’
+
+‘Boil the brandy,’ muttered Beckwith.
+
+Without gratifying his desire to know how I came there, I said, quietly,
+‘How is your niece, Mr. Slinkton?’
+
+He looked hard at me, and I looked hard at him.
+
+‘I am sorry to say, Mr. Sampson, that my niece has proved treacherous and
+ungrateful to her best friend.  She left me without a word of notice or
+explanation.  She was misled, no doubt, by some designing rascal.
+Perhaps you may have heard of it.’
+
+‘I did hear that she was misled by a designing rascal.  In fact, I have
+proof of it.’
+
+‘Are you sure of that?’ said he.
+
+‘Quite.’
+
+‘Boil the brandy,’ muttered Beckwith.  ‘Company to breakfast, Julius
+Cæsar.  Do your usual office,—provide the usual breakfast, dinner, tea,
+and supper.  Boil the brandy!’
+
+The eyes of Slinkton looked from him to me, and he said, after a moment’s
+consideration,
+
+‘Mr. Sampson, you are a man of the world, and so am I.  I will be plain
+with you.’
+
+‘O no, you won’t,’ said I, shaking my head.
+
+‘I tell you, sir, I will be plain with you.’
+
+‘And I tell you you will not,’ said I.  ‘I know all about you.  _You_
+plain with any one?  Nonsense, nonsense!’
+
+‘I plainly tell you, Mr. Sampson,’ he went on, with a manner almost
+composed, ‘that I understand your object.  You want to save your funds,
+and escape from your liabilities; these are old tricks of trade with you
+Office-gentlemen.  But you will not do it, sir; you will not succeed.
+You have not an easy adversary to play against, when you play against me.
+We shall have to inquire, in due time, when and how Mr. Beckwith fell
+into his present habits.  With that remark, sir, I put this poor
+creature, and his incoherent wanderings of speech, aside, and wish you a
+good morning and a better case next time.’
+
+While he was saying this, Beckwith had filled a half-pint glass with
+brandy.  At this moment, he threw the brandy at his face, and threw the
+glass after it.  Slinkton put his hands up, half blinded with the spirit,
+and cut with the glass across the forehead.  At the sound of the
+breakage, a fourth person came into the room, closed the door, and stood
+at it; he was a very quiet but very keen-looking man, with iron-gray
+hair, and slightly lame.
+
+Slinkton pulled out his handkerchief, assuaged the pain in his smarting
+eyes, and dabbled the blood on his forehead.  He was a long time about
+it, and I saw that in the doing of it, a tremendous change came over him,
+occasioned by the change in Beckwith,—who ceased to pant and tremble, sat
+upright, and never took his eyes off him.  I never in my life saw a face
+in which abhorrence and determination were so forcibly painted as in
+Beckwith’s then.
+
+‘Look at me, you villain,’ said Beckwith, ‘and see me as I really am.  I
+took these rooms, to make them a trap for you.  I came into them as a
+drunkard, to bait the trap for you.  You fell into the trap, and you will
+never leave it alive.  On the morning when you last went to Mr. Sampson’s
+office, I had seen him first.  Your plot has been known to both of us,
+all along, and you have been counter-plotted all along.  What?  Having
+been cajoled into putting that prize of two thousand pounds in your
+power, I was to be done to death with brandy, and, brandy not proving
+quick enough, with something quicker?  Have I never seen you, when you
+thought my senses gone, pouring from your little bottle into my glass?
+Why, you Murderer and Forger, alone here with you in the dead of night,
+as I have so often been, I have had my hand upon the trigger of a pistol,
+twenty times, to blow your brains out!’
+
+This sudden starting up of the thing that he had supposed to be his
+imbecile victim into a determined man, with a settled resolution to hunt
+him down and be the death of him, mercilessly expressed from head to
+foot, was, in the first shock, too much for him.  Without any figure of
+speech, he staggered under it.  But there is no greater mistake than to
+suppose that a man who is a calculating criminal, is, in any phase of his
+guilt, otherwise than true to himself, and perfectly consistent with his
+whole character.  Such a man commits murder, and murder is the natural
+culmination of his course; such a man has to outface murder, and will do
+it with hardihood and effrontery.  It is a sort of fashion to express
+surprise that any notorious criminal, having such crime upon his
+conscience, can so brave it out.  Do you think that if he had it on his
+conscience at all, or had a conscience to have it upon, he would ever
+have committed the crime?
+
+Perfectly consistent with himself, as I believe all such monsters to be,
+this Slinkton recovered himself, and showed a defiance that was
+sufficiently cold and quiet.  He was white, he was haggard, he was
+changed; but only as a sharper who had played for a great stake and had
+been outwitted and had lost the game.
+
+‘Listen to me, you villain,’ said Beckwith, ‘and let every word you hear
+me say be a stab in your wicked heart.  When I took these rooms, to throw
+myself in your way and lead you on to the scheme that I knew my
+appearance and supposed character and habits would suggest to such a
+devil, how did I know that?  Because you were no stranger to me.  I knew
+you well.  And I knew you to be the cruel wretch who, for so much money,
+had killed one innocent girl while she trusted him implicitly, and who
+was by inches killing another.’
+
+Slinkton took out a snuff-box, took a pinch of snuff, and laughed.
+
+‘But see here,’ said Beckwith, never looking away, never raising his
+voice, never relaxing his face, never unclenching his hand.  ‘See what a
+dull wolf you have been, after all!  The infatuated drunkard who never
+drank a fiftieth part of the liquor you plied him with, but poured it
+away, here, there, everywhere—almost before your eyes; who bought over
+the fellow you set to watch him and to ply him, by outbidding you in his
+bribe, before he had been at his work three days—with whom you have
+observed no caution, yet who was so bent on ridding the earth of you as a
+wild beast, that he would have defeated you if you had been ever so
+prudent—that drunkard whom you have, many a time, left on the floor of
+this room, and who has even let you go out of it, alive and undeceived,
+when you have turned him over with your foot—has, almost as often, on the
+same night, within an hour, within a few minutes, watched you awake, had
+his hand at your pillow when you were asleep, turned over your papers,
+taken samples from your bottles and packets of powder, changed their
+contents, rifled every secret of your life!’
+
+He had had another pinch of snuff in his hand, but had gradually let it
+drop from between his fingers to the floor; where he now smoothed it out
+with his foot, looking down at it the while.
+
+[Picture: He had another pinch of snuff in his hand, but gradually let it
+                      drop from between his fingers]
+
+‘That drunkard,’ said Beckwith, ‘who had free access to your rooms at all
+times, that he might drink the strong drinks that you left in his way and
+be the sooner ended, holding no more terms with you than he would hold
+with a tiger, has had his master-key for all your locks, his test for all
+your poisons, his clue to your cipher-writing.  He can tell you, as well
+as you can tell him, how long it took to complete that deed, what doses
+there were, what intervals, what signs of gradual decay upon mind and
+body; what distempered fancies were produced, what observable changes,
+what physical pain.  He can tell you, as well as you can tell him, that
+all this was recorded day by day, as a lesson of experience for future
+service.  He can tell you, better than you can tell him, where that
+journal is at this moment.’
+
+Slinkton stopped the action of his foot, and looked at Beckwith.
+
+‘No,’ said the latter, as if answering a question from him.  ‘Not in the
+drawer of the writing-desk that opens with a spring; it is not there, and
+it never will be there again.’
+
+‘Then you are a thief!’ said Slinkton.
+
+Without any change whatever in the inflexible purpose, which it was quite
+terrific even to me to contemplate, and from the power of which I had
+always felt convinced it was impossible for this wretch to escape,
+Beckwith returned,
+
+‘And I am your niece’s shadow, too.’
+
+With an imprecation Slinkton put his hand to his head, tore out some
+hair, and flung it to the ground.  It was the end of the smooth walk; he
+destroyed it in the action, and it will soon be seen that his use for it
+was past.
+
+Beckwith went on: ‘Whenever you left here, I left here.  Although I
+understood that you found it necessary to pause in the completion of that
+purpose, to avert suspicion, still I watched you close, with the poor
+confiding girl.  When I had the diary, and could read it word by word,—it
+was only about the night before your last visit to Scarborough,—you
+remember the night? you slept with a small flat vial tied to your
+wrist,—I sent to Mr. Sampson, who was kept out of view.  This is Mr.
+Sampson’s trusty servant standing by the door.  We three saved your niece
+among us.’
+
+Slinkton looked at us all, took an uncertain step or two from the place
+where he had stood, returned to it, and glanced about him in a very
+curious way,—as one of the meaner reptiles might, looking for a hole to
+hide in.  I noticed at the same time, that a singular change took place
+in the figure of the man,—as if it collapsed within his clothes, and they
+consequently became ill-shapen and ill-fitting.
+
+‘You shall know,’ said Beckwith, ‘for I hope the knowledge will be bitter
+and terrible to you, why you have been pursued by one man, and why, when
+the whole interest that Mr. Sampson represents would have expended any
+money in hunting you down, you have been tracked to death at a single
+individual’s charge.  I hear you have had the name of Meltham on your
+lips sometimes?’
+
+I saw, in addition to those other changes, a sudden stoppage come upon
+his breathing.
+
+‘When you sent the sweet girl whom you murdered (you know with what
+artfully made-out surroundings and probabilities you sent her) to
+Meltham’s office, before taking her abroad to originate the transaction
+that doomed her to the grave, it fell to Meltham’s lot to see her and to
+speak with her.  It did not fall to his lot to save her, though I know he
+would freely give his own life to have done it.  He admired her;—I would
+say he loved her deeply, if I thought it possible that you could
+understand the word.  When she was sacrificed, he was thoroughly assured
+of your guilt.  Having lost her, he had but one object left in life, and
+that was to avenge her and destroy you.’
+
+I saw the villain’s nostrils rise and fall convulsively; but I saw no
+moving at his mouth.
+
+‘That man Meltham,’ Beckwith steadily pursued, ‘was as absolutely certain
+that you could never elude him in this world, if he devoted himself to
+your destruction with his utmost fidelity and earnestness, and if he
+divided the sacred duty with no other duty in life, as he was certain
+that in achieving it he would be a poor instrument in the hands of
+Providence, and would do well before Heaven in striking you out from
+among living men.  I am that man, and I thank God that I have done my
+work!’
+
+If Slinkton had been running for his life from swift-footed savages, a
+dozen miles, he could not have shown more emphatic signs of being
+oppressed at heart and labouring for breath, than he showed now, when he
+looked at the pursuer who had so relentlessly hunted him down.
+
+‘You never saw me under my right name before; you see me under my right
+name now.  You shall see me once again in the body, when you are tried
+for your life.  You shall see me once again in the spirit, when the cord
+is round your neck, and the crowd are crying against you!’
+
+When Meltham had spoken these last words, the miscreant suddenly turned
+away his face, and seemed to strike his mouth with his open hand.  At the
+same instant, the room was filled with a new and powerful odour, and,
+almost at the same instant, he broke into a crooked run, leap, start,—I
+have no name for the spasm,—and fell, with a dull weight that shook the
+heavy old doors and windows in their frames.
+
+That was the fitting end of him.
+
+When we saw that he was dead, we drew away from the room, and Meltham,
+giving me his hand, said, with a weary air,
+
+‘I have no more work on earth, my friend.  But I shall see her again
+elsewhere.’
+
+It was in vain that I tried to rally him.  He might have saved her, he
+said; he had not saved her, and he reproached himself; he had lost her,
+and he was broken-hearted.
+
+‘The purpose that sustained me is over, Sampson, and there is nothing now
+to hold me to life.  I am not fit for life; I am weak and spiritless; I
+have no hope and no object; my day is done.’
+
+In truth, I could hardly have believed that the broken man who then spoke
+to me was the man who had so strongly and so differently impressed me
+when his purpose was before him.  I used such entreaties with him, as I
+could; but he still said, and always said, in a patient, undemonstrative
+way,—nothing could avail him,—he was broken-hearted.
+
+He died early in the next spring.  He was buried by the side of the poor
+young lady for whom he had cherished those tender and unhappy regrets;
+and he left all he had to her sister.  She lived to be a happy wife and
+mother; she married my sister’s son, who succeeded poor Meltham; she is
+living now, and her children ride about the garden on my walking-stick
+when I go to see her.
+
+
+
+
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