beat like lead, that the man whose confidence he had outraged, and whom he had so treacherously deceived, was there to recognise and challenge him with his mask plucked off his face; struck a panic through him. He tried the door in which the veil was shut, but couldn't force it. He opened one of the windows, and looked down through the lattice of the blind into the courtyard; but it was a high leap, and the stones were pitiless. The ringing and knocking still continuing-his panic too--he went back to the door in the bedchamber, and with some new efforts, each more stubborn than the last, wrenched it open. Seeing the little staircase not far off, and feeling the night air coming up, he stole back for his hat and coat, made the door as secure after him as he could, crept down lamp in hand, extinguished it on seeing the street, and having put it in a corner, went out where the stars were shining. CHAPTER XXV. ROB THE GRINDER LOSES HIS PLACE. THE porter at the iron gate which shut the courtyard from the street had left the little wicket of his house open, and was gone away; no doubt to mingle in the distant noise at the door on the great staircase. Lifting the latch softly, Carker crept out, and shutting the jangling gate after him with as little noise as possible, hurried off. In the fever of his mortification and unavailing rage, the panic that had seized upon him mastered him completely. rose to such a height that he would have blindly encountered almost any risk, rather than meet the man of whom, two hours ago, he had been utterly regardless. His fierce arrival, which he had never expected; the sound of his voice; their having been so near a meeting face to face; he would have braved out this, after the first momentary shock of alarm, and would have put as bold a front upon his guilt as any villain. But the springing of his mine upon himself seemed to have rent and shivered all his hardihood and self-reliance. Spurned like any reptile; entrapped and mocked; turned upon, and trodden down, by the proud woman whose mind he had slowly poisoned, as he thought, until she had sunk into the mere creature of his pleasure; undeceived in his deceit, and with his fox's hide stripped off, he sneaked away, abashed, degraded, and afraid. Some other terror came upon him, quite removed from this of being pursued, suddenly like an electric shock, as he was creeping through the streets. Some visionary terror, unintelligible and inexplicable, associated with a trembling of the ground, a rush and sweep of something through the air, like Death upon the wing. He shrunk, as if to let the thing go by. It was not gone, it never had been there, yet what a startling horror it had left behind! He raised his wicked face, so full of trouble, to the night sky where the stars, so full of peace, were shining on him as they had been when he first stole out into the air; and stopped to think what he should do. The dread of being hunted in a strange, remote place, where the laws might not protect him—the novelty of the feeling that it was strange and remote, originating in his being left alone so suddenly amid the ruins of his plans-his greater dread of seeking refuge now in Italy or in Sicily, where men might be hired to assassinate him, he thought, at any dark street corner---the waywardness of guilt and fear-perhaps some sympathy of action with the turning back of all his schemesimpelled him to turn back too, and go to England. "I am safer there, in any case. If I should not decide," he thought, "to give this fool a meeting, I am less likely to be traced there than abroad here, now. And if I should (this cursed fit being over), at least I shall not be alone, without a soul to speak to, or advise with, or stand by me. I shall not be run in upon and worried like a rat.” He muttered Edith's name, and clenched his hand. As he crept along in the shadow of the massive buildings, he set his teeth, and muttered dreadful imprecations on her head, and looked from side to side, as if in search of her. Thus, he stole on to the gate of an inn yard. The people were abed; but his ringing at the bell soon produced a man with a lantern, in company with whom he was presently in a dim coach-house, bargaining for the hire of an old phaeton to Paris. The bargain was a short one; and the horses were soon sent for. Leaving word that the carriage was to follow him when they came, he stole away again, beyond the town, past the old ramparts, out on the open road, which seemed to glide away along the dark plain like a stream ! Whither did it flow? What was the end of it? As he paused, with some such suggestion within him, looking over the gloomy flat where the slender trees marked out the way, again that flight of Death came rushing up, again went on, impetuous and resistless, again was nothing but a horror in his mind, dark as the scene, and undefined as its remotest verge. There was no wind; there was no passing shadow on the deep shade of the night; there was no noise. The city lay behind him, lighted here and there, and starry worlds were hidden by the masonry of spire and roof that hardly made out any shapes against the sky. Dark and lonely distance lay around him everywhere, and the clocks were faintly striking two. He went forward for what way; often stopping to listen. bells greeted his anxious ears. now inaudible, now ringing very slowly over bad ground, now brisk and merry, it came on; until, with a loud shouting and lashing, a shadowy postillion, muffled to the eyes, checked his four struggling horses at his side. appeared a long time, and a long At last the ringing of horses' Now softer, and now louder, "Monsieur has walked a long way in the dark midnight." "No matter. Every one to his taste. Were there any other horses ordered at the post-house?" "A thousand devils!--and pardon other horses? at this hour? No." 'Listen, my friend. I am much hurried. Let us see how fast we can travel. The faster the more money there will be to drink. Off we go, then! Quick!" Halloa! whoop! Halloa! Hi!" Away, at a gallop, over the black landscape, scattering the dust and dirt like spray! The clatter and commotion echoed to the hurry and discordance of the fugitive's ideas. Nothing clear without, and nothing |