my wretched wife, she would not shelter me? Did I go forth that night, abjured of God and man, and anchored deep in hell, to wander at my cable’s length about the earth, and surely be drawn down at last?’

‘Why did you return? said the blind man.

‘Why is blood red? I could no more help it, than I could live without breath. I struggled against the impulse, but I was drawn back, through every difficult and adverse circumstance, as by a mighty engine. Nothing could stop me. The day and hour were none of my choice. Sleeping and waking, I had been among the old haunts for years—had visited my own grave. Why did I come back? Because this jail was gaping for me, and he stood beckoning at the door.’

‘You were not known?’ said the blind man.

‘I was a man who had been twenty-two years dead. No. I was not known.’

‘You should have kept your secret better.’

‘My secret? Mine? It was a secret, any breath of air could whisper at its will. The stars had it in their twinkling, the water in its flowing, the leaves in their rustling, the seasons in their return. It lurked in strangers’ faces, and their voices. Everything had lips on which it always trembled.—My secret!’

‘It was revealed by your own act at any rate,’ said the blind man.

‘The act was not mine. I did it, but it was not mine. I was forced at times to wander round, and round, and round that spot. If you had chained me up when the fit was on me, I should have broken away, and gone there. As truly as the loadstone draws iron towards it, so he, lying at the bottom of his grave, could draw me near him when he would. Was that fancy? Did I like to go there, or did I strive and wrestle with the power that forced me?’

The blind man shrugged his shoulders, and smiled incredulously. The prisoner again resumed his old attitude, and for a long time both were mute.

‘I suppose then,’ said his visitor, at length breaking silence, ‘that you are penitent and resigned; that you desire to make peace with everybody (in particular, with your wife who has brought you to this); and that you ask no greater favour than to be carried to Tyburn as soon as possible? That being the case, I had better take my leave. I am not good enough to be company for you.’

‘Have I not told you,’ said the other fiercely, ‘that I have striven and wrestled with the power that brought me here? Has my whole life, for eight-and-twenty years, been one perpetual struggle and resistance, and do you think I want to lie down and die? Do all men shrink from death—I most of all!’

‘That’s better said. That’s better spoken, Rudge—but I’ll not call you that again—than anything you have said yet,’ returned the blind man, speaking more familiarly, and laying his hands upon his arm. ‘Lookye,—I never killed a man myself, for I have never been placed in a position that made it worth my while. Farther, I am not an advocate for killing men, and I don’t think I should recommend it or like it—for it’s very hazardous—under any circumstances. But as you had the misfortune to get into this trouble before I made your acquaintance, and as you have been my companion, and have been of use to me for a long time now, I overlook that part of the matter, and am only anxious that you shouldn’t die unnecessarily. Now, I do not consider that, at present, it is at all necessary.’

‘What else is left me?’ returned the prisoner. ‘To eat my way through these walls with my teeth?’

‘Something easier than that,’ returned his friend. ‘Promise me that you will talk no more of these fancies of yours—idle, foolish things, quite beneath a man—and I’ll tell you what I mean.’