“A rare night for our meeting,” thought he; “I suppose he will not fail me. Now let me con over my task. I must not tell him all yet. Such babes must be led into error before they can walk: just a little inkling will suffice, a glimpse into the arcana of my scheme. Well, it is indeed fortunate that I met him, for verily I am surrounded with danger, and a very little delay in the assistance I am forced to seek might exalt me to a higher elevation than the peerage.”
Such was the meditation of this man, as with a slow, shufling walk, characteristic of his mind, he proceeded to the appointed spot.
A cessation of unusual length in the series of the lightnings, and the consequent darkness, against which the dull and scanty lamps vainly struggled, prevented Crauford and another figure approaching from the opposite quarter seeing each other till they almost touched. Crauford stopped abruptly.
“Is it you?” said he.
“It is a man who has outlived fortune!” answered Glendower, in the exaggerated and metaphorical language which the thoughts of men who imagine warmly, and are excited powerfully, so often assume.
“Then,” rejoined Crauford, “you are the more suited for my purpose. A little urging of necessity behind is a marvellous whetter of the appetite to danger before, he! he!” And as he said this, his low chuckling laugh jarringly enough contrasted with the character of the night and his companion.
Glendower replied not: a pause ensued; and the lightning which, spreading on a sudden from east to west, hung over the city a burning and ghastly canopy, showed the face of each to the other, working and almost haggard as it was with the conception of dark thoughts, and rendered wan and unearthly by the spectral light in which it was beheld. “It is an awful night,” said Glendower.
“True,” answered Crauford, “a very awful night; but we are all safe under the care of Providence. Jesus! what a flash! Think you it is a favourable opportunity for our conversation?”
“Why not?” said Glendower; “what have the thunders and wrath of Heaven to do with us?”
“H-e-m! h-e-m! God sees all things,” rejoined Crauford, “and avenges Himself on the guilty by His storms!”