He thought that without knowing it he had fallen into the power of the Harkaways again; that in flying from them he had suddenly, when he thought himself miles away from them and from imminent danger, fallen into their arms.
And so went his alarming dream, when his worst enemies were assembled in judgment over him. Jack Harkaway, Harvey, and Jefferson, together, being his judges, the latter places were suddenly taken by three visitors from the other world.
These were Harry Girdwood, young Jack, and oh, horror! Robert Emmerson, his murdered friend.
His three visitors.
And these three threatened and put him to tortures unimaginable, until he raved, stormed, and wept by turns; and then, broken in body and in spirit, he prostrated himself before them and begged them to kill him, and in this horrible phase of his vision he groaned so loudly that he awoke, to find the perspiration pouring off him in a regular bath.
He was quivering like one suddenly stricken with ague.
Not an inch of his body was free from this fearful palsy.
"Oh, what would I give for the light now!" he thought; "will they never come?"
Yes.
What was that?