Seeing this, Mantel took him by the arm. "What is the matter?" he asked.
David started. "My God," he cried, drawing his hand over his eyes like a man awakening from a dream; "it is he!"
"It is who? Are you mad! Come away! People are observing you. If there is anything wrong, we must move or get into trouble."
"Let me alone!" David replied, shaking off his hand. "I would rather die than lose sight of that man."
"Then come into this doorway where you can watch him unobserved, for you are making a spectacle of yourself. Come, or I shall drag you."
With his eyes still riveted on that strange countenance, David yielded to the pressure of his friend's hand and they retired to a hallway whence he could watch the beggar unobserved. His whole frame was quivering with excitement and he kept murmuring to himself: "It is he. It is he! I cannot be mistaken! Nature never made his double! But how he has changed! How old and white he is! It cannot be his ghost, can it? If it were night I might think so, but it is broad daylight! This man is living flesh and blood and my hand is not, after all, the hand of a mur—"
"Hush!" cried Mantel; "you are talking aloud!"
"Yes, I am talking aloud," he answered, "and I mean to talk louder yet! I want you to hear that I am not a murderer, a murderer! Do you understand? I am going to rush out into the streets to cry out at the top of my voice—I am not a murderer!"
Terrified at his violence, Mantel pushed him farther back into the doorway; but he sprang out again as if his very life depended upon the sight of the great white face.
"Be quiet!" Mantel cried, seizing his arm with an iron grip.