As Lieberg spoke, he rose from the chair in which he had been placed; but for some moments he could scarcely stand, and, motioning the rest to leave him, he said--"Go quick, go quick! I must put on some more clothes. Go with them, Martini, and bring me intelligence as soon as may be."

The man obeyed at once, and Lieberg proceeded to dress himself, as quickly as possible, though it was but slowly after all--for both his arms and feet were cramped and swollen, from the tightness of the ligatures which had bound them. As he proceeded, he paused two or three times in thought, and once struck his hand vehemently upon the dressing-table, saying--"Curses upon them!--Well, well, Martini," he exclaimed, as the man entered the room; "what have you found?--what has happened?"

There was a grin upon the man's countenance which assured Lieberg that no life had been lost; and the Italian replied--"We found the old man, sir, tied naked to the bed-post, cold, shivering, and miserable enough, but he has contrived to warm himself since, for never did I see a man in such a fury about his money and his plate? They have cleared the whole house out, that is certain, and got some seven thousand pounds, the old man says."

"They have got five or six hundred from me," said Lieberg. "But what of Miss Barham?"

"Oh, she is very well, sir, I suppose," said the man, with a peculiar expression of countenance. "I met her maid just now going to her room, and she did not say that her mistress had been disturbed at all. The truth is, sir," he added, approaching close to Lieberg, and speaking in a low tone, "I did hear some noise in the night, but I did not know what it might be, and thought it better to keep quiet, and take no notice."

Lieberg shut his teeth hard, and clenched his hand with a frowning brow; but he made no reply, and having dressed himself as far as was necessary, issued forth and proceeded to the room of Mr. Carr. That gentleman was coming out, with nothing but his stockings, breeches, and a grey dressing gown on; and grasping Lieberg's arm, he dragged him on towards the drawing-room, saying, "They have robbed me--they have plundered me--they have ruined me, sir!"

Now there was nothing on earth that excited Lieberg's scorn and hatred so much as to see a human being give way to passion or emotion, simply because he had great powers of concealing his own; and the agony of Mr. Carr, on account of his loss, only served to curl his companion's lip with a contemptuous smile, and render all his movements, as if for the contrast's sake, as cool, as self-possessed as possible.

While the old man, then, walked about the room in a state of half-frenzied agitation, Lieberg calmly approached the table, and after looking at him for a moment, with a cold, sneering, gaze, he opened quietly the leaves of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and began to turn over the engravings.

"Do you know, Mr. Carr," he said, in the tone of a connoisseur, "I think they have made a very great mistake in representing Apollyon as so fearfully ugly. Surely, if that good gentleman, who tempts us all, be so frightful as he is here put down, we sinners must be men of good stomachs to run after his sweet things so greedily."

Mr. Carr thought him perfectly insane; but Lieberg went on in the same spirit--"He should be rendered very beautiful and attractive, powerful certainly, and well armed, but still very charming; for we all of us paint our own particular fiend as a pleasant, sweet personage. Now you, for instance, never represent to yourself Mammon with horns and a tail, and all this paraphernalia of episodical horrors, fangs, and hoofs, and claws, and all that sort of a thing. I dare say, in your eyes, he is a sweet little cherub, with a purse in his hand, as I paint Asteroth to myself as a beautiful woman."