Or,—
2. Human nature is thoroughly depraved. A certain portion of the race are born to be damned in this world, as well as in the next. Such creatures as Madam Resimer, are but the proper instruments of that damnation.
Upon my soul, good friend, who read this book, these answers are worthy of some moments of attentive thought.
Arthur Dermoyne stood in the gloom of that winter midnight,—a midnight awful and profound, and only deepened in its solemnity, by the clear, cold light of the wintery stars. A thousand thoughts flitted over his brain, as he gazed upon the fatal house. Was Alice already a tenant of that loathsome den? Again and again, he rejected the thought, but still, it came back upon him, and crept like ice through his veins. If she was, indeed, within these walls, what might be her fate ere the morrow's dawn? Arthur could not repress a cry of anguish. A vague picture of a lost woman, put to death in the dark, by the gripe of a fiend in human shape, seemed to pass before him, like a shadow from the other world.
He surveyed the house. A street-lamp, which stood some paces from it, shed a faint gleam over its walls, and served to show, that from cellar to garret, it was closed like a tomb.
The wealthy tenants of the houses on either hand, had evidently retired to their beds. Not a gleam of light shone from their many windows.
The street was profoundly still; a solitary footstep was heard in the distance; above the roof was the midnight sky and the wintery stars.
Arthur crossed the street.
"I remember what the policemen told me, who showed me the way to this place. Three cellar windows protected by sheet-iron bars; they are before me. Beyond these windows a cellar filled with rubbish; then a basement room, where one of the Madam's bullies is in waiting, day and night, ready to do her bidding."
The Madam was provided with two bullies, whom she had raked from the subterranean regions of New York. They were men of immense muscular strength, with the print of their depraved nature upon their brutal faces. One was six feet two inches in height; he was known among his familiars by the succinct name of "Dirk." He used a dirk-knife in his encounters. The other, short, bony, with broad chest and low legs, was known as "Slung-Shot." His favorite weapon was a leaden ball attached to a cord by net-work, with a loop for his wrist. One blow with this "Slung-Shot," rightly administered, on the temple, would kill the strongest man.