'Silence, curse ye, or I'll cut out your tongue as I did the Kinchen's!' roared the Dead Man, drawing his knife. 'Nero, what cause of complaint have you against this man?'
'Cause enough,' replied the black—'he shut me up in a dark dungeon for having gratified the wishes of his licentious wife.'
'Enough,' cried the Dead Man—'I will now state my grounds of complaint against him. Firstly—he played the spy upon me, and was the cause of my being returned to the State Prison, from which I had escaped. Secondly—he discovered the secrets of my Anthony street crib, and administered a drug to my wife which has deprived her of reason. And thirdly he is my mortal foe, and I hate him. Is that not enough?'
'It is—it is!' replied Julia and the African. The Dead Man continued:
'Now, Sydney, listen to me: you behold the light of day for the last time. But 'tis not my wish to kill you at once—no, that would not satisfy my vengeance. You shall die a slow, lingering death; each moment of your existence shall be fraught with a hell of torment; you will pray for death in vain; death shall not come to your relief for years. Each day I will rack my ingenuity to devise some new mode of torture. To increase the horrors of your situation, you shall have a companion in your captivity—a being unnatural and loathsome to look upon—a creature fierce as a hyena, malignant as a devil. Ha, you turn pale; you guess my meaning. You are right; you shall be shut up in the same dungeon with my Image! the deformed and monstrous dwarf, whom Heaven (if there is one,) must have sent as a curse and a reproach to me; he shall now become your curse and punishment!'
Poor Frank heard this awful doom pronounced which he could not repress. He could have borne any ordinary physical torture with fortitude; but the thought of being shut up in that noisome dungeon with a being so fearful and loathsome as the Image, made him sick and faint; and when the Dead Man and the negro seized him in their powerful grasp, in order to convey him to the dungeon, he could make no resistance, even if resistance had been of any avail. Julia did not accompany them, but contented herself with a glance of malignant triumph at her husband.
They descended to the cellar, and entered the secret passage, which they traversed in profound darkness. This passage communicated directly with the cellar of the house in Anthony street; a walk of ten minutes brought them to it, and when they had entered it, the Dead Man ignited a match and lit a lamp.
The appearance of the cellar was precisely the same as when Frank had last seen it.—There was the same outlet and the moveable platform; there, in that dim and distant corner, lay the putrefying corpse; and there, too, was the iron door of the dungeon, secured on the outside by the massive bolt.
At that moment the fearful inmate of that dungeon set up its strange, unnatural cry.
'Hark—my Image welcomes you, Sydney,' whispered the Dead Man, and, assisted by the African, he hurried his victim towards the dungeon door.