"All right," returned the porter: "I'll attend to him."
Skilligalee then conducted the Resurrection Man up another flight of stairs, and into a room which Tidkins knew, from what had been already said, to be immediately over the one where Margaret Flathers slept. Skilligalee left the Resurrection Man a candle, wished him good night, and retired to the room in which he slept.
The moment the Resurrection Man was alone, his hideous countenance threw aside its constraint composure, and assumed an expression so truly fiend-like, that, had a spectator been by, it must have inspired sentiments of terror. Like every greedy and avaricious man, he entertained the most ferocious hatred against the person who had robbed him of his treasure;—and now that the means of revenge were within his reach, together with a hope of recovering his gold, (for he resolved to converse with the Rattlesnake ere he killed her), he experienced that kind of demoniac joy which invariably characterises the triumph of the ruffian.
Beneath the rough upper coat which the Resurrection Man wore, he had a pair of loaded pistols; and in his pocket he carried a clasp-knife, with a blade as long, pointed, and sharp as a dagger.
Thus armed to the very teeth, as it were,—and moreover endowed with that reckless kind of daring which we have seen him exercise on so many different occasions,—the Resurrection Man was as desperate and formidable a villain as any Italian bravo that ever wielded the elastic steel of Milan, or any Spanish bandit whose hand was familiar with the bright blade of Albaceta.
An hour passed away; and profound silence reigned throughout the Palace in the Holy Land.
The Resurrection Man, with a candle in his left hand, and his right ready to grasp a weapon of defence, stole cautiously from his room.
He descended the stairs, and proceeded to the apartment in which the Rattlesnake slept.
The door yielded to his hand—and he entered the chamber.
It was a large room, with twelve mattresses spread upon the floor; but only one of the beds was occupied—and that was by Margaret Flathers.