Plunging desperately down into the subterranean, at the risk of breaking his neck, Tidkins felt like one on whose eyes a hideous spectre suddenly bursts, when he beheld the door of a cell—the very cell in which his treasure was concealed—standing wide open!
Staggering now, as a drunken man—and no longer rushing wildly along,—but dragging himself painfully,—Tidkins reached that cell.
His worst fears were confirmed: the stone in the centre was removed from its place;—and his treasure was gone!
Yes:—money-bags and jewel-casket—the produce of heaven only knows how much atrocity and blackest crime—had disappeared.
This was the second time that his hoarded wealth was snatched from him.
Then did that man—so energetic in the ways of turpitude, so strong in the stormy paths of guilt,—then did he sink down, with a hollow groan, upon the cold floor of the cell.
For a few minutes he lay like one deprived of sense and feeling, the only indications of life being the violent clenching of his fists, and the demoniac workings of his cadaverous countenance.
Cadaverous!—never did the face of a wretched being in the agonies of strangulation by hanging, present so appalling—so hideous an appearance!
But in a short time the Resurrection Man started up with a savage howl and a terrible imprecation: his energies—prostrated for a period—revived; and his first idea, when arousing from that torpor, was vengeance—a fearful vengeance upon the plunderer.
But who was that plunderer? whose hand had suddenly beggared him?