"Had we not better take a coach?" asked Old Death.
"No—we will walk, be it to the other end of London," replied the highwayman resolutely. "I shall follow close behind you:—beware how you attempt to address yourself to a soul whom you may meet—beware also how you trifle with me. But stay—I will have a guarantee for your good faith. Give me your pocket-book!"
"My pocket-book!" ejaculated Old Death, with something approaching a shudder.
"Yes—your pocket-book," replied Rain. "I know that it contains Bank-notes, and memoranda of value or utility to you; and I will retain it in this house, until we return from the expedition on which we are about to set forth. Come—quick! I have no time for idle delays!"
"My pocket-book!" repeated Old Death, with increasing dismay.
"Do I not speak plain enough?" demanded the highwayman. "If I cannot make myself intelligible by words, I may by deeds: so permit me to help myself to the article I require. It will not be the first time I shall have rifled a pocket," he added, with a merry laugh.
"Do you know that you are treating me in a manner that I never experienced before?" said Old Death, his hideous countenance convulsed with rage.
"I can very well believe what you state," returned Tom Rain coolly. "Hitherto you have had to deal with men whom you got completely into your power—whose lives hung on a thread which you could snap without endangering yourself—who were mere puppets in your hands, and did not dare say their names were their own. Oh! I am well aware how you have played the tyrant—the griping, avaricious, grinding miser—the cruel, relentless despot! But now,—now, Mr. Bones, you have another sort of person to deal with,—a man who will be even with you anywhere and everywhere,—and who will never let you gain an advantage over him without acquiring one in return."
"Who are you," demanded Old Death, in strange bewilderment, "that talk to me thus?"
"Why—Thomas Rainford, to be sure!" cried the highwayman, laughing—yet with a certain chuckling irony that sounded ominously on the old fence's ears. "And I need not tell you," he continued after a few moments' pause, "that I am rather a desperate character, who would as soon shoot you in the open street—aye, or in the midst of a crowd, too—if you attempted any treachery towards me, as I would ease a gentleman of his purse upon the lonely road. But we are wasting time: give me your pocket-book."