The three villains—villains as they were—started at the frightful intention thus announced to them.
"Yes—I will put out their beautiful eyes," said Benjamin Bones, clenching his fists with feverish excitement: "then I will leave them bound hand and foot in the house, and will send a letter to the Earl to tell him where he may seek for them! Will not such vengeance as this be sweet? Did you ever hear of a vengeance more complete? The Earl I leave unhurt, save in mind—and there he will be cruelly lacerated! But he must have his eyes to see that those whom he loves are blind—he must be spared his powers of vision, that he may read in the newspapers the account of those indignities which will have been shown to the corpse of his elder brother!"
And, as he feasted his imagination with these projects of diabolical vengeance, the horrible old man chuckled in his usual style,—as if it were a corpse that so chuckled!
The three miscreants, whom he had taken into his service, expressed their readiness to assist him in all his nefarious plans; for the reward he had promised them was great, and the earnest they had received was most exhilirating to their evil spirits.
The infernal project having been fully discussed, and it having been agreed that Tidmarsh should proceed with one of the three villains in the morning to Saint Luke's churchyard, to point out the precise spot where the coffin bearing the name of Thomas Rainford had been interred,—all preliminaries, in a word, having been thus settled, the old housekeeper was summoned to place the supper upon the table.
The meal was done hearty justice to; and when the things were cleared away, Old Death, who was anxious to conciliate his friends as much as possible by a show of liberality, commissioned John Jeffreys to compound a mighty jorum of punch, the ingredients for which were bountifully supplied from the cupboard, the wash-hand basin serving as a bowl.
And now the four villains—four villains as hardened and as ready for mischief as any to be found in all London—dismissed from their minds every matter of "business," and set to work to do justice to the punch.
"Come—who'll sing us a song?" exclaimed Tim the Snammer.
"Don't let us have any singing, my dear friend," said Old Death: "we shall alarm the neighbours—and it's better to be as quiet as possible."
"Well, we must do something to amuse ourselves," insisted Timothy Splint. "If we get talking, it will only be on things of which we all have quite enough in our minds; and so I vote that some one tells us a story: I'm very fond of stories—particklerly when they're true."