Todd was as anxious as possible to leave the wood, but he felt that to do so in daylight would be jeopardising himself much too seriously. He was not without money, as the reader is aware; and after placing some distance between himself and the dead body of Mr. Lupin, he sat down upon the roots of an old tree to think.
It was not that Todd had any particular terrors connected with the dead body of Mr. Lupin that induced him to get away from the neighbourhood of the body, but he thought it was just possible some people might come into the wood, and in such a case he did not wish to be connected with the deed in consequence of any contiguity to it.
"What shall I do?" said Todd, after he had rested for some time with his head upon his hand. "That is the question—what shall I do? I have some money, but not enough. Oh, that I had but a tithe of the amount that once was mine! I would yet leave England for ever, and forego all my thoughts of vengeance, unless I could contrive from a great distance to do some mischief, and that might be done if very cunningly contrived; but they have taken from me all—all!"
Here Mr. Todd indulged in a few expletives, with which we do not think proper to encumber our pages; and after swearing himself into a state of comparative calmness again, he held up his left hand, and separating the fingers, he began to count upon them the names of people.
"Let me see," he said. "Let me see, how many throats now it would give me a very special pleasure to cut—Humph—Ha. Sir Richard Blunt—one; Tobias Ragg—two; Colonel Jeffery—three; Johanna Oakley—four; and her husband, that is, I suppose, by this time, five—confound him! Ah! those make up the five that I most specially should like to sacrifice! A whole handful of victims! After they were comfortably despatched, no doubt, I could think of a few more; but it is better to confine one's attention to the principals for a time. The others may drop in afterwards, when one has nothing more important to do."
He thought he heard a noise in the wood, and he stooped his head to listen. It was nothing, or if it had been anything, it quickly ceased again, and he was tolerably satisfied that he was alone.
"What a delightful thing, now, it would be," he muttered, "if I could poison the whole lot of them at once, with some drug that would give them the most excruciating agony! And then I should like to go round to them all, and shout in their ears—'I did it!—I, Sweeney Todd, did it!' That would be glorious, indeed! Ha! ha!"
"Ha!" said a voice behind him, following up his hideous laugh most closely in point of tone.
It was almost with what might be called a yell of terror that Todd sprang to his feet, and turned round, fully expecting to see some one; but not the slightest vestige of the presence of any human being met his eyes.
After gazing for a moment or two, he thought that surely some one must be hiding behind one of the trees, and he sprang forward, crying—