Without another word, Todd laid down the couple of guineas, and putting the wig upon his head he left the shop, certainly having given the wig-maker an impression that he was the oddest customer he had had for some time; but little did he suspect that that odd customer was the criminal with whose name all London was ringing, and upon whose head—with or without a wig—so heavy a price was set.
After this, Todd made his way to a shop where second-hand clothing was bought and sold, and there he got accommodated with an old gray coat that reached down to the calves of his legs, and he bought likewise a very voluminous white cravat; and when he got into the street with these articles, and purchased at another shop a walking cane, with a great silver top to it, and put one hand behind his back and stooped very much, and moved along as if he were afflicted with all the corns and bunions that his toes could carry, and by bending his knees, decreased his height six inches, no one could have known him.
At least, so Todd flattered himself.
In this way he tottered on until he got to the immediate neighbourhood of Fleet Street. To be sure, with all his coolness and courage, he could not help shaking a little when he came to that well remembered neighbourhood.
"And I," he thought to himself, "and I by this time hoped and expected to be far over the sea, instead of being such a wretch as I am now, crawling about, as it were, amid pitfalls and all sorts of dangers! Alas! alas!"
He really shook now, and it was quite astonishing how, with his old wig, and his old gray coat and his stick, and his stooping posture, old and venerable, yes, positively venerable, Sweeney Todd actually looked.
"Ain't you well, sir?" said a respectable man, stepping up to him. "Can I assist you?"
Todd perpetrated about half a dozen wheezing coughs, and then, not sorry for an opportunity of trying his powers of imitation of age, he replied in a tremulous voice—
"Ah, sir! Yes—old age—old age, sir—eugh!—eugh!—oh, dear me, I feel that I am on my last legs, and that they are on the shake—old age, sir, will come on; but it's a comfort to look back upon a long life well spent in deeds of charity!"
"Not a doubt of it," said the stranger. "I was only afraid, sir, you were taken suddenly ill, as you stood there."