"Eh? Eh?"
The beadle turned round three times, as though he were going to begin a game at blind-man's-bluff, and then he said—
"I thought I heard something. Oh dear, how shivery I do get to be sure, when I'm alone in the church. I'll just get through the dusting job as quick as I can, and no mistake. Amen! Amen! I'm a miserable sinner—Amen!"
CHAPTER CLIV.
DETAILS THE PERILOUS SITUATION OF THE BEADLE.
Todd had heard all this with anger and impatience rankling at his heart. He began to have the most serious thoughts of sacrificing the beadle—indeed, if any good could have been got to himself by so doing, he would not have scrupled to do so with the greatest speed. As it was, however, he could not concoct any plan of proceedings quickly which would benefit him, and so he was compelled to remain an auditor of the beadle's private thoughts, and a spectator of what he was about, when he chose to peep over the edge of the pulpit.
"Well, it's astonishing," continued the beadle, "what a fever that fellow Todd has kept me in for I don't know how long, one way or another: me and Fleet Street have been regularly bothered by him. First of all, I was in all sorts of doubts and uncertainties about the matter before they took him and tried him, and was a-going to hang him, and then I did think that he was as—good—as done—for—"
As he uttered these last words, the beadle was banging one of the cushions of the communion-table, so that he was compelled for want of breath to utter them at intervals.
"Oh, confound you!" muttered Todd, "if I only had hold of you, I would throttle you, and then think of what to do afterwards."
Todd's great difficulty arose from the fact that he thought if he tried to descend from the pulpit, the beadle might see him and get the start of him in leaving the church, in which event the alarm that he would raise in Fleet Street would be such, that any attempt to escape would be attended by the greatest hazard.
"There is nothing for it but to wait," said Todd to himself gloomily. "I can do nothing else; but woe to him when I do catch him!"