This was not a dream upon which any one was likely to be very still for any length of time, and Todd groaned in his sleep, and tossed his arms to and fro, and more than once uttered the word—"Mercy!—mercy!"
Suddenly he started wide awake as a knock came at the door and roused him. Todd blessed that knock at the moment; for by waking him it had rescued him from the dream of terrors that had been vexing his brain.
He sat up in bed, and for a moment or two could hardly collect his scattered senses sufficiently to assure himself that it was all a dream, and that he was in the lodging-house in Norfolk Street; but the brain rapidly recovers from such temporary confusions; and Todd, with a long breath of immense relief, gasped out—
"It was, after all, but a dream—only a dream! Oh, God! but it was horrible!"
He fell back upon the pillow again; but sleep did not again come to him, and he began to feel a vague kind of curiosity to know who it was that had knocked at the door; and yet, he told himself, that it could not matter to him, for that in a house like that, of course, there must be plenty of people coming and going, and that, although the persons who kept it might control noises within the house, they could not possibly have any influence upon the knocker.
"Oh, it's all right," said Todd. "It's all right. I will sleep again—I must sleep again; for it yet wants hours and hours to the night, when I may, at least, make the attempt to get off from—from England for ever!"
A faint sort of doze—it could not be called a sleep—was coming over Todd, when he suddenly heard the sound of voices; and he was startled wide awake by hearing his own name pronounced. Yes, he clearly heard some one say—"Todd!"
In a moment he sat up in bed, and intently listened. He held his breath, and he shook again, as his imagination began to picture to him a thousand dangers.
There were footsteps upon the staircase, and in a few moments he heard persons go into the next room—that is to say, the front one to that in which he lay, the room that he had paid for a few weeks' occupation of, and which was only divided from that in which he lay by a pair of folding-doors, that he knew were just upon the latch, and might, at any moment, be opened to discover him.
He then heard a female voice say—