A couple of the officers now dismounted, while the others held their horses, and they dragged the wretched man to the side of the road.
"Is he dead?" said Ingestrie.
"No," said Todd, opening his eyes. "He still lives to curse you all! I—"
It was evident that he wished to say more; but he was bleeding internally, and he began to struggle with the volumes of blood that rose to his throat. With a horrible shriek, he rolled over on to his face, and then, after one sharp convulsion of his limbs, he lay perfectly still.
One of the officers turned him round again. One glance at the face was sufficient. The guilty spirit of Sweeney Todd had fled at last to its account!
"Dead," said Sir Richard Blunt. "Let the body lie here, and we will all ride on to Brighton, and from there send some conveyance for it. Mr. Ingestrie and you, Colonel Jeffrey, are witnesses of his end, and I can only say that I feel now as if a heavy weight were lifted off my breast. The good, and the kind, and true, need no longer live in fear of the wild vengeance of this man. Let us hope that Heaven will have more mercy upon his guilty soul than ever he had consideration for the sufferings of others."
The Death Of Sweeney Todd.
CHAPTER CLXXIII.
THE CONCLUSION.
We have little to say in conclusion, now that the chief actor in the fearful Domestic Drama it has been our fate to record, is no more. Todd was buried in the old church-yard at Brighton, but no record of the spot where the murderer's bones decayed was preserved.