"I won't open the door while that dog is there. He is mad, or has a spite against me—I don't know nor care which—it's a fact, that's all I am aware of."
"I will undertake," said the captain, "that the dog shall do you no harm; but open the door, for in we must come, and will."
"I will take your promise," said Sweeney Todd; "but mind you keep it, or I shall protect myself, and take the creature's life; so if you value it, you had better hold it fast."
The captain pacified Hector as well as he could, and likewise tied one end of a silk handkerchief round his neck, and held the other firmly in his grasp, after which Todd, who seemed to have some means from within of seeing what was going on, opened the door, and admitted his visitors.
"Well, gentlemen, shaved, or cut, or dressed, I am at your service; which shall I begin with?"
The captain, the colonel, and Sweeney.
The dog never took his eyes off Todd, but kept up a low growl from the first moment of his entrance.
"It's rather a remarkable circumstance," said the captain, "but this is a very sagacious dog, you see, and he belongs to a friend of ours, who has most unaccountably disappeared."
"Has he really?" said Todd. "Tobias! Tobias!"