"Confound these old-fashioned snuffers, the spring is broken!"
My eyes opened at this, wider, I believe, than they had ever done before, and my ears tingled. "What a speech from an inhabitant of the other world!" thought I.
"Oh! is it you, Joe Peak?" quoth the handsome spectre; "why do you steal in and startle one so, you little villain? Hush—off with these heavy shoes of yours, and come and sit down, will ye?"
Master Joey, who, I knew, was in the body as yet at any rate, now came forward into the light, and drawing a chair, sat down fronting the apparition.
"Well, Henry, my lad, how is master Benjamin—better?"
"A good deal—if that old French medico has not poisoned him outright with laudanum. He has slept since twelve at noon—and what's the hour now, Joey?"
"Gone eight bells—so go and turn in, De Walden, and I will take my spell here."
"Thank you, and so I will. But here, take a glass of vin-de-grave;" and, to my great wonderment, the spectre and man of flesh hobbed and nobbed together with all the comfort in life. "Have you seen Lennox this afternoon?"
"Yes, I saw him about eight o'clock," said Peak; "the alcalde has given up all the money that was taken from"—here he nodded towards me—"when he was stabbed by the raggamuffin he had fleeced."
"If ever I set foot within a gambling-house again," thought I,—but finding myself their topic, I lay still, and listened attentively.