'Yes, 'tis a pity,' she said. 'Maybe it will some day.'
'Pray what do you say to the hand to make it run your errands?'
'Ah!' she continued, without answering his question. 'There be other things the Hand of Glory can do. It will go if you send it to some person—bolts and locks will not keep it out, and it will catch the end of the bedclothes, and scramble up, and pass itself over the eyes of the sleeper, and make him sleep like a dead man, and it will dive under the clothes and lay its fingers on the heart; then there will come aches and spasms there, or it will creep down the thighs and pinch and pat, and that brings rheumatic pains. I've heard of one hand thus sent as went down under the bedclothes to the bottom of the sleeper's foot, and there it closed up all the fingers but one, and with that it bored and bored, working itself about like a gimblet, and then gangrene set in, and the man touched thus was dead in three days.'
'It is a mighty fortunate thing you've not the hand of old Wellon,' growled Charles.
'I have got it,' answered Mrs. Veale.
Charles looked at her with staring eyes.
'You shall see it,' she said.
'I do not want to. I will not!' he exclaimed, shuddering.
'Wellon's hand will fetch you a hundred pounds, and we will not ask whence it comes,' said Mrs. Veale.
'I will not have it, I will not touch it!' He spoke in a hoarse, horrified whisper.