There was a silence of some moments' duration, and then the stranger spoke in a tone of voice which looked as it he were struggling with some emotion.
"Sir, you do know more of me than many. You know what I have been, and you know how I left an occupation which would have made me loathed. But you—even you—do not know what made me take to so terrible a trade."—"I do not."
"Would it suit you for me now to tell you?"—"Will you first promise me that you will do all you can for this persecuted family of the Bannerworths, in whom I take so strange an interest?"
"I will. I promise you that freely. Of my own knowledge, of course, I can say but little concerning them, but, upon that warranting, I well believe they deserve abundant sympathy, and from me they shall have it."
"A thousand thanks! With your assistance, I have little doubt of being able to extricate them from the tangled web of dreadful incidents which has turned them from their home; and now, whatever you may choose to tell me of the cause which drove you to be what you became, I shall listen to with abundant interest. Only let me beseech you to come into this summer-house, and to talk low."
"I will, and you can pursue your watch at the same time, while I beguile its weariness."—"Be it so."
"You knew me years ago, when I had all the chances in the world of becoming respectable and respected. I did, indeed; and you may, therefore, judge of my surprise when, some years since, being in the metropolis, I met you, and you shunned my company."—"Yes; but, at last, you found out why it was that I shunned your company."
"I did. You yourself told me once that I met you, and would not leave you, but insisted upon your dining with me. Then you told me, when you found that I would take no other course whatever, that you were no other than the—the——"—
"Out with it! I can bear to hear it now better than I could then! I told you that I was the common hangman of London!"
"You did, I must confess, to my most intense surprise."