"Oh, to release Marchdale. Charles told me how the villain had fallen into the trap he had laid for him."
"He has, indeed, fallen into the trap, and it's one he won't easily get out of again. He's dead."
"Dead!—dead!"
"Yes; in the storm of last night the ruins have fallen, and he is by this time as flat as a pancake."
"Good God! and yet it is but a just retribution upon him. He would have assassinated poor Charles Holland in the cruelest and most cold-blooded manner, and, however we may shudder at the manner of his death, we cannot regret it."
"Except that he has escaped your friend the hangman," said the admiral.
"Don't call him my friend, if you please," said Dr. Chillingworth, "but, hark how he is working away, as if he really intended to carry the house away piece by piece, as opportunity may serve, if you will not let it to him altogether, just as it stands."
"Confound him! he is evidently working on his own account," said the admiral, "or he would not be half so industrious."
There was, indeed, a tremendous amount of hammering and noise, of one sort and another, from the house, and it was quite clear that the hangman was too heart and soul in his work, whatever may have been the object of it, to care who was listening to him, or to what conjecture he gave rise.
He thought probably that he could but he stopped in what he was about, and, until he was so, that he might as well go on.