‘Waiter, my bill,’ said he in a peremptory tone.
The boy brought him a slip of paper, on which was written the amount.
He paid it without a word; walked across the room, took down his hat, put it on his head, and turning to Kornicker, said in a tone of solemn earnestness: ‘Young man, you’re in a bad way, a very bad way. Had I known with what people you were in the habit of associating before I sat down at that table, Ezra Scrake’s legs and yours would never have been under the same mahogany. A man in the employ of another and know nothing of him! It’s enormous! He might be a murderer, a thief; a man-slaughterer; a Burker, an arsoner, or any thing that is bad. Young man, in spite of the injury you’ve done me, I pity you; nay, I forgive you.’
Mr. Kornicker, was merely waiting for an opportunity to suggest to him that his company had not only been unsought, but actually forced upon him, and even under his solemn protest. But before he could do so, Mr. Scrake was in the street; whereupon, on ascertaining that he was out of the hearing of Mr. Kornicker, he muttered to himself: ‘It was no go. Waited for him two hours; then spent an hour in pumping a dry well. Enoch Grosket, has sent me on a fool’s errand. Michael Rust knows too much to trust that addle-headed fool.’
Having given vent to these observations, he deliberately buttoned up his coat, and walked off.
CHAPTER TWENTIETH.
In a dark room into which even in the day-time the light struggled in such scanty streams that a kind of twilight was the nearest approach that it ever made to broad day, but which was now only lighted by a single candle, that flared and dripped in the currents of air, as they eddied and whirled about, seeking an escape, sat Tim Craig, and his comrade Bill Jones, the men with Rust’s interview with whom the reader is already acquainted. They were sitting cheek by jowl on two wooden benches in front of a fire, which they from time to time nourished with sticks from a heap of wood on the hearth. The fire however would not burn, but kept smouldering and smoking, now and then springing up into a fitful blaze, which threw a spectral air over the room, peopling its dim recesses with all sorts of fantastic forms, and then expired, leaving it more gloomy than ever. The appearance of the men, their subdued, whispering voices and startled looks, showed that at that particular time they were not altogether in a frame of mind to resist the gloomy influence of the place. The dark, lonely room, with its large shadowy corners and gaping seams, through which the wind sighed and wailed, and the pattering of the rain as it swept heavily against the side of the house and on the roof, all tended to add to the melancholy and sombre tone of their feelings. Bill drew his bench to the fire, looked suspiciously about him, and then, as if half ashamed of having done so, said:
‘It’s a h-ll of a night! I don’t know how it is, but I’m not in trim to-night. Blow me, if the sight of that old fellow don’t make one’s blood cold. I can’t get warm; and this bloody fire keeps sputtering and smoking, as if to spite one.’
Tim Craig, to whom this remark was addressed, turned and looked him steadily in the face, without speaking; and then his eyes wandered about the room, as if he were fearful of being watched or overheard, in what he was going to say.
‘Bill,’ said he in a low voice, his thin lips quivering; but whether from anger or any other emotion, was a matter of much doubt; ‘d——d if I know which way to leap! Enoch pulls one way and Rust another. Either of them could send us to kingdom come. Ugh! how cold it is! Something comes over me to-night—I can’t tell what. I don’t half like the job. Bill,’ continued he after a pause, drawing nearer his comrade and lowering his voice, ‘I’m haunted to-night. You know that fellow, the man up town, the cartman——’ He hesitated, and leaned his mouth close to the ear of the other, while in the dim light his face seemed ghastly; ‘the—the man, last year——’