“Now run down there, and bring up a chair from the stand at the second corner.”
She indicated the direction with her hand, and I—exerting myself to the full, as much as if I had had a personal stake in the enterprise, in which I thus found myself, through sheer wantonness, actively involved—ran at my utmost speed upon the errand, and quickly returned with the desired conveyance.
Into this, the feeble woman who had been resting as I have described, was hurried, and the chairmen having received directions to follow the two others, and I in turn to follow them, we all trudged onward, for forty minutes and upwards, in absolute silence.
By that time we had penetrated considerably beyond Werburgh-street, and were now entering the Liberties, when turning abruptly into a short, dark, dilapidated street, the women stopped in front of a tall, dingy house, and after inspecting its exterior and interchanging a few words, they signed to the chairmen to set down their conveyance. Someone had probably been watching for its arrival, from one of the many dark windows which overlooked the street, for she who had sat in it was hardly disengaged from the chair, when the hall-door was stealthily opened, and a grimy, suspicious-looking girl, with a wretched candle in one hand, and shading her eyes with the other, peeped out.
“Give me that,” said the woman who had spoken to me, and who seemed to have the command of the expedition, at the same time entering, and taking the candle from her, while she drew the door fully open.
“All right?” she added, inquiringly, glancing significantly upwards.
“Ay, everything,” rejoined the other, sleepily; at the same time the other two women entered and passed silently on toward the stairs.
“Pay the men, now, and come in yourself,” added the same woman, addressing me. I fortunately had about me enough change to satisfy the chairmen, which, as it seemed it was my province to do, and having dismissed them, I followed my conductress into the house, and surrendered the bundle into her hands.
She turned the key in the hall-door, and beckoned me into a dilapidated wainscotted backroom, on the windowsill of which she placed the dipped candle, which faintly lighted this inhospitable apartment, and pointing to the only piece of furniture which garnished its walls, a solitary, clumsy chair, placed there, I suppose, in anticipation of my arrival, she said—
“Wait there, my good man, till I come back by-and-by, and you know the rest.”
As she spoke to me, I for the first time saw her countenance, which was about as ugly and sinister a one as I had ever beheld; very nearly resembling the lineaments usually ascribed in fairy tales, and other such authentic records, to witches of the malignant kind; a yellow skin, hooked nose, a wide mouth, with a few carious fangs, and a marvellous prominence of chin, gave additional effect to a pair of eyes, whose fierce and ratlike vivacity seemed scarcely reconcilable with the evident antiquity of her other features; and though her head was somewhat sunk upon her chest, yet her original wiry activity seemed to have suffered little abatement from years. This woman’s countenance, I confess, impressed me most unfavourably with respect to the object of these arrangements; and I could not help entertaining a vague and unpleasant suspicion of meditated foul-play, and impending mischief, as the glance of this ill-favoured hag continued to haunt my fancy long after she had left me to the dreary solitude of the apartment. There was something, perhaps, a little wounding to the self-love of a young man in being thus coolly set down, as I clearly was, for a lackey; but this I must do myself the justice to say, that I was buttoned up in a great coat fashioned more with a view to comfort than to elegance; and provided with a hat which had seen a great deal of rough night-duty.
The interest I felt in the denouement of the adventure, however, prevented my troubling myself much about this; and seating myself, pursuant to the old woman’s directions, in the solitary chair, I was left alone to keep watch in this singularly bleak and comfortless apartment.
Insensibly I began to grow sleepy; and, adjusting myself in as easy an attitude as my uncomfortable position would permit, I fell into an uneasy dose, in which the ill-looking hag, who had last left me, was in my sleeping fancy, hovering about me, and offering me share of the rings I had seen her take, on condition of my being accessary to some infernal crime, which she was always on the point of confiding to me, yet, somehow or other, never divulged, when I was startled from my dreams by a piercing cry. For a moment I forgot where I was; the sound was still ringing in my ears, and the candle, the snuff of which out-topped its blaze, afforded but an imperfect and shadowy light. Full of uneasy apprehensions, I walked softly into the hall, and made my way to the foot of the stairs, where I stood, listening breathlessly for the slightest sound of a human voice, but in vain. I thought, indeed, I could distinguish in some remote upper-room the shuffling of feet, but of this I could not, on account of the constant rattling of the old window-frames in the wind, be perfectly certain. After waiting for a considerable time, I was about to abandon my new position, or to return to my post in the parlour, when I once more distinctly heard the same piercing cry of agony which had at first startled me. Without one moment’s hesitation, I drew my sword, strode by three-at-a-time up the stairs, the cries continuing as I ascended; and just as I reached
