She sat revolving in her mind, how she could put an end to the state of horrible doubt and perplexity in which she was. There were some little difficulties in the way of Mrs. Lovett emerging from her present condition. It has been before hinted at, that Todd and the fair lady of the pieshop had between them accumulated a large sum of money, and that the money was duly deposited in the hands of a stockbroker, who was by no means to part with it to either of them, except upon an order signed by both. So far all looked fair enough; and as they were likewise bound together by such a bond of mutual guilt, it did not look likely that either would make an endeavour to get the better of the other. Suppose there was 40,000 in the hands of the stockbroker, it did not seem, we say, under all the circumstances likely that Toddbeing fairly entitled as between them, to 20,000would peril the safety of both their necks, by getting up a quarrel about the division equitably of the spoil. The same reasoning will apply to Mrs. Lovett. But these unlikely things are the very things that do come to pass to upset the finest plans. Todd never from the firstwhenever that wasmeant that Mrs. Lovett should share with him; no, he thought that he, as the superior genius, the greater villain, would manage to cheat her, and that she would, for her own safety's sake, be obliged to put up with what he chose to give her. That would have been only such a pittance, as to keep her constantly in a state of dependance upon him. Now, to do Mrs. Lovett justice upon the old equitable principle of giving the devil his due, she never had any intention, until she saw symptoms of bad faith in Todd, of attempting to act otherwise than fairly by him. She loathed him; and all she meant to do, was when the division of the spoil should take place, to ascertain where he was going, and then to get as far off him as possible. Of late, however, finding that Todd was getting lucky, and feeling quite convinced that he aimed at her life, other views had dawned upon her, as we are already well aware. She did not so much care for all the money as she would have liked in her retirement, wherever it was, to have felt sure that Todd was not "An inhabitant of the earth;" and hence she had taken the pains, all of which had been frustrated, to put him into another world. But a feeling, superstitiously consequent upon her failure, had started up in her mind that he bore a charmed life; and hence she bethought herself of flying from England; but the moneyhow was she to get the money to do so? How was she, without his cognisance, to get her share of the funds which had been placed in the hands of a stockbroker? Now, since she had begun to feel uncomfortable regarding the faith of Todd, Mrs. Lovett had kept what cash she saved at home; therefore some weeks had elapsed since she had paid a monetary visit to the city. If she had gone as usual, she might have got some news. To a woman of lively and discursive imagination like Mrs. Lovett, a plan of operation was not long in suggesting itself. Why, she asked herself, should she hesitate to put Todd's name to the document necessary to get her half of the money from the stockbroker? What a natural consequence from this question it was to ask herself another, which wasIf I am forging Todd's signature at all, might I not do it for the whole amount as for half, and so take the only revenge upon him which he would feel, or which I dare offer myself the gratification of exacting from him? When such a question as this is asked, it is practically answered in the affirmative. Mrs. Lovett felt quite decided upon it. She was a woman of courage. No fainthearted scruple interposed between the thought and the execution of a project with her. The recent scene that had taken place in front of her window decided her. Now or never! she told herself. Now or never is the time to escape. I have nothing to encumber myself with. Let Todd keep his jewels and trinkets. All I want is the money which is in the hands of Mr. Anthony Brown, the stockbroker, and that I will have forthwith. Mrs. Lovett did not know the exact amount; but as it was a joint account, such an amount of ignorance need not appear at all surprising to the stockbroker; so she drew up an order for the money, and signed it with both Todd's name and her own, leaving a blank for the amount. She then carefully locked up all doors but that of the outer shop, and having procured the services of a young girl from a greengrocer's shop in the vicinity, to mind the place for an hour, as she said, she considered she was all right. The girl had attended to the shop before for Mrs. Lovett at times when no batches of pies were expected from the regions below, so she did not feel at all surprised at the call upon her services. "I shall be an hour," said Mrs. Lovett. "You can take a pie or two for yourself if you feel at all hungry; and if Mr. Todd should come in, say I'm gone to call upon a dressmaker in Bondstreet." "Yes, mum!" Mrs. Lovett left the shop. At the corner of Bellyard she turned and cast a glance at it. She hoped it was a farewell oneShe shuddered and passed on; and then she muttered to herself "If I amwhich assuredly I shall besuccessful in the city, I will take posthorses there at once for some seaport, and from thence reach the Continent, before Todd can dream of pursuit, or find out what I have done, or where bestowed myself." She was not so impudent as to pass Todd's shop, but she went down one of the streets upon the opposite side of Fleetstreet, and came up another, which was considerably past the house which was so full of horrors. A lumbering old hackney coach met her gaze. It was disengaged, and Mrs. Lovett got into it. "To Lothbury," she said; and after swaying to and fro for a few moments, the machine was set in action, and duly steering up Ludgate Hill. The impatience of Mrs. Lovett was so great, that she would gladly have done anything to induce the horses to go at a faster rate than the safe two miles and a half an hour to which they were accustomed, but she dreaded that if she exhibited any signs of extreme impatience she might excite suspicion. To the guilty, any observation of a more than ordinary character is a thing to dread. They would fain glide through life gently, and not at all do they sigh to be "The observed of all observers." But the longest journey even in the slowest hackney coach must come to an end. As Ben the beefeater would have said"Easy does it;" and as Mrs. Lovett's journey was anything but a long one, the gloomy precincts of Lothbury soon loomed upon her gaze. After the customary oscillations, and wheezing and creaking of all its joints and springs, the coach stopped. "Wait," said Mrs. Lovett with commendable brevity; and alighting, she entered a dark doorway upon the side of which was painted, in letters that had contracted so much the colour of the woodwork that they were nearly illegible, "Mr. Anthony Brown." This was the stockbroker, who held charge of the illgotten gains of that pair of unworthies, Mrs. Lovett and Sweeney Todd. A small door, covered with what had been green baize, but which was now of some perfectly original brown, opened into the outer office of the man of business, and there a spruce clerk held dominion. At the sound of the rustling silks of Mrs. Lovett, he raised his head from poring over the cumbrous ledger; and then seeing, to use his own vernacular, it was "a monstrous fine woman," he condescended to alight from his high stool, and he demanded the lady's pleasure. "Mr. Brown." "Yes, madam. Certainly. Mr. B. is in his private room. What name shall I have the pleasure of saying?" "Lovett." "Lovett? Yes, madam. Certainlyahem! Pray be seated, madam, if you please." Mrs. Lovett made a gesture of dissent, and the clerk went upon his errand. He was scarcely absent a moment, and then holding open a door, he said, with quite a chivalric air "This way, if you please, madam.A monstrous fine woman," he added to himself. The door closed after Mrs. Lovett, and she was in the private room of Mr. Anthony Brown. "Ah, Mrs. Lovett. Pray be seated, madam. I am truly glad to see you well. Well, to be sure, you do look younger, and younger, and younger, every time I have the pleasure of a visit from you." "Thank you, Mr. Brown, for the compliment. My visits have not been so numerous as usual of late." "Why, no ma'am, they have not; but I hope we are going to resume business again in the old way?" "Not exactly." "Well, my dear madam, whatever it is that has procured me the honour and the pleasure of this visit, I am sure I am very glad of it, and shall not quarrel with it. He! he! Nice weather, Mrs. Lovett." "Very." "Ah, madamah, it was a world of pities to disturb the investments. It was indeed. But ladies will be ladies." "Sir?" "II merely said ladies will be ladies you know. And indeedhe! he!I fully expected the interesting ceremony had come off before now, I did indeed; and I should have wagered a new hat." "Mr. Brown, what are you talking about?" "About?" "Yes, what do you mean?" "Why, aathat istheaaaboutconcerningthemy dear madam, if I have inadvertently trodden upon your sensibilities, II really" "You really what?" Mr. Brown looked perplexed. Mrs. Lovett looked a little furious. "Sir," she said. "Before I explain the cause of my visit to you, I insist upon knowing to what all your mysterious hints and remarks allude. Speak freely and plainly, sir." "Well then, madam, when Mr. Todd was last here, he said that you had at last consented to reward years of devotion to you by becoming his, and that the ceremony which was to make him a happy man by uniting him to so much excellence and beauty, was to come off almost immediately, and that that was the reason you had both agreed to withdraw all the money I had in such snug and comfortable safe investments for you both. He! he! he!" CHAPTER LXXVIII. MUTUAL DEFIANCE. Be so good, reader, as to picture to yourself the look of Mrs. Lovett. We feel that one brief moment of imagination will do more to enable you to feel and to see with "Your mind's eye" her aspect, than as if we were to try a paragraph upon the subject. How that he! he! he! of Mr. Brown's rung in her ears. It was at any time almost enough to provoke a saint, and we need not say that this time of all others was not one at which Mrs. Lovett's feelings were attuned to gentleness and patience. Besides, she certainly was no saint. A rather heavy inkstand stood upon the table between Mrs. Lovett and the stockbroker. The next moment it narrowly escaped his head, leaving in its progress over his frontispiece a long streak of ink down his visage. "Wretch!" said Mrs. Lovett. "It is not true." "Murder!" cried Mr. Brown. Mrs. Lovett covered her face with both her hands for a moment, as though, to enable her to think clearly, it were necessary to shut out the external world; and then starting up, she advanced to the door of the room. "Murder!" said the stockbroker again. "Silence!" "A constable." "If you dare to say one word of this interview, I will return, and tear you limb from limb." Mrs. Lovett opened the door of the private room with such a vengeance that the nose of the clerk, who had been listening upon the other side, was seriously damaged thereby. He started back with a howl of pain. "Fool!" said Mrs. Lovett, as she passed him, and that was all she condescended to say to him;not by any means an agreeable reminiscence of his last words with a lady to a gentleman who prided himself upon his looksrather! Mrs. Lovett reached the street, and walked for some distance as though street it was not. She was only roused to a sense of the world in which she was, by hearing the sound of a voice calling "Mummum! Here yer ismummum! woo!" She turned and saw the coach in which she had come to the stockbroker. "Going back, mum?" said the man. "Yes, yes." She stepped into the vehicle, looking more like an animated statue than aught human. The man stood touching what was once the brim of a hat, as he said "Where to, mum?" Mrs. Lovett looked at him with an air of such abstraction that it was quite clear she did not see him, but she heard the question, that came to her like an echo in the air. "Where to, mum?" "To Fleetstreet!" Wheezecreakwheezecreakswaysway, and the coach moved on again. Mrs. Lovett sunk down among the straw with which the lower part of the vehicle was plentifully strewed; and then, with her head resting upon the seat, her throbbing temples clasped in her hands, she tried to think. Yesshe called upon all that calmnessthat decisionthat talent or tact, call it which you will that had saved her for so long, not to desert her now in this hour of her dire extremity. She called upon everything for aid but upon Heaven! and then, to ease her mind, she cursed a little. Somebody says "Swearing when the passions are at war, And light the chambers of the brain with angers flash. Has an effect quite morala kind of safety valve, Sparing what might be a tremendous crash!" and so Mrs. Lovett got cooler, but not a whit the less determined, as the crazy vehicle conveyed her to Fleetstreet. She fully intended now to measure conclusions with Todd. The distance was so short that even a hackneycoach performed it with tolerable promptitude. Mrs. Lovett did not wish to alight exactly at the door of Todd's shop; so she was rather glad upon finding the coach stop at the corner of Fleetstreet by the old Market, and the driver demanded what number? "This will do." She was in the street in another minute. It took a minute to get out of a hackneycoach. It was like watching the moment to spring from a boat to the shore in a heavy surf. And yet, oh much vilified old hackneycoach! how much superior wert thou to thy bastard son, the present odious rattling, bumping, angular, bonedislocating, horrid cab! The driver received about double his fare, and a cabman of the present day would have gathered a mob by his vociferations, and blackguarded you into a shop, if you had treated him in such a way. Nothing less than three times what he's entitled to ever lights up the smallest spark of civility in the soul of a modern cabdriver, but the old hackneycoachman was always content with double; so upon this occasion Mrs. Lovett got a "thank ye, mum;" and a long straw that had taken an affection for the skirt of her dress was arrested by jarvey and restored to the coach again. Mrs. Lovett walked to all appearance composedly up Fleetstreet. Alas! in this world who can trust to appearances? She had time, before reaching the shop of Sweeney Todd, to arrange slightly what she should say to that worthy. Of course, he could know nothing of her visit to the Cityof her interview with Mr. Brown, and she need not blurt that out too soon. She would argue with him a little, and then she would be down upon him with the knowledge of his knavery and treachery. She reached the shop. No wonder she paused there a moment or two to draw breath. You would have done the same; and after all, Mrs. Lovett was mortal. But she did not hesitate for long. The threshold was crossedthe handle of the door was in her handit was turned, and she stood in Todd's shop. Todd was looking at something in a bottle, which he was holding up to the light; and Mrs. Lovett saw, too, that a pretty genteellooking lad was poking about the fire, as if to rouse it. "Ah, Mrs. Lovett!" said Todd, "how do you do? Some more of that fine grease for the hair, I suppose, madam?" Todd winked towards the lad (our dear friend Johanna), as though he would have said"Don't appear to know me too well before this boy. Be careful, if you please." "I have something to say to you, Mr. Todd." "Oh, certainly, madam. Pray walk inthis way, if you please, madamto my humble bachelorparlour, madam. It is not fit exactly to ask a lady into; but we poor miserable single men, you know, madam, can only do the best we can. Ha! ha! This way." "No." "Eh? Not come in?" "No. I have something to say to you, Mr. Todd; but I will say it here." And now Mrs. Lovett gave a sidelong glance at the seeming boy, as much as to say "You can easily send him away if you don't want him to listen to our discourse." Todd saw the glance; and the diabolical look that he sent to Mrs. Lovett in return would indeed have appalled any one of less nerve than she was possessed of. But she had come to that place wound up firmly to a resolution, and she would not shrink. Todd had no resource. "Charley," he said, "you can go and take a little turnhere is a penny to spend; get yourself something in the market. But be sure you are back within half an hour, for we shall have some customers, no doubt." "Yes, sir." Johanna did not exactly know whether to think that Mrs. Lovett came in anger or friendship; but, at all events, she felt that it would be hazardous to remain after so marked a dismissal from Todd, although she would gladly have heard what the subject of the conversation between those two was to be. Neither Mrs. Lovett nor Todd now spoke until Johanna had fairly gone and closed the door after her. Then Todd, as he folded his arms, and looked Mrs. Lovett fully in the face, said "Well?" "The time has come." "What time?" "For the end of our partnershipthe dissolution of our agreement. I will go on no further. You can do as you please; but I am content." "Humph!" said Todd. "After much thought, I have come to this conclusion, Todd. Of course, let me be where I may, the secret of our road to fortune remains hidden here (she struck her breast as she spoke). All I want is my half of the proceeds, and then we part, I hope, for ever." "Humph!" said Todd. "Andand the sooner we can forget, if that be possible, the past, the better it will be for us bothonly tell me where you purpose going, and I will take care to avoid you." "Humph!" Passion was boiling in the heart of Mrs. Lovett; and that was just what Todd wanted; for well he knew that something had gone amiss, and that as long as Mrs. Lovett could keep herself calm and reasonable, he should stand but a poor chance of finding out what it was, unless she chose, as part of her arrangement, to tell it; but if he could but rouse her passion, he should know all. Therefore was it that he kept on replying to what she said with that cold insulting sort of "humph!" "Man, do you hear me?" "Humph!" "You villain!" "Humph!" Mrs. Lovett took from a sidetable an iron, which, in the mystery of hairdressing, was used for some purpose, and in a cool, calm voice, she said "If you do not answer me as you ought, I will throw this through your window, into the street; and the first person who comes in, in consequence, I will ask to seize Todd, the murderer! and offer myself as evidence of his numerous atrocitiescontrite evidencemyself repenting of my share in them, and relying upon the mercy of the crown, which, in recompense for my denouncing you may graciously pardon me." "And so it has come to this?" said Todd. "You see and hear that it has." It was rather a curious coincidence, that Mrs. Lovett had threatened Todd that she would awaken public attention to his shop by the same means that Sir Richard Blunt had recommended to Johanna to use in case of any emergencynamely, throwing something through the window into the street. If Mrs. Lovett had been goaded by Todd to throw the iron through a pane of his glass, the officers of Sir Richard would quickly have made their appearance to hear her denunciation of the barber. Unhappy woman! If she had but known what the future had in store for her, that act which she threatened Todd with, and which to her imagination seemed such a piece of pure desperation, would have been the most prudent thing she could have done. But it was not to be! There was a few moments silence now between them. It was broken by Todd. "Are you mad?" he said. "No." "Then, what, in the name of all that is devilish, has got possession of you?" "I have told you my determination. Give me twenty thousand poundsyou may profit by the odd sumgive me that amount, and I will go in peace. You know I am entitled to more; but there is no occasion for us to reckon closely. Give me the sum I seek, and you will see me no more. "You take me by surprise. Just step into the parlour, and" "Nono." "Why not? Do you suspect" "I suspect nothing; but I am sure of much. Now, for me to set foot within your parlour would be tantamount to the commission of suicide, and I am not yet come to thatyou understand me?" Todd understood her. His hand strayed to a razor that lay partially open close to him. Mrs. Lovett raised the iron. Mrs. Lovett And Todd Quarrel. Mrs. Lovett And Todd Quarrel. "Beware!" she said. Todd shrunk back. "Pho! pho! this is child's play," he said. "You and I, Mrs. Lovett, ought to be above all thisfar above it. You want your half of the proceeds of our joint business, and I must confess, at the moment, that the demand rather staggered and distressed me; but the more I think of it, the more reasonable it appears." "Very well. Give it to me, then." "Why, really now, my dear Mrs. Lovett, you quite forget that all our joint savings are in the hands of Mr. Brown." Todd glared at her as though he would read her very soul. She felt that he more than suspected she knew all, and she adopted at once the bold policy of avowing it. "I do not forget anything that it is essential should be remembered," she said; "and among other things, I know that, by forging my name, you have withdrawn the whole of the money from the hands of Brown. It is not worth our while to dispute concerning your motives for such an act. Let it suffice that I know it, and that I am here to demand my due." "Ha! ha!" "You laugh?" "I do, indeed. Why, really nowha! ha!this is good; and so it is this withdrawal of the money from Brown that has made all this riot in your brain? Why, I withdrew it from him simply because I had certain secret information that his affairs were not in the best order; and from a fear, grounded upon that information, that he might be tempted to put his hand into our purse, if he found nothing in his own." "Well, well; it matters not what were your reasons. Give me my half. It will be then out of your custody, and you will have no anxiety concerning it, while I can have no suspicions." "In a moment" "You will?" "If I had it here; but I have reinvested the whole, you see, and cannot get it at a moment's notice. I have moved it from the hands of Brown to those of Black." CHAPTER LXXIX. MRS. LOVETT FINDS THAT IN THIS WORLD THERE IS RETRIBUTION. "Black?" said Mrs. Lovett. "Yes, Black." "Do you think me so" green, she was going to say, but the accidental conjunction of the coloursbrown, black, and greensuddenly struck her as ludicrous, and she altered it to foolish. "Do you think me so foolish as for one moment to credit you?" "Hark you, Mrs. Lovett," pursued Todd, suddenly assuming quite a different tone. "You have come here full of passion, because you thought I was deceiving you." "You are." "Allow me to proceed. It is, I believe, one of the penalties of all associations forforwhy do I hesitate about a word?guilty purposes that there should be mutual distrust. I tell you again, that if I had not moved the money from Brown, we should have lost it all." "But why not come to me and get my signature?" "Therereallywasnottime," said Todd, dropping his words out one by one, with a staccato expression. "That is too absurd." Todd shrugged his shoulders, as though he would have said"Well, if you will have it so, I cannot help it;" and then he said "I was in the City. I heard the rumour of the instability of Brown. I flew into a shop. I wrote the order like a flash of lightning. I went to Brown's like an avalanche, and I brought away the money, as if Heaven and earth were coming together." There was not the ghost of a smile upon Todd's face as he made use of these superlatives. Mrs. Lovett began to be staggered. "Then you have it here?" "No, no!" "You have. Tell me that you have, and that this Mr. Black you mentioned is a mere delusion." "Black may be no colour, but it is not a delusion." "You trifle with me. Beware!" "In a word then, my charming Mrs. Lovett, I dreaded to bring the money here. I thought my house the most unsafe place in the world for it. I and you stand upon the brink of a precipicea slumbering volcano is beneath our feet. Pshaw! Where is your old acuteness, that you do not see at once how truly foolish it would have been to bring the money here?" "Juggler! Fiend!" "Hard words, Mrs. Lovett." She dashed her hand across her brow, as though by that physical effort she could brush from her intellect the sophistical cobwebs that Todd had endeavoured to move before it, and then she said "I know not. I care not. All I askall I demandis my share of the money. Give it to me, and let me go." "I will." "When?" "This day. Stay, the day is fast going, but I will say this night, if you really, in your cool judgment, insist upon it." "I do. I do!" "Well, you shall have. This night after business was over and the shop was closed, I intended to have come to you, and fully planned all this that you have unfortunately tortured yourself by finding out. I regret that you think of so quickly leaving the profits of a partnership which, in a short time longer, would have made us rich as monarchs. Of course, if you leave, I am compelled." "You compelled?" "Yes. How can I carry on business without you? How could I, without your aid, dispose of the" "Hush, hush!" Mrs. Lovett shuddered. "As you please," said Todd. "I only say, I regret that a copartnership that promised such happy results should now be broken up. However, that is a matter for your personal consideration merely. If I had thought of leaving, and being content with what I had already got, of course it would have compelled you to do so. Therefore I cannot complain, although I may regret your excuse of a right of action that equally belonged to me." "If I only thought you sincere" "And why not?" "If I could only bring myself to believe that the money was once more rightly invested" "You shall come with me yourself, if you like, in the morning to Mr. Black the broker in Abchurch Lane, No. 3, and ascertain that all is right. You shall there sign your name in his book, so that he may know it, and then you will be satisfied, I presume?" "Yes, I should then." "And this dream of leaving off business would vanish?" "Perhaps it would. Butbut" "But what?" "Why did you say to Brown that our union was to take place?" "Because it was necessary to say something, to account for the sudden withdrawal of the money; and surely I may be pardoned, charming Mrs. Lovett, for even in imagination dreaming, that so much beauty was mine." The horrible leer with which Todd looked upon her at this moment made her shudder again; and the expression of palpable hatred and disgust that her countenance wore, added yet another, and not the least considerable, link to the chain of revenge which Todd cherished against her in his cruel and most secret heart. While he was philosophising about guilty associations producing a feeling of mutual distrust, he should have likewise added that they soon produce mutual hatred. For a few moments they looked at each otherthat guilty pairwith expressions that sought to read each other's souls; but they were both tolerable adepts in the art of dissimulation. The silence was the most awkward for Todd, so he broke it first by saying "You are satisfied, let me hope?" "I will be." "You shall be." "Yes, when I have my money. Henceforward, Todd, we will have much shorter reckonings, so shall we keep much longer friends. If you keep, in some secret place, your half of the proceeds of ourour" "Business," said Todd. Mrs. Lovett made a sort of gulph of the word, but she adopted it. "If you, I say, keep your half of the proceeds of our business, and I keep mine, I don't see how it is possible for us to quarrel." "Quite impossible." He began to strop a razor diligently, and to try its edge across his thumb nail. Mrs. Lovett's passionthat overwhelming passion which had induced her to enter Todd's shop, and defy him to a species of single combat of witshad in a great measure subsided, giving place to a calmer and more reflective feeling. One of the results of that feeling was a selfquestion to the effect of, "What will be the result of an open quarrel with Todd?" Mrs. Lovett shook a little at the answer she felt forced to give herself to this question. That answer was continued in two wordsmutual destruction! Yes, that would be the consequence. "Todd," she said in a softened tone, "if I had forged your name, and gone to the city and possessed myself of all the money, what would you have thought? Tell me that." "Just what you thoughtthat it was the most scandalous breach of faith that could possibly be; but an explanation ought to put that right." "It has." "Then you are satisfied?" "I am. At what time shall we go together, tomorrow morning, to Mr. Black's in Abchurch Lane?" "Name your own time," said Todd with the most assumed air in the world. "Black lives at Ballam Hill, and don't get to business until ten; but any time after that will do." "I will come here at ten, then." "So be it. Ah, Mrs. Lovett, how charming it is to be able to explain away these little difficulties of sentiment. Never trust to appearances. How very deceitful they are apt to be." There was an air of candour about Todd, that might have deceived the devil himself. Notwithstanding all his hideous uglinessnotwithstanding his voice was of the lowest order, and notwithstanding that frightful laugh, and that obliquity of vision that seemed peculiar to himself in its terrible malignancy, there was a plausibility about his manner, when he pleased, that was truly astonishing. Even Mrs. Lovett, with all her knowledge of the man, felt that it was a hard struggle to disbelieve his representations. What must it have been to those who knew him not? "No," said Mrs. Lovett, "it don't do to trust to appearances." She still held the iron in her hand. "Nor," added Todd, giving the razor he had been putting an edge to, a flourish, "nor will it do to listen always to the dictates of compassion; for if we did, what miseries might we inflict upon ourselves. Now, here is a cure in point." "Where?" "I allude to this little affair between us. If you had flown to Bowstreet, and there, to spite me, made a full disclosure of certain little facts, why, the result would have been that we might both have slept in Newgate tonight." "Yes, yes." "And then there would have been no recal. You could not have freed us by telling the police that you had made a mistake. Then the gallows would have risen up in our dreams." "Horrible!" "And it being easily discovered that it was no love of public justice or feeling of remorse, that induced you to the betrayal, they would have shown you no mercy, but you would have swung from the halter amid the shouts and execrations of" "No, no!" "I say yes." "No more of thisno more of this. Can you bear to paint such a picturedoes it not seem to you as though you stood upon that scaffold, and heard those shouts? Oh, horror, horror!" "You don't like the picture?" "No, no!" "Ha! ha! Well, Mrs. Lovett, you and I had far better be friends than foes; and above all, you ought by this time to feel that you could trust me. The very fact that to all the world else I am false, ought to prove to you that to you I am true. No human being can exist purely isolated, and I am not an exception." "Say no moresay no more. We will meet tomorrow." "Tomorrow be it, then." "At ten." "At ten be it, and then we will go to Black. Come now, since all this is settled, take a glass of wine to our" "No, no. Not that. II am not very well, A throbbing headacheaa. That is, no!" "As you pleaseas you please.


Bytheby, did Black give me a receipt, or did he say it was not usual? Stay a moment, I will look in my secretaire. Sit down a moment in the shaving chair; I will be with you again directly." "We will settle that tomorrow," said Mrs. Lovett; "I feel convinced that Black did not give you a receipt. Goodday." She left the shop, unceremoniously carrying the iron with her. Todd breathed more freely when Mrs. Lovett was gone. He gave one of his horrible laughs as he watched her through the opening in his window. "Ha! ha! Curses on her; but I will have her life first, ere she sees one guinea of my hoard!" He saw Charley Green crossing the road. "Ah, the boy comes back. 'Tis well. I don't know how or why it is, but the sight of that boy makes me uneasy. I think it will be better to cut his throat and have done with him. I" Todd was suddenly silent. He saw two women pass, and as they did so, one pointed to his shop and said something to the other, who lifted up her hands as though in pious horror. One of these women was Mrs. Ragg, poor Tobias's mother. The other was a stranger to Todd, but she looked like what Mrs. Ragg had been, namely, a laundress in the temple. "Curses," he muttered. Johanna entered the shop. Todd caught up his hat. "Charley?" "Yes, sir." "I shall be gone five minutes. Be vigilant. If any one should come, you can say I have stepped a few doors off to trim Mr. Pentwheezle's whiskers." "Yes, sir." Todd darted from the shop. Mrs. Ragg and her friend were in that deep and earnest course that is a foe to rapid locomotion, so they had not got many yards from Todd's door. He was rarely seen, however, for either to "Paint a moral or adorn a tale" Mrs. Ragg turned suddenly and pointed to the shop, and then both the ladies lifted up their hands as though in horror, after which they resumed their deep and allabsorbing discourse as before. Todd followed them closely, and yet with abundance of caution. CHAPTER LXXX. TODD TAKES A JOURNEY TO THE TEMPLE. The two females took their way to the Temple. Todd had been quite right in his conjectures. The friend of Mrs. Ragg was one of the old compatriots of the laundress tribe; and that good lady herself, although, while there was no temptation to do otherwise, she had kept well the secret of her son's residence at Colonel Jeffery's, broke down like a frail and weak vessel as she was with the weight of the secret the moment she got into a gossip with an old friend. Now Mrs. Ragg had only come into that neighbourhood upon some little errand of her own, and with a positive promise of returning to the colonel's house as soon as possible. She would have kept this promise, but that amid the purlieus of Fetterlane she encountered Martha Jones her old acquaintance. One word begot another, and at last as they walked up Fleetstreet, Mrs. Ragg could not help, with many headshakings and muttered interjectional phrases, letting Martha Jones know that she had a secret. Nay, as she passed Todd's shop, she could not help intimating that she fully believed certain persons, not a hundred miles off, who might be barbers or who might not, would some day come to a bad end in front of Newgate, in the Old Bailey. It was at this insinuation that Martha Jones lifted up her hands, and Mrs. Ragg lifted up hers in sympathy. Todd had seen this action upon the part of the ladies. To overhear what they were saying was to Todd a great object. That it in some measure concerned him he could not for a moment doubt, since the headshaking and handuplifting reference that had been made to his shop by them both as they passed, could not mean anything else. And so, as we have said, he followed them cautiously, dodging behind bulky passengers, so that they should not see him by any sudden glance backwards. One corpulent old lady served him for a shield half up Fleet Street, until, indeed, she turned into a religious bookseller's shop, and left him nothing but thin passengers to interfere between him and the possibility of observation. But Mrs. Ragg and her friend Martha Jones were much too fully engaged to look behind them. In due course, they arrived opposite to the Temple; and then, after much flurrying, in consequence of real and supposed danger from the passing vehicles, they got across the way. They at once dived into the recesses of the legallylearned Temple. Todd dashed after them. "Now, my dear Mrs. Ragg," said Martha Jones, "you must not say No. It's got a beautiful head upon it, and will do you good." "Nono. Really." "Like cream." "But, really, II" "Come, come, it ain't often you is in the Temple, and I knew very well he don't miss a bottle now and then; and 'twix you and me and the pump, I think we has as much a right to that beautiful bottled ale as Mr. Juggas has, for I'd take my bible oath, he don't mean to pay for it, Mrs. Ragg." "You don't say so?" "Yes, I does, Mrs. Ragg. Oh, he's a bad 'un, he is. Ah, Mrs. Ragg, you don't know, nor nobody else, what takes place in his chambers of a night." "Is it possible?" "Yes. I often say to myself what universal profundity he must be possessed with, for he was once intended, he says, for the church, and I heard him say he'd have stuck to it like bricks, if he could have heard of any church that was intended for him." "Shocking!" "Yes, Mrs. Ragg. There's profundity for you." Did Martha Jones mean profanity? "Ah," interposed Mrs. Ragg, "we live in a world." "Yes, Mrs. Ragg, we does; but as you was a saying?" "Eh?" "As you was a saying about somebody being hung, if rights was rights, you know." "Oh, dear, really you must not ask me. Indeed you must not." "Well, I won't; but here we are, in Pump Court." Todd darted into a doorway, and watched them up the staircase of No. 6, in that highly classic locality. He slunk into the doorway, and by taking a perspective glance up the staircase, he saw them stop upon the first floor. He saw that they turned to the right. He darted up a few stairs, and just caught sight of a black door. Then there was a sharp sound, as of some small latch closing suddenly, after which all was still. Todd ascended the stairs. "Curses on them!" he muttered. "What can they mean by looking in such a manner at my shop? I thought the last time I saw that woman, Ragg, that she was cognizant of something. If now she, in her babbling, would give me any news of TobiasPho! he ishe must be dead." By this time Todd had got to the top of the first flight of stairs, and stood upon the landing, close to several open doorsthat is to say, outer black heavylooking doorsand within them were smaller ones, armed with knockers. "To the right," he muttered. "They went to the rightthis must be the door." He paused at one and listened. Not a sound met his ears, and his impatience began to get extreme. That these two women were going to have a conference about him he fully believed; and that he should be so near at hand, and yet not near enough to listen to it, was indeed galling. In a few moments it became insupportable. "I must and will know what they mean," he said. "My threats may wring the truth from them; and if necessary, I should not scruple to silence them both. Dead men tell no tales, so goes the proverb, and it applies equally well to dead women." Todd smiled. He was always fond of a conceit. "Yes," he muttered, "every circumstance says to me now in audible language, 'Gogogo!' and go I will, far away from England. I feel that I have not now many hours to spare. This fracas with Mrs. Lovett expedites my departure wonderfully, and tomorrow's dawn shall not see me in London. But I willI must ascertain what these women are about. Yes, and I will do so at all risks." A glance showed him that the act of temerity was a safe one. The door opened upon a dingy sort of passage, in which were some mops, pails, and brooms. At its further extremity there was another door, but it was not quite shut, and from the room into which it opened, came the murmer of voices. There were other doors right and left, but Todd heeded only that one which conducted to the room inhabited. He crept along the passage at a snail's pace; and then having achieved a station exactly outside the door, he placed one of his hands behind one of his elephantinelooking ears, and while his countenance looked like that of some malignant demon, he listened to what was going on within that apartment. Martha Jones was speaking. Todd Listens And Learns A Dangerous Secret. Todd Listens And Learns A Dangerous Secret. "It is good, indeed, Mrs. Ragg, as you may well say, and the glasses sticks to the table, when they is left overnight, showing, as Mr. Juggus says, as it's a gluetenious quality this ale is." "Sticks to the table?" said Mrs. Ragg. "Yes, mum, sticks. But as you was a saying?" "Well, Martha, in course I know that what goes to you goes no farther." "Not a step." "And you won't mention it to no one?" "Not a soul. Another glass?" "No, no." "Only one. Nonsense! it don't get into your head. It's as harmless as milk, Mr. Juggus says." "But ain't you afeard, Martha, he may come in?" "Not he, Mrs. Ragg. Chambers won't see him agin till night. Oh, he's a shocking young man. Well, Mrs. Ragg, as you was a saying?" "Well, it is good. As I was a saying, Martha, I don't feel uneasy now about Tobias, poor boy; for if ever a poor lad, as was a orphan in a halfandhalf kind of way, seeing that I am his natural mother, and living, and thanking God for the same, and health, leastways, as far as it goes at this present moment of speakin, IIBless me, where was I?" "At Tobias." "Oh, yes, I was at Tobias. As I was saying, if ever a poor body was well provided for, Tobias is. The colonel" "The who?" "The colonel, Marthathe colonel as has took the care of him, and who, sooner or later, will have all the truth out of him about the Toddey Sween." "Who? Who?" "Bless my poor head, I mean Sweeney Todd. Dear me, what am I thinking of?" "The barber?" "Yes, Martha; that horrid barber in Fleetstreet; and between you and me, there isn't in all the mortal world a more horrid wretch living than he is." "I'm all of a shake." "Hehe" "Yes, yes. What" "He takes folks in and does for 'em." "Kills 'em?" "Kills 'em." "Whatwhywhat? You don't mean to saywhy? Take another glass Mrs. Ragg. You don't mean to say that Tobias says, that Todd the barber is a murderer?My dear Mrs. Ragg, take another glass, and tell us all about it; only look at the cream on the top of it." "You'll excuse me, Mrs. Jones, but the truth is, I aught not to say more than I have said; and if the colonel only knew I'd said as much, I can tell you, I think he'd be like a roaring lion. But Tobias is quite a gentleman now, you see, and sleeps in as fine a bed as a nobleman could have for love or money. The colonel is very good to him; and there never was such a kind goodgood." Mrs. Ragg began to run over with tears of ale. "Bless me, and where does he live?" "Who?" "The colonel. The good, kind, colonelcolonelaa dear me, I forget what you said his name was." "Jeffery, and may his end be peace. He will get the reward of all his good actions in another world than this, Martha. Ah, Martha, such men as he can afford to smile at their latter ends.Nono, I couldn't." "Only half a glass; look at the" "Nono" "Cream on it." "I must go, indeed. In course the colonel, since I have been his cook, knows what cooking is, for though I say it, perhaps as should not, I am a cook, and not a spiler of folks' victuals. Of course what's said, goes no further. I know I can trust you, Martha." "Oh dear, yes, in course. I'll just put on my shawl and walk a little way with you, Mrs. Ragg. Dear medear me!" "What is it, Martha?" "Its a raining like cats and dogs, it is. Well, I never; what shall you do, Mrs. Ragg? What shall you do?" "Call a coach, I shall, Martha. The last words the colonel said to me was, 'Mrs. Ragg, rather than there should be any delay in your return,' says he, 'as Tobias may want you, call a coach, and I will pay for it.'" Todd had only just time to dart down the staircase before the two ladies made their appearance; and then hiding sometimes in doorways, and sometimes behind columns and corners, he dodged them into Fleetstreet. A coach was duly called, and Mrs. Ragg by the assistance of Martha Jones, was safely bestowed inside it. Todd heard distinctly the colonel's address given to the coachman, who would have it twice over, so that he should be sure he had it all right. "That will do," said Todd. He darted across the street, and made the best of his way to his shop again. He listened at the door for a few moments before he entered, and he thought he heard the sound of weeping. He listened more attentively, and then he was sure. Some one was sobbing bitterly within the shop. "It must be Charley," thought Todd. He placed his ear quite close to the panel of the door, in the hope that the boy would speak. Todd was quite an adept at listening, but this time he was disappointed, for the sham Charley Green spoke not one word. Yet the deep sobs continued. Todd was not in the best of tempers. He could stand the delay no longer, and bouncing into the shop, he cried "What the devil is the meaning of all this? What is the meaning of it, you young rascal? I suspect" "Yes, sir," said Johanna, looking Todd full in the face, "and so do I." "Youyou? suspect what?" "That I shall have to have it out, for its aching distracts me. Did you ever have the toothache, sir?" "The toothache?" "Yes, sir. It'sit's worse than the heartache, and that I have had." "Ah!humph! Any one been?" "One gentleman, sir, to be shaved; he says he will call again." "Very goodvery good." Todd took from his pocket the key of the backparlourthat key without which in his own possession he never left the shop; and then, after casting upon Johanna a somewhat sinister and threatening look, he muttered to himself "I suspect that boy. If he refuse to come into the parlour, I will cut his throat in the shop; but if he come in I shall be better satisfied. Charley? Come here." "Yes, sir," said Johanna, and she walked boldly into the parlour. "Shut the door." She closed it. "Humph," said Todd. "It is no matter. I will call you again when I want you." CHAPTER LXXXI. JOHANNA IS ENCOURAGED. Was Todd satisfied with Johanna's excuse about the toothache? Was he satisfied of the good foible of the supposed Charley Green, by the readiness with which she had come into the parlour? We shall see. If he were not satisfied, he was staggered in his suspicions sufficiently to delayand delay just then was to Sweeney Toddone of the most fatal things that could be imagined. There are crumbs of consolation under all circumstances. When Johanna was best sent out of the shop, upon the occasion of the visit of Mrs. Lovett to Todd, she had scarcely got a half dozen steps from the door of the barber's, when a man in passing her, and without pausing a moment, said "Miss Oakley, be so good as to follow me." Johanna at once obeyed the mandate. The man walked rapidly on until a fruiterer's shop was gained, into which he at once walked. "Mr. Oston," he said to a man behind the counter, "is your parlour vacant?" "Yes, Sir Richard, and quite at your service," said the fruiterer. By this Johanna found that she had made no mistake, and that the person she had followed was no other than Sir Richard Blunt, the magistrate, who was interesting himself so much for her safety, as well as for the discovery of what had befallen Mark Ingestrie. The fruiterer's parlour was a prettily fitted up place, where a couple of lovers might in a very romantic manner, if they chose, eat strawberries and cream, and quite enjoy each other's blissful society, in whispered nothing the while. Sir Richard handed Johanna a seat as he said"Miss Oakley, I am very much pleased, indeed, to have this opportunity of seeing you, and of saying a few words to you." "Ah, Sir, how much do I owe you." "Nay, Miss Oakley, you owe me nothing. When once I happily become aware of your situation, it becomes my duty as well as my inclination to protect you in every way against what, I am sure you will forgive me, for calling your rashness." "Call it what you will, sir." "Well, Miss Oakley, we will dismiss that part of the subject. Are you going upon any errand, or have you a little time to spare." "I have some time." "Then it is a very proper thing that you should enjoy it in taking some proper refreshment." "I want nothing." "Nay, but you shall have something whether you want it or not, before I say any more to you about Todd and his affairs." Johanna, whose mental excitement had prevented her completely from feeling the amount of exhaustion, which otherwise must by that time have come over her, would still have protested that she wanted nothing, but Sir Richard Blunt opened the door of the parlour, and called out "Mr. Orton, is your daughter at home?" "Yes, Sir Richard, Ann is up stairs." "Very good. My young friend here can find the way, I dare say. Is it the first floor?" "Yes, don't you hear her practising upon her spinet." The tinkling sounds of a spinet, then all the fashion; came upon their ears, and Sir Richard, said to Johanna "Go up stairs, now, to that young lady. She is about your own age, and her father's housekeeper. She will find you something to eat and drink, and then come down to me, as soon as you can." Sir Richard nodded to Mr. Orton, who nodded in return, and then Johanna seeing that it was all right, ascended the staircase, and guided by the sound of the spinet, soon found herself in a tolerably handsome room, upon the first floor. A young girl with a profusion of chesnut curls hanging down her back, was seated at the spinet. Johanna made up to her at once, and throwing her arms round her neck, said "And will you say a kind word to me?" The girl gave a slight scream, and rose. "Well, I'm sure, you impertinanthandsome" "Girl," said Johanna. "Boy," faltered Miss Orton. "No, girl," added Johanna. "Your father sent me to you, and Sir Richard Blunt suggested it. Shall I leave you again." "Oh, nono," said Ann Orton, as she sprang towards Johanna, and kissed her on both cheeks, "you are Miss Johanna Oakley." "How is it that you know me?" "My father is an old friend of Sir Richard's, and he has told us all your story. How truly delighted I am to see you. And so you have escaped from that odious Todd, and" "Immediate refreshment, my dear, and all the attention you can cram into a very short space of time to Miss Oakley, my dear," said Mr. Orton, just putting his head so far into the room as to make himself plainly and distinctly heard. "Yes, father, yes." "How kind you all are," said Johanna. "Nonoat least we wish to be, but what I mean is that we are no kinder than we ought to be. My father is so good, I have no mother." "And I, too, am motherless." "Yes, II heard that Mrs. Oakley" "Lived, you would say; and yet am I motherless." Johanna burst into tears. The sense of desolation that came over the young girl's heart whenever she thought how little of a mother the fanatical personage who owned that title was to her, generally overcame all her firmness, as upon the present occasion. Ann flung her arms around Johanna, and the two young creatures wept in unison. We will leave them to their sacred intercourse. Sir Richard Blunt remained in conversation with Mr. Orton for about a quarter of an hour, and then both Johanna and Ann came down stairs. Johanna looked calmer and happier. Ann had said some kind things to hersuch as none but a young girl can say to a young girl. "I am ready," said Johanna. "Ready for what?" enquired Sir Richard Blunt, with a look of earnest affection in the face of the beautiful heroinefor if ever there were a heroine, we really think Johanna Oakley was one, and we are quite sure that you agree with us. "For my mission," said Johanna, "I am ready." "And can you really find courage to go again to thatthat" Sir Richard could not find a fitting name for Todd's home, but Johanna understood him, and she replied gently "I may not pause now. It is my duty." "Your duty?" "Yes. Oh, MarkMark, I cannot restore you from the dead, but in the sacred cause of justice I may bring your murderer to the light of day. It is my duty to do so much for your memory." Ann turned aside to hide her tears. Mr. Orton, too, was much affected, and there was an unwonted jar, as though some false note had had been struck in voice of Sir Richard Blunt as he spoke, saying "Miss Oakley, I will notI cannot deny that by your going back to Todd's house, you may materially assist in the cause of justice. But yet I advise you not to do so." "I know you are all careful of my safety, while I" "Ah, Johanna," said Ann, "you do not know yet that you are so desolate as to wish to die." "Yes, yesI am desolate." "And so," added Sir Richard, "because you loved one who has been, according to your judgment upon the circumstances that have come to your knowledge, torn from you by death, you will admit no other ties which could bind you to the world. Is that right? Is it like you?" The tones of voice in which these words were uttered, as well as the sentiment embodied in them, sunk deeply into Johanna's heart. Clasping her hands together, she cried "Oh, no, no! Do no think me so inhuman. Do not think me so very ungrateful." "Had you forgotten, Arabella Wilmot? Had you forgotten your father? Nay, had you forgotten the brave Colonel Jeffery?" "No, no! I ought not to forget any, when so many have so kindly remembered me, and you too, sir, I ought not, and will not forget you, for you have been a kind friend to me." "Nay, I am nothing." "Seek not, sir, to disparage what you have done, you have been all kindness to me." Before he was aware of what she was about, Johanna had seized the hand of Sir Richard Blunt, and for one brief moment touched it with her lips. The good magistrate was sensibly affected. "God bless me!" said Mr. Orton, "something very big keeps blocking up the whole of my window." They all looked, and as they were silent at that moment, they heard a voice from the street, say "Come! Come, my dear! Don't set the waterworks agoing. Always remember, that easy does it. You come in here, and have something to eat, if you won't go home. Lor bless me! what will they think has become of me at the tower?" "Why, it is Ben!" cried Johanna. "Ben?" said Ann. "Who is Ben?" "Hush! Stop," said Sir Richard, "I pray you, stop." Johanna would have rushed out to speak to Ben, who certainly was at the window of the fruiterer's shop, with Arabella Wilmot upon his arm, endeavouring to persuade her to enter, and partake of some refreshment. "I will bring him in," said Sir Richard. "Retire into the parlour, I beg of you, Miss Oakley, for he will make quite a scene in the shop if you do not." Johanna knew well Ben's affection for her, and doubted not, but that as Sir Richard said, he would not scruple to show it, even in the open shop, probably to the great edification of the passers by. She accordingly retired to the parlour with Ann. In a few moments, Sir Richard Blunt ushered in both Ben and Arabella Wilmot. Arabella with a shriek of joy, rushed into Johanna's arms, and then with excess of emotion she fainted. Ben caught up Johanna fairly off her feet, as though he had been dancing some little child, and holding her in a sitting posture upon one arm, he said "Bless you! Easy does it. Easy I saydoesit. Don't you think I'm a crying. It's a teachest has flew in my eye from that grocer's shop opposite. Oh, you little rogue, you. Easy does it. What you have got them what do you call 'ems on, have you?" The kiss that Ben gave her might have been heard at Sweeney Todd's, and then when prevailed upon to sit down, he would insist upon holding her fast upon his knee. "I must go," said Johanna, and then looking at Arabella, she added"Let me go, before she awakens from her transient forgetfulness to beg me to stay." Ben was furious at the idea of Johanna going back to Todd's, but Sir Richard, overruled him, and after some trouble, got him to consent. Then turning to Johanna, he said "The moment night comes on, you will have some visitors, and remember, Miss Oakley, that St. Dunstan's is the watchword. Whoever comes to you with that in his mouth, is a friend." "I will remember, and now farewell and God bless and reward you for all your goodness to me. I will live for the many who love me yet, and whom I love in this world." Was it not a world of wonders that amid all this, Johanna did not go mad? Surely something more than mortal strength must have sustained that young and innocent girl in the midst of all these strange events. No human power that she possessed, could have possibly prevented her mind from sinking, and the hideous fascinations of an overcharged fancy from breeding "Rude riot in her brain." But there was a power who supported hera power which from the commencement of the world has supported manya power which while the world continues, will support many more, strengthening the weak and trampling on the strong. The power of love in all the magic of its deep and full intensity. Yes, this was the power which armed that frail and delicatelooking girl with strength to cope with such a manman shall we call him? no, we may say such a fiend as Sweeney Todd. If it required no small amount of moral courage to go in the first instance upon that expeditionso fraught with danger, to Todd's shopwhat did it require now to enable her to return after having passed through much peril, and tasting the sweets of friendship and sympathy? Surely any heart but Johanna's must have shrunk aghast from ever again even in thought, approaching that dreadful place. And yet she went. Yes upon her mission of justice she went. To be sure, she was told that as far as human means went, she would be upheld and supported from those without; but what could that assure to her further than that if she fell she should not fall unavenged? Truly, if some higher, some far nobler impulse than that derived from any consciousness that she was looked after, had not strengthened her, the girl's spirit, must have sunk beneath the weight of many terrors. With a sad smile she once again crossed the threshold of that house, which she now no longer suspected to be the murderer's haunt. She knew it. CHAPTER LXXXII. TODD PLANS. How she sped with Todd we are already aware. Let us take a peep at the archdemon in that parlour, which he considered his sanctuary, his city of refuge as it were. At least Todd considered it to be such, whether it was or not. He sits at a table, the table beneath which there was no floor, and covering up his face with his huge hands, he sets about thinking. Yes, that man now abandons himself to thought, as to how he is, with a blaze of wickedness, to disappear from the scene of his iniquities. It was not remorse that now filled his brain. It was not any feeling of bitter heartfelt regret for what he had done that oppressed him now. No such feeling might possibly find a home in his heart at the hour of success, but now when he saw and felt that he was surrounded by many difficulties, it had no home in his brain. But yet he thought that they were only difficulties that now surrounded; he did not as yet dream of positive danger. He still reasoned, as you have heard him reason before, namely, that if anything beyond mere suspicion were entertained regarding his mode of life, he would be at once apprehended. He thought that somebodymost likely Colonel Jefferywas trying to find out something, and the fact that he, Todd, was there in his own parlour, a free man, appeared to him proofsufficient that nothing was found out. "How fallacious!" If he had but known that he was virtually in custody even then, as he, indeed, really was, for Fleetstreet was alive with officers and the emissaries of the police. If he had but guessed so much for a moment what a wild tumult would have been raised in his brain. But he knew nothing and suspected little. After a time from generalizing upon his condition, Todd began to be particular, and then he laid down, as it were, one proposition or fact which he intended should be the groundwork of all in other proceedings. That proposition was contained in the words "Before the dawn of tomorrow I must be off!" "That's settled," said Todd, and he gave the table a blow with his hand. "Yes, that's settled." The table creaked ominously, and Todd rose to peep into the shop to see what his boy was doing. Charley Green, alias, Johanna Oakley, was sitting upon a low stool reading a bill that some one had thrown into the shop, and which detailed the merits of some merchandize. How far away from the contents of that bill which she held before her face, were her thoughts? "Good," said Todd. "That boy, at all events, suspects nothing, and yet his death is one of the things which had better not be left to chance. He shall fall in the general way of this place. What proper feeling errandboy would wish to survive his master's absence. Ha!" Of late Todd had not been very profuse in his laughs, but now he came out with one quite of the old sort. The sound startled himself, and he retired to the table again. By the dim light he opened a desk and supplied himself with writing materials; the twilight was creeping on, and he could only just see. Spreading a piece of paper before him, he proceeded to make a memoranda of what he had to do. It was no bad plan this of Todd's, and the paper, when it was finished was quite a curiosity in its way. It ran thus Mem.To go to Colonel Jeffery's, and by some means get into the house and murder Tobias. Mem.To pack off goods to the wharf where the Hamburg vessel, called the Dianna, sails from. Mem.To arrange combustibles for setting fire to the house. Mem.To cut Charley Green's throat, if any suspicion ariseif not to let him be smothered in the fire. Mem.To have a letter ready to post to Sir Richard Blunt, the magistrate, accusing Mrs. Lovett of her own crimes, and mine likewise. "I think that is all," said Todd. He folded the paper and placed it in his bosom, after which he came out of the parlour into the shop, and called to Johanna. "Charles?" "Yes, sir." "Go to the market, and get me a couple of stout porterI want something carried a short distance." "Yes, sir." Away went Johanna, but before she got half way down to Fleet Market she met Sir Richard, who said "What is it?" "He wants a couple of porters to carry something." "Very well, get them. Depend upon me." "I do, sir. I feel now in good heart to go through with anything, for you are near to me, and I know that I am safe." "You are safe. It will need to be some very extraordinary circumstances, indeed, that could compromise you. But go at once for these porters; I, and my men will take good care to find where they go to." There was no difficulty in finding parties in abundance at the end of Fleet Market, and Johanna speedily returned, followed by two sturdy fellows. Todd had quite a smile upon his face, as he received them. "This way," he said"This way. I hope you have been lucky to day, and have had plenty of work." "No, master," said one, "we haven't, I'm sorry to say." "Indeed," added Todd. "Well, I am very glad I have a little job for you. You see these two little boxes. You can carry one each of you, and I will go with you and show you where to." One of the porters raised one of the boxes, and then he gave a long whistle, as he said "I say, master is there penny pieces or paving stones in this here, its deuced heavy, that it is." "And so is this, Bill," said the other. "Oh, my eyes ain't it. There must be a quarter of a pound of goose feathers in here." "Ha! ha!" said Todd, "How funny you both are." "Funny?" "Yes, to be sure, but come. This will put strength into you if you had none before.


" He took a bottle and glass from a cupboard, and gave each of the men a full measure of such frightfully strong spirits, that they winked again, and the tears came into their eyes, as they drank it. "Now shoulder the little boxes, and come along," he said, "and I tell you what I'll do. If you step in here in the evening, and I should happen to be at home, I'll give each of you a shave for nothing, and polish you off in such a manner, that you will recollect it as long you live." "Thank you, masterthank you. We'll come." One of the porters helped his companion with the chest on to his back and head, and Todd then lent a helping hand with the other. "Charley," he said. "I shall be back in a quarter of an hour." Away he went, preceding the porter by some half dozen steps only, but yet ever and anon keeping a wary eye upon the two chests, which contained cash, and jewels, sufficient to found a little kingdom. If he got clear off with those two chests only, he felt that he would not give himself much uneasiness about what was left behind. But was Todd going to trust these two porters from out his own immediate neighbourhood, with the secret of the destination of the boxes? No. He was by far too crafty for that. After proceeding some distance, he took them round the unfrequented side of St. Paul's Church yard, and stopping suddenly at the door of a house that was to let, he said "This will do." "In here, master." "This will do. Put them down." The porters complied, and Todd set down upon one of the boxes, as he said "How much?" "A shilling each of us, master." "There's double the money, and now be off, both of you, about your business." The porters were rather surprised, but as they considered themselves sufficiently paid, they made no objection, and walked off with considerable alacrity, leaving Todd, and his treasure in the street. "Now for a coach," he muttered. "Now for a coach. Here boy"to a ragged boy who was creeping on at some short distance. "Earn a penny by fetching me a coach directly." The boy darted off, and in a very few minutes brought Todd a hackney coach. The boxes, too, were got upon it by the united efforts of Todd, the coachman, and the boy, and then, and not till then did Todd give the correct address of the wharf in Thames Street from which the Hamburg ship was going, and in which he fully intended to embark that night. The ship was advertised to sail at the turn of the tide, which would be about four o'clock in the morning. All this did not take long to do. The coach rumbled along Thames Street, but Todd was not aware that Mr. Crotchet had got up behind the vehicle, but such was the fact, and when the lumbering old machine stopped at the wharf, that gentleman got down, and felt quite satisfied with the discovery he had made. "He's a trying of it on," soliloquised Mr. Crotchet in the bolting line, "but it ain't no manner of a go. He'll swing, and he can't help it, if he were to book himself to the moon, and there was a coach or a ship as went all the way, and no stoppages." "Mem," said Todd to himself. "To go to Colonel Jeffery's and murder TobiasHa!" "Lor!" said the coachman, "was that you, sir?" "What do you mean?" "Why as made that horrid sort of noise." "Mind your business, my friend, and tell me if you can take me quickly to Islington, for I have no time to lose." "Like the wind, sir, you can go with these here osses," replied the coachman, "did you ever see sich bits o' blood, sir, one on 'ems blind, and' t'other on 'em is deaf, which is advantages as you don't get in one pair." "Advantages?" "Lor bless you, yes, sir. The blind 'un goes unknown quick, cos you sees, sir, he thinks he's only in some dark place, and in course he wants to get out on it as soon as he can." "Indeed?" "Yes, sir, and the deaf 'un, he goes quick too, cos as he hears nothink, he thinks as there never was sich a quiet place as he's go's, and he does it out o' feeling and gratitude, sir, yer sees." "Be quick then, and charge your own price." Todd sprang into the vehicle, and stimulated by the idea of charging his own price, the coachman certainly did make the bits of blood do wonders, and in quite an incredibly short space of time, Todd found himself in the immediate neighbourhood of the Colonel's house. It was now getting dark, but that was what he wished. He dismissed the coach, and took from the angle of a wall, near at hand, a long and earnest look at the Colonel's house, and as he did so dark and hideous thoughts concerning Tobias passed through his mind. CHAPTER LXXXII. TODD VISITS THE COLONEL "Well, Tobias," said Colonel Jeffery, as he entered the pretty, cheerful room into which the now convalescent boy had been removed. "Well, Tobias, how are you now?" "Much better, sir. Oh, sir,II" "What would you say?" "I feel that when I see you, sir, I ought to say so much to convince you of how truly, and deeply grateful I am to you, and yet I can scarcely ever say a word about it. I pray for your happiness, sir, indeed I do. Your name and my mother's, andand Minna Gray's, are always uttered to God by me." "Now, Tobias," said Colonel Jeffery gravely. "I am quite satisfied that as regards all that has passed, you feel as you ought to feel, and for my own part, I beg you to feel and to know that your saying anything about it only distresses me." "Distresses you, sir?" "Yes, it does, indeed. I see your eyes are upon the door. You expect Minna, to day, I am sure." "Yes, sir,sheshemy mother was to bring her, sir." A ringing at a bell now came upon Tobias's ear, and his colour went and came fitfully. "You are still very weak, my poor boy," said the colonel, "but you are certainly much improved. Do you feel any confusion in your head now?" "None at all, only when I think of Todd suddenly, ever it makes me feel cold and sick, and something seems to rush through my heart." "Oh, that will go away. That is nothing. There, I will draw up the blind for you. The evening is coming, and the sky is overclouded. You can see better now, and there is one coming whom I know you wish to lose no sight of." "I hear her foot upon the stairs," said Tobias. "Do you?It is more than I do." "Ah, sir, the senses are sharpened, I think, by illness." "Not so much as by love. Tobias! do you hear her footstep now?" "Yes, and it is like music." He had his head on one side in an attitude of listening; and then with joy sparkling from every feature of his face, he spoke again "She comesshe comes. Ah, she comes fast. My ownmy beautiful. She comeshe comes." "This is real love," said the colonel, and he stepped from the room. Nearly on the landing at the head of the stairs, he met Minna Gray. "Welcome," he said as he held out his hand to her. "You will find your young friend up and much better." Minna could only look her thanks. Mrs. Ragg was following her, and as the ascent of stairs was always rather a task to that good Lady, she was making a noise like a stranded grampus in breathing. "Ah, colonel," she said, "young legs get up stairs faster than old ones, sir, as you see. Wellwell, there was a time when first I knew poor dear Ragg, who is of course dead and gone, quite premature." "Exactly, Mrs. Ragg," said the colonel, as he rapidly descended the stairs. "Did you ever, my dear, know such a strange man?" said Mrs. Ragg to Minna. "Who?" "The colonel, to be sure. So soon as I begin to tell him any little what do you call it. No it ain't nannygoatthat's ridiculous. It'sit'swhat is it?" "Anecdote do you mean, Mrs. Ragg?" "Yes, to be sure. Well, as I was a saying, no sooner do I begin telling him a little nannygoatno, I mean anecdote, than off he is like a shot." Minna smiled to herself, and she was far from wondering that the colonel was off like a shot, for well she knew, that when Mrs. Ragg did begin anything concerning the late Mr. Ragg, it usually lasted three quarters of an hour at the very least. "Minna, Minna!" called Tobias. "I am here, Tobias." In another moment she was in the room. Truly it was a pleasant thing to see the face of Tobias, when, his sunshine, as he called Minna, came close to him, and in her soft voice asked him if he was better. "Don't mind me," said Mrs. Ragg, "I am going to darn a stocking or two. that's all. Just say what you both like. Young folks will be young folks. Bless me, I recollect just as if it were only yesterday, when I used to speak to poor departed Mr. Ragg, who is, premature, dead and gone, in a manner of speaking. Ah, dear me! How the world goes round and roundround and round, continually." Tobias and Minna were so well accustomed to the garrulity of Mrs. Ragg, and so well aware that she required no answer, that they let her talk on, and did not mind her, as she requested they would not; and so the evening grew apace, and the light gradually began to wane, as those two young loving hearts spoke together of the future, and indulged in that day dream of happiness which can only belong to youth and love. Todd is skulking round the angle of the garden wall, from which he can get a view of the colonel's house, and yet not be seen himself. The more he looked the more the desire grew upon him, notwithstanding the immense risk he ran of personal detection, by so doing, to get into the house, and finish the career of poor Tobias. He would have had no particular objection rather to have taken the life of Mrs. Ragg, if it could be easily and comfortably done. It has been said that there are folks in the world who never forgive any one for doing them a kindness; and such paradoxical views of human nature have been attempted to be laid down as truths; but whether this be so or not, is still to be proved, although it is certain that nothing stirs the evil passions of men who will inflict injury upon the innocent, as to find themselves baffled in their villany. From that moment the matter becomes a personal affair of vengeance. Hence, since Todd had become thoroughly aware that Tobias had escaped from the death he had intended for him at the madhouse, his rage against the boy knew no bounds. Indeed, the reader will conclude that it must have been a feeling of no ordinary strength, that, at such a busy and ticklish time, would take Todd to the colonel's house at all. It was revengebitter, uncompromising revenge! Now, you must know the colonel's house was one of those halfvilla, halfmansionlike residences, that are so common in the neighbourhood of London. There was a kind of terrace in the front, and a garden with flowering shrubs, that had a pretty enough appearance, and which at night afforded abundance of shelter. It was by this front garden that Todd hoped to reach the house. When it was nearly dark, he slunk in, crouching down among the trees and shrubs, and crawling along like a serpent as he was. He soon came to a flight of stone steps that led to the kitchens. By the time Todd had got thus far, some of her domestic duties had called Mrs. Ragg to the lower part of the house. He saw by the firelight that some one was going about the kitchen, close to the foot of the stone steps; but he could not exactly, by that dim and uncertain radiance, take upon himself to say that it was Mrs. Ragg. She soon lit a candle, though, and then all was clear. He saw the good lady preparing divers lights for the upper rooms. While Todd was halfway down the stone steps, peeping into the kitchen, one of the other servants of the house came into that receptacle for culinary articles, and commenced putting on a bonnet and shawl. Todd could not hear one word of what was said by Mrs. Ragg and this young woman who was getting ready to go out; but he saw them talk, and by their manner he felt convinced that it was only upon ordinary topics. If the young woman left the house by the steps upon which Todd was, and which it was more than likely she would do, his situation would be anything but a pleasant one, and discovery would be certain. To obviate the chance of this, he stepped back, and crouched down in among the shrubs in the garden. He was not wrong in his conjectures, for in a few moments the servant, who was going out, ascended the steps, and passed him so closely, that by stretching out his hand, he could, if he had been so minded, have touched her dress. In a short time she was out of earshot. Todd emerged from his concealment again, and crept down the steps, and once more peeped into the kitchen. Mrs. Ragg was still busy with the candles. He was just considering what he should do, when he heard the tramp of horses' feet in the road above. He ascended sufficient of the steps to enable himself to get a peep at what was going on. He saw a groom well mounted, and leading another horse. Then no other than Colonel Jeffrey himself, although he did not of his own knowledge, feel assured that it was him, come out at the front door of the house and mounted. "Now, William," said the colonel, "we must ride sharply." "Yes, sir," said the groom. Another moment and they were gone. "This is lucky," said Todd. "It is not likely that there is any other room in the house; and if not, I have the game in my own hands." He crept down the remainder of the stone steps, and placed his ear quite close to the kitchen window. Mrs. Ragg was enjoying a little conversation to herself. "Ah!" she said, "it's always the waygirls will be girls; but what I blame her for is, that she don't ask the colonel's leave at once, and say'Sir, your disorderly has won my infections, and may he come here and take a cup of tea?'" This was Greek to Todd. "What is the old fool talking about," he muttered. "But I will soon give her a subject that will last for her life." He now arrived at the door of the kitchen. It was very unlikely to be locked or otherwise fastened, so immediately after the young woman, who had left the house, and passed so close to him, Todd. Yet he listened for a few moments more, as Mrs. Ragg kept making observations to herself. "Listeners hear no good of themselves, says the proverb, and at all events it was verified in this instance." "Lor' a mussy," ejaculated Mrs. Ragg, "how my mind do run upon that horrid old ugly monster of a Todd to day. Well, I do hope I shall never look upon his frightful face again, and how awful he did squint, too. Dear me, what did the colonel say he had with his visioncould it bea something afixity? No that isn't it." "Obliquity!" said Todd, popping his head in at the kitchen door. "It was obliquity, and if you scream or make the least alarm, I'll skin you, and strew this kitchen with your mangled remains!" Mrs. Ragg sank into a chair with a melodramatic groan, that would have made her fortune over the water in domestic tragedy if she could have done it so naturally. Todd kept his eye upon her. That basilisklike eye, which had fascinated the good woman often, and this time it acted as a kind of spell, for truly might he have said, or rather might some one have said for him, "He held her with his glittering eye." Todd's first care now was to get between Mrs. Ragg and the kitchen door, lest upon some sudden impulse she should rise and flee. Then he folded his arms, and looked at her calmly, and with such a devilish smile as might have become Mephistopheles himself, while contemplating the ruin of a soul. He took from his pocket a razor. "Mercy," gasped Mrs. Ragg. "Where is Tobias?" Todd Horrifies Mrs. Ragg. Todd Horrifies Mrs. Ragg. "Up stairs. Back room, second floor, looking into the garden." "Alone?" "No, Minna Grey is with him." "Listen to me. If you stir from here until I come to you again, I will not only murder you, but Tobias likewise, and every one whom I meet with in this house. You know me, and can come to some opinion as to whether or not I am a man likely to keep my word. Remain where you are; move not, speak not, and all will be well." Mrs. Ragg slowly slid off her chair, and fell to the floor of the kitchen, where she lay, in what seemed a swoon. "That will do as well," said Todd as he glanced at her, "and yet as I return." He made a movement with his hand across his throat to indicate what he would do, and then feeling assured that he had little or, indeed, no opposition to expect in the house, he left the kitchen, and walked up stairs. When he reached the top of the kitchen stairs he paused to listen. All was very still in the house. "'Tis well," he said "tis well. This deed of blood shall be done, and long before it can be thought that it was I who struck the blow, I shall be gone." Alas! After passing through so much! After being persued in so almost a miraculous manner from the murderous intentions of Todd, backed by the cupidity of Fogg, and his subordinate Watson, was poor Tobias yet to die a terrible death as a victim to the cruel passions of his relentless persecutor? No, we will not yet believe that such is to be the fate of poor honest Tobias, although at the present time, his prospects look gloomy. Todd may, and no doubt has taken as worthy lives, but we will hope that the hand of Providence will prevent him from taking this one. He reached the landing of the first floor, and he paused to listen again. He thought this time, that he heard the faint sound of voices above, but he was not quite sure. Otherwise all was quiet. This was a critical situation for Todd. If any one, who was a painter of pictures or of morals had but seen him, Sweeney Todd, as he there stood, they would no longer have doubted either that there was a devil, or that some persons in this world, were actuated by a devilish fiend. He looked the incarnate fiend!the Mephistopheles of the imagination, such as he is painted by the German enthusiast. His laugh too? Was not that satanic? He set himself to listen to the voices that he heard in that quiet rooms and the sounds, holy and full of affection as they were, awakened no chord of answering feeling, in that bold, bad man's breast. He stood apart from human nature, a solitary being. A wreck upon the ocean of society "None loving, and by none beloved." Who would be Sweeney Todd, for all the wealth, real or fabled, of a million Californias? "He is here," he said, "I know his voice. Tobias is here. Ah! he mentions the name of God. Ha! He is more fitting to go to that heaven he can talk of so glibly, but there is none. There is none! No, no! all that is a fable." Of course Todd could not believe in a divinity of goodness and mercy. If he had, what on earth could have saved him from absolute madness? CHAPTER LXXXIII. TOBIAS IN JEOPARDY. "And so you do love me, Minna?" said Tobias. How his voice shook like a reed swayed by the wind, and yet what a world of melody was in it. "Can you ask me to say yes?" was the reply of the fair young creature by his side. "Can you ask me to say yes, Tobias?" "It seems to me," said Tobias, "as though it would be such a joy to hear you say so, Minna, and yet I will not ask you." "How well you have got, Tobias. Your cheek has got its old colour back again. The colour it had long before you knew there was such a man as Sweeney Todd in the world. Your eyes are bright too, and your voice has its old pleasant sound." "Used it to be pleasant to you, Minna?" She held up her hand, and shook her head laughingly. "No questions, Tobias! No questions. I will confess nothing." "Stop!" said Tobias, as he put himself into an attitude of listening, "what was that, I thought I heard something? It was like a suppressed growl. I wish the colonel would come home. Did you not hear it, Minna?" Minna had heard it, but she did not say she had. "Where did it come from, Tobias?" "From the stairhead, Minna." "Oh, it is some accidental noise, such as is common to all houses, and such as always defy conjecture and explanation, and being nothing and meaning nothing, always comes to nothing. Yet I will go and see. Perhaps a door has been left open, and is banging to and fro by the wind, and if so it will only vex you to hear it again, Tobias." It was Todd, who upon hearing the soft and tender speeches from the young lovers, had not been able to suppress a growl, and now that he had heard Minna Grey talk of coming to look what it was, he felt the necessity of instantly concealing himself somewhere. It was not likely she would come down the stairs, so Todd adopted an original mode of keeping himself out of sight. He descended steps sufficient, that by laying at full length along them, his head did not reach the top, and in the darkness he then considered that he should be quite safe from the casual glance, that in all likelihood, merely to satisfy Tobias, Minna would give outside the room door. Todd thought by her manner she had heard nothing. "No, no, Minna," said Tobias, "there is no occasion. It is nothing, I dare say, and I don't like you to be out of my sight a moment." "It is only a moment." She rose, and proceeded to the door. An unknown feeling of dread, she knew not why, was at the heart of Minna. Certainly the slight sound she had heard, and that too in the house of Colonel Jeffery, was not sufficient to warrant such a feeling, and yet there, at her heart, it sat brooding. She stood for a moment at the door. It was only for a moment. "How foolish I am," she thought, and then she passed out on to the landing, where she stood for a moment glancing round her. "It is nothing, Minna," called out Tobias, "or shall I try and come. I feel quite strong enough to do so." "Oh, nono! It is nothing." Minna stepped lightly back and sat down. She clasped her hands very tight indeed together, and then placed both upon her breast. She had seen Todd. Yes, Minna Grey had seen the man that had been, and who was for all she knew to the contrary still to be, the bane of Tobias's existence. The clear eyes of youth had noticed the lumbering figure as it lay upon the stairs before them. And she did not screamshe did not cry for helpshe did not faint, she only crept back as we have seen, and held her hands upon her heart, and looked at Tobias. There was no mistaking Todd. Once seen he was known for ever. Like some hideous picture, there dwelt the memory of Sweeney Todd upon the young imagination of the fair Minna Grey. Once before, a long time ago, so it seemed to her, she had seen him in the Temple skulking up an old staircase. From that moment the face was Daguerreotyped upon her brain. It was never to be forgotten, and with the face comes the figure too. That she saw upon the stairs. Alas! Poor Minn! "And so it was nothing but one of those odd accidents that will occur in defiance of all experience, and calculation," said Tobias. "Just that," replied Minna. "Ah, my dear Minna. We are so safe here. It always seems to me as though the very air of this house, belonging as it does to such a man, so full of goodness as the colonel is, such that nothing very bad could live in it for long." "II hope soI think so.What a calm and pleasant evening it is, Tobias, did you see the new book of the seasons, so full of pretty engravings in the shape of birds and trees, and flowers, that the colonel has purchased." "New book?" "Yes, it lies in his small study, upon this floor. I will fetch it for you, if you wish it, Tobias?" "Nay, I will go." "You are still weak. Remain in peace upon the couch, dear Tobias, and I will go for you." Before she left the room, she kissed the forehead of the boy. A tear, too, fell upon his hand. "Who knows," she thought, "that I shall ever see him in life again?" "Minna, you weep." "Weep? NonoI am soso happy." She hastily left the room. Todd had heard what had passed, and had turned to hide himself again. The young girl knew that she passed the murderer within a hair's breadth. She knew that he had but to stretch out his right hand and say"Minna Gray, you are my victim!" and his victim she would have become. Was not that dreadful? And she so young and so fairso upon the threshold, as it were, of the garden of her existenceso loving, and so wellbeloved. She felt for a moment, as she crossed the landingjust for a moment as though she were going mad. But the eye of the Omnipotent was upon that house. She staggered on. She made her way into a bedroom. It was the colonel's. Above the mantelshelf, supported on a small bracket, was a pair of pistols. They were of a large size, and she had heard from the current gossip of the house, how they were always loaded, and how the servants feared to touch them, and how even they shrank from making the bed, lest the pistol from some malice aforethought, or from something incidental to such watching, should go off at once of their own accord, and inevitably shoot whoever chanced to be in the room. Minna Gray laid her hand upon the dreaded weapons. "For Tobias! for Tobias!" she gasped. Then she paused to listen. All was still as the grave. Todd was not yet ready for the murder, or he wished to take their lives both together, and in the one room. That was more probable. Then she began to think that he must have some suspicion, and that it was necessary upon her part to do something more than merely make no alarm. The idea of singing occurred to her. It was a childish song that she had been taught, when a pretty child, that she now warbled forth a few lines of "If I were a forest bird, I'd shun the noisy town; I'd seek the verdure of the spring The dear autumnal brown. And even when the winter came, By sunny skies bereft, I'd sleep in some deep distant cave, Which wanton winds had left." She crossed the landing. "Minna," said Tobias. "My Minna!" "I come." She passed into the room, and the moment she crossed the thresholdshe turned her face to it and presented both the pistols before her. Then as she wound, inch by inch, into the centre of the room, all her power of further concealment of her feelings deserted her, and she could only say, in a strange choking tone "Todd!Todd!Todd!" "Nonono! Oh, God, no!" cried Tobias. "Todd!Todd!Todd!" "Nono! Help! help!" "Dn!" said Sweeney Todd, as he dashed open the door of the chamber, and stood upon the threshold with a glittering knife in his right hand. "Hold!" shrieked Minna Gray. "Another step, murderer, and I send you to your God!" Todd waited. He could almost see down the barrels of the large pistols, which a touch of the young girl's finger would explode in his face. With a sharp convulsive cry, Tobias fell to the floor. The blood gushed from his mouth, and he lay bereft of sensation. Heroic Conduct Of Minna Gray. Heroic Conduct Of Minna Gray. "Away!" cried Minna. "Monster, away! Another moment, and as Heaven hears me, I will fire; oncetwice" Todd darted to the stair head, but he darted away again quicker than he had gone there; for who, to his horror, should he meet, advancing with great speed up the steps, but Mrs. Ragg, who had managed to get out of the kitchen, and who bore, as a weapon of offence and defence, the large kitchen poker, which was of a glowing red heat. Todd caught a touch of it on his face. "Oh, you villain of the world!" cried Mrs. Ragg, "I'll teach you to come here murdering people. My poor Tobias is no more, I know; but I'll take the law of you, I will. Murder! murder! Police! Colonel!" With an alacrity, that was far beyond to all appearance Mrs. Ragg's powers, that good lady pursued Todd with the redhot poker. He dared not take refuge in Tobias's room, for there stood Minna with the pistols in her hand, so he darted up the first flight of stairs he saw, which led to the top of the house. Mrs. Ragg pursued him; but when she got to the head of the stairs, Minna pressed too hard upon the hairtrigger of one of the pistols, and off it went. Mrs. Ragg fully believed herself shot, and rolled down the stairs, poker included; while Todd, labouring under the impression that the shot was at him, became still more anxious to find some place of refuge. Upon the landing, which he was not a moment in reaching, he found a great show of doors; for he was, in fact, upon the floor from which all the sleeping rooms of the servants opened. It was quite a chance that the first one he bounced into was one that had in the roof a little square trapdoor, facetiously called "a fire escape;" but which, in the event of a fire, would have acquired the agility of a harlequin, and the coolness of a taxgatherer to get through. Todd dragged a bedstead beneath the trap; and then his great height enabled him to thrust it open, and project his head through it. He found that part of his corporality was in the roof as it werethat is to say, in the cavity, between the ceiling of the room and the house. A trapdoor of somewhat larger size in the actual roof, opened to the air. Todd dragged himself through, and was fairly upon the top of the colonel's house. A slippery elevation! But surely that was better than facing a redhot poker, and a pair of hairtrigger duelling pistols; and so, for a time, the desire to escape kept down every other feeling. Even his revengeful thoughts gave way to the great principle of selfpreservation; and Todd was only intent upon safely getting away. He glared round him upon the night sky, and a gaudy assemblage of chimney tops. What was he to do? In a minute he uttered a string of such curses, as we cannot very well here set down, and he turned preternaturally calm and still. "Shall I go back," he said, "or escape?" He heard the tramp of horses' feet, and peeping carefully over the front parapet of the house, he saw Colonel Jeffery arrive on horseback, and dismount. His groom led the horse away, and the colonel ascended the steps. Then, and not until then, Todd made up his mind. "Escape," he said, "and be off." There was a long sloping part of the roof close to where he was, and he thought that if he slid down that very carefully he should be able to get on to the roof of the next house, and so perchance through their trap door, and by dint of violence or cunning, or both united, reach the street. It was a desperate resource, but his only one. The top part of the long sloping roof was easily gained, and then Todd began to let himself down very carefully, but the angle of the roof was greater than he had imagined, and by the time he got about half way down he found a dangerous and most uncomfortable acceleration of motion ensuing. It was in vain he tried to stop himself down he went with a speed into the gutter behind the coppingstone, that left him lying there for a few moments half stunned, and scarcely conscious if he were safe or not. The colonel's house, however, was stoutly built, and Todd's weight had not displaced anything; so that there he lay safe enough, wedged into a narrow rain gutter, from which, when he did recover himself sufficiently to make the attempt, he found some difficulty in wrenching himself out of. Sore and shaken, Todd now looked about him. He was close to the roof of the nextdoor house. To be sure there was a chasm of sixty feet; but its width was not as many inches, so Todd ought, with his long legs, to easily step it. CHAPTER LXXXIV. TODD'S WONDERFUL ESCAPE. The step was but a trifle; and yet, shaken as Todd was by his fall, it really seemed to him to be one of the most hazardous and nervous things in the world to take it. He made two feints before he succeeded. At length he stood fairly upon the roof of the adjoining house. He did not say "Thank God!"; such words were not exactly in the vocabulary of Sweeney Todd; but he wiped the perspiration from his brow, and seemed to think that he had effected something at last. And yet how far was he from safety? It is some satisfaction to have got such a man as Todd upon the housetops. Who pities him? Who would be violently afflicted if he made a false step and broke his neck? No one, we apprehend; but such men, somehow, do not make false steps; and if they do, they manage to escape the consequences. Surely it was about as ticklish a thing to crawl up a sloping roof as to come down one.