https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/5/Hunted_Down_Part_III/1859-09-03-Hunted_Down_Part3.pdf e54b7e8cda8abf0a3dec6e77a79cb6c8 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Short Fiction Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context short-stories Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. This collection (still in development) unites various short stories that Dickens wrote throughout his career for various publications, including newspapers and periodicals, and for inclusion in short story collections. Between 1833, when he tentatively submitted “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” for publication in The Monthly Magazine, and his death in 1870, Dickens as ‘BOZ,’ briefly, as ‘TIBBS,’ and as “Charles Dickens” wrote dozens of short stories and ‘sketches,’ which often moved easily between journalism and story. It was as Boz, the late Georgian literary persona, that he first endeared himself to the British reading public in the pages of such newspapers and periodicals as The Evening Chronicle, Bell’s Life in London, and Bentley's Miscellany with a unique blend of comedy and pathos. By turns scathing of observed social and personal injustices, and appreciative of London’s colourful, vibrant culture and the oddities of human nature, Boz followed in the literary footsteps of other recent metropolitan commentators like Charles Lamb (‘ELIA’), Leigh Hunt, Theodore Hook, Robert Surtees, Thomas Hood, and John Poole, and eighteenth-century Picaresque novelists, Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. Soon, Dickens established his own unique voice. Prior to and following the ascension of the young Queen Victoria in 1837, Boz became a prescient spectator of both the rising empire’s rapidly developing culture in public spaces and of the domestic dramas enacted in British homes. Global fame arrived with the serial publication of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837), marking Dickens’s shift to writing novels. In tone, this rambling comedic travelogue owed much to Boz’s voice and incidentally featured several tales unrelated to the main narrative. Dickens would sporadically publish the Mudfog stories in 1836 and 1837, enlarging on them in Sketches by Boz, a collection of many of the sketches and stories first published by John Macrone in two volumes in 1836 and 1837 and illustrated by George Cruikshank. According to Robert L. Patten, ‘When Dickens gathered up previously published writing, anonymous and pseudonymous, for republication, he identified authorship with a particular subset of his journalistic pieces, the ‘sketches’ rather than the tales or portraits of characters, and with his pseudonym. Hence, after mooting several other titles, Dickens settled on Sketches by Boz’ (44). Sketches of Young Gentlemen (1838), a joking response to Rev. Edward Caswell, or “QUIZ’s” recent effort Sketches of Young Ladies (1838), and Sketches of Couples (1840) were published by Chapman and Hall and illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne, better known as ‘PHIZ’. After this point, Dickens’s short stories were published in his periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round, though after 1837 he never published them with any regularity, preferring instead to focus on writing and serialising novels. Occasionally, he contributed several chapters to a jointly authored short story, collection, or series; Christmas numbers of his periodicals provided the opportunity to feature multiple famous writers uniting to weave a Yule-tide yarn, such as The Haunted House (1859). Notably, his collaboration with Wilkie Collins resulted in such works as The Perils of Certain English Prisoners (1857) and No Thoroughfare (1867). Towards the end of his life, Dickens began to publish short stories again in American publications such as The New York Ledger, The Atlantic Monthly, and Our Young Folks. Until now, first printings of Dickens’s earliest short stories published between 1833 and 1836 have been difficult to find for those unable to visit the periodicals and newspaper holdings at eminent institutions such as The British Library. Similarly, the last ones written by Dickens have remained understudied due in part to their obscurity. Twentieth-century editions of the Sketches are generally based on the text of Chapman and Hall’s later 1839 single volume edition, which relies on the reissue serialised between 1837 and 1839, or the 1868 Charles Dickens Edition, which is based on the 1850 cheap (and further revised) edition. Other anthologies, for instance Selected Short Fiction (Penguin, 2005), edited by Deborah A. Thomas, choose excerpts from Dickens’s entire oeuvre in the short fiction genre. Several scholars have explored the drafting, publication, and impact of the early sketches and short stories, with notable studies including Dickens and the Short Story. (University of Philadelphia Press, 1982) by Deborah A. Thomas and Charles Dickens and ‘Boz’: The Birth of the Industrial-Age Author (Cambridge, 2012) by Patten.1 To date, the most comprehensive overview of the sketches is provided by The Oxford Edition of Charles Dickens’s Sketches by Boz (2021) edited by Paul Schlicke with David Hewitt. Others include Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches as Originally Composed and Published 1833–1836 (2012), edited by Robert C. Hanna, and Sketches by Boz and Other Early Papers (1994), edited by Michael Slater. Because Dickens made many alterations, whether significant or incidental, between the first printing of a sketch and successive editions, these changes open up a window into his editorial process and developing intentions for the ‘Boz’ legacy. Now, with this Dickens Search collection, these emendations can be studied with greater ease than ever before. Our transcription field contains text Dickens is believed to have solely authored, though our pdfs of the short story collaborations will be provided in their entirety to facilitate easier engagement and comprehension of how his narrative might interact with those constructed by other writers. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to Dickens’s words only, to avoid skewing the results. While building this collection, we have consulted, and transcribed scans found on databases such as British Newspaper Archive (BNA), digital archives, and such open-access sites as Hathi Trust, Internet Archive, and Google Books; all items are linked to their original location on the internet. Please contact us with any errors, corrections, and suggestions, or to mention other short stories by Dickens that might have been overlooked. 1. See Dominic Rainsford. ‘“Luller-li-e-te”! Language, Personhood, and Sympathy in Sketches by Boz.’ In Some Keywords in Dickens. Edited by Michael Hollington, Francesca Orestano, and Nathalie Vanfasse. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021, pp. 117-130; William F. Long. ‘“Our Space is Limited”: Fitting Sketches by Boz into the Morning Chronicle”. Dickens Quarterly 4 (December 2020): pp. 325-348; William F. Long. 'Dickens before Sketches by Boz: Earliest Reactions to his Earliest Works'. Dickensian (2018), 114.505, pp.170-176; Christina Jen. '"Drop the Curtain": Astonishment and the Anxieties of Authorship in Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz. Dickens Studies Annual 49.2 (2018): pp. 249-278; Dianne F. Sadoff. ‘Boz and Beyond: “Oliver Twist” and the Dickens Legacy’. Dickens Studies Annual 45 (2014): pp. 23-44; Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches, as Originally Composed and Published, 1833–1836, No. 46. Ed. Robert C. Hanna (2012): New York, AMS Press; Danielle Coriale. ‘Sketches by Boz, “So Frail a Machine”. SEL: Studies in English Literature 48.4 (2008): pp. 801-812; Paul Schlicke. ‘“Risen Like a Rocket”: The Impact of Sketches by Boz’. Dickens Quarterly 22.1 (2005): pp. 3-18; Ellen Miller Casey. ‘“Boz has got the Town by the ear”: Dickens and the “Athenæum Critics”’. Dickens Studies Annual 33 (2003): pp. 159-190; Richard Maxwell. ‘Dickens, the Two “Chronicles”, and the Publication of “Sketches by Boz”’. Dickens Studies Annual 9 (1981): pp. 21–32; Angus Easson. “Who is Boz? Dickens and His Sketches”. The Dickensian 18.1.405 (Spring 1985): pp. 13-22; Julian W. Breslow. 'The Narrator in Sketches by Boz.' ELH 44.1 (1977): pp. 127–49. Short Story Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Newspaper Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) The New York Ledger Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18590903 Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. V. I had a very particular engagement to breakfast in the Temple. It was a bitter north-easterly morning, and the sleet and slush lay inches deep, in the streets. I could get no conveyance, and was soon wet to the knees; but I should have been true to that appointment though I had had to wade to it, up to my neck in the same impediments. The appointment took me to some chambers in the Temple. They were at the top of a lonely corner house overlooking the river. The name, MR. ALFRED BECKWITH was painted on the outer door. On the door opposite, on the same landing, the name MR. JULIUS SLINKTON. The doors of both sets of chambers stood open, so that anything said aloud in one set, could be heard in the other. I had never been in those chambers before. They were dismal, close, unwholesome, and oppressive; the furniture, originally good, and not yet old, was faded and dirty—the rooms were in great disorder; there was a strong prevailing smell of opium, brandy and tobacco; the grate and fire-irons were splashed all over, with unsightly blotches of rust; and on a sofa by the fire, in the room where breakfast had been prepared, lay the host, Mr. Beckwith, a man with all the appearances of the worst kind of drunkard, very far advanced upon his shameful way to death. "Slinkton is not come yet," said this creature, staggering up when I went in; "I’ll call him. Halloa! Julius Cæsar! Come and drink!" As he hoarsely roared this out, he beat the poker and tongs together in a mad way, as if that were his usual manner of summoning his associate. The voice of Mr. Slinkton was heard through the clatter from the opposite side of the staircase, and he came in. He had not expected the pleasure of meeting me. I have seen several artful men brought to a stand, but I never saw a man so aghast as he was when his eyes rested on mine. "Julius Cæsar," cried Beckwith, staggering between us, "Mist’ Sampson! Mist’ Sampson, Julius Cæsar! Julius, Mist’ Sampson, is the friend of my soul. Julius keeps me plied with liquor, morning, noon, and night. Julius is a real benefactor. Julius threw the tea and coffee out of window when I used to have any. Julius empties all the water-jugs of their contents, and fills ’em with spirits. Julius winds me up and keeps me going.—Boil the brandy, Julius!" There was a rusty and furred saucepan in the ashes,—the ashes looked like the accumulation of weeks—and Beckwith, rolling and staggering between us as if he were going to plunge headlong into the fire, got the saucepan out, and tried to force it into Slinkton’s hand. "Boil the brandy, Julius Cæsar! Come! Do your usual office. Boil the brandy!" He became so fierce in his gesticulations with the saucepan, that I expected to see him lay open Slinkton’s head with it. I therefore put out my hand to check him. He reeled back to the sofa, and sat there, panting, shaking, and red-eyed, in his rags of dressing-gown, looking at us both. I noticed then, that there was nothing to drink on the table but brandy, and nothing to eat but salted herrings, and a hot, sickly, highly peppered stew." "At all events, Mr. Sampson," said Slinkton, offering me the smooth gravel path for the last time, "I thank you for interfering between me and this unfortunate man’s violence. However you came here, Mr. Sampson, or with whatever motive you came here, at least I thank you for that." "Boil the brandy," muttered Beckwith. Without gratifying his desire to know how I came there, I said, quietly: "How is your niece, Mr. Slinkton?" He looked hard at me, and I looked hard at him. "I am sorry to say, Mr. Sampson, that my niece has proved treacherous and ungrateful to her best friend. She left me without a word of notice or explanation. She was misled, no doubt, by some designing rascal. Perhaps you may have heard of it." "I did hear that she was misled by a designing rascal. In fact, I have proof of it." "Are you sure of that?" said he. "Quite." "Boil the brandy," muttered Beckwith. "Company to breakfast, Julius Cæsar. Do your usual office—provide the usual breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper.—Boil the brandy!" The eyes of Slinkton looked from him to me, and he said, after a moment’s consideration: "Mr. Sampson, you are a man of the world, and so am I. I will be plain with you." "Oh, no, you won’t," said I, shaking my head. "I tell you, sir, I will be plain with you." "And I tell you you will not," said I. "I know all about you. You plain with any one? Nonsense, nonsense!" "I plainly tell you, Mr. Sampson," he went on, with a manner almost composed, "that I understand your object. You want to save your funds, and escape from your liabilities; these are old tricks of trade with you Office-gentlemen. But you will not do it, sir; you will not succeed. You have not an easy adversary to play against, when you play against me. We shall have to inquire, in due time, when and how Mr. Beckwith fell into his present habits. With that remark, sir, I put this poor creature and his incoherent wanderings of speech, aside, and wish you a good morning and a better case next time." While he was saying this, Beckwith had filled a half pint glass with brandy. At this moment, he threw the brandy at his face, and threw the glass after it. Slinkton put his hands up, half blinded with the spirit, and cut with the glass across the forehead. At the sound of the breakage, a fourth person came into the room, closed the door, and stood at it; he was a very quiet but very keen-looking man, with iron-grey hair, and slightly lame. Slinkton pulled out his handkerchief, assuaged the pain in his smarting eyes, and dabbled the blood on his forehead. He was a long time about it, and I saw that, in the doing of it, a tremendous change came over him, occasioned by the change in Beckwith—who ceased to pant and tremble, sat upright, and never took his eyes off him. I never in my life saw a face in which abhorrence and determination were so forcibly painted, as in Beckwith’s then. "Look at me, you villain," said Beckwith, "and see me as I really am. I took these rooms, to make them a trap for you. I came into them as a drunkard, to bait the trap for you. You fell into the trap, and you will never leave it alive. On the morning when you last went to Mr. Sampson’s office, I had seen him first. Your plot has been known to both of us, all along, and you have been counterplotted all along. What? Having been cajoled into putting that prize of two thousand pounds in your power, I was to be done to death with brandy, and, brandy not proving quick enough, with something quicker? Have I never seen you, when you thought my senses gone, pouring from your little bottle into my glass? Why, you Murderer and Forger, alone here with you in the dead of night, as I have so often been, I have had my hand upon the trigger of a pistol, twenty times, to blow your brains out!" This sudden starting up of the thing that he had supposed to be his imbecile victim into a determined man, with a settled resolution to hunt him down and be the death of him, mercilessly expressed from head to foot, was, in the first shock, too much for him. Without any figure of speech, he staggered under it. But, there is no greater mistake than to suppose that a man who is a calculating criminal, is, in any phase of his guilt, otherwise than true to himself and perfectly consistent with his whole character. Such a man commits murder, and murder is the natural culmination of his course; such a man has to outface murder, and will do it with hardihood and effrontery. It is a sort of fashion to express surprise that any notorious criminal, having such crime upon his conscience, can so brave it out. Do you think that if he had it on his conscience at all, or had a conscience to have it upon, he would ever have committed the crime? Perfectly consistent with himself, as I believe all such monsters to be, this Slinkton recovered himself, and showed a defiance that was sufficiently cold and quiet. He was white, he was haggard, he was changed; but, only as a sharper who had played for a great stake and had been outwitted and had lost the game. "Listen to me, you villain," said Beckwith, "and let every word you hear me say, be a stab in your wicked heart. When I took these rooms, to throw myself in your way and lead you on to the scheme that I knew my appearance and supposed character and habits would suggest to such a devil, how did I know that? Because you were no stranger to me. I knew you well. And I knew you to be the cruel wretch who, for so much money, had killed one innocent girl while she trusted him implicitly, and who was by inches, killing another." Slinkton took out a snuff-box, took a pinch of snuff, and laughed. "But, see here," said Beckwith, never looking away, never raising his voice, never relaxing his face, never unclenching his hand. "See what a dull wolf you have been, after all! The infatuated drunkard who never drank a fiftieth part of the liquor you plied him with, but poured it away, here, there, everywhere—almost before your eyes; who bought over the fellow you set to watch him and to ply him, by outbidding you in his bribe, before he had been at his work three days—with whom you have observed no caution, yet who was so bent on ridding the earth of you as a wild beast, that he would have defeated you if you had been ever so prudent—that drunkard whom you have, many a time, left on the floor of this room, and who has even let you go out of it, alive and undeceived, when you have turned him over with your foot—has, almost as often, on the same night, within an hour, within a few minutes, watched you awake, had his hand at your pillow when you were asleep, turned over your papers, taken samples from your bottles and packets of powder, changed their contents, rifled every secret of your life!" He had had another pinch of snuff in his hand, but had gradually let it drop from between his fingers to the floor: where he now smoothed it out with his foot, looking down at it the while. "That drunkard," said Beckwith, "who had free access to your rooms at all times, that he might drink the strong drinks that you left in his way and be the sooner ended, holding no more terms with you than he would hold with a tiger, has had his master-key for all your locks, his test for all your poisons, his clue to your cipher writing. He can tell you, as well as you can tell him, how long it took to complete that deed, what doses there were, what intervals, what signs of gradual decay upon mind and body; what distempered fancies were produced, what observable changes, what physical pain. He can tell you, as well as you can tell him, that all this was recorded day by day, as a lesson of experience for future service. He can tell you, better than you can tell him, where that journal is at this moment." Slinkton stopped the action of his foot, and looked at Beckwith. "No," said the latter, as if answering a question from him. "Not in the drawer of the writing-desk that opens with a spring; it is not there, and it never will be there again." "Then you are a thief!" said Slinkton. Without any change whatever in the inflexible purpose which it was quite terrific even to me to contemplate, and from the power of which I had always felt convinced it was impossible for this wretch to escape, Beckwith returned: "And I am your niece’s shadow, too." With an imprecation, Slinkton put his hand to his head, tore out some hair, and flung it to the ground. It was the end of the smooth walk; he destroyed it in the action, and it will soon be seen that his use for it was past. Beckwith went on: ‘Whenever you left here, I left here. Although I understood that you found it necessary to pause in the completion of that purpose, to avert suspicion, still I watched you close, with the poor confiding girl. When I had the diary, and could read it word by word—it was only about the night before your last visit to Scarborough—you remember the night? you slept with a small flat vial tied to your wrist—I sent to Mr. Sampson, who was kept out of view. This is Mr. Sampson’s trusty servant standing by the door. We three saved your niece among us." Slinkton looked at us all, took an uncertain step or two from the place where he had stood, returned to it, and glanced about him in a very curious way—as one of the meaner reptiles might, looking for a hole to hide in. I noticed at the same time, that a singular change took place in the figure of the man—as if it collapsed within his clothes, and they consequently became ill-shapen and ill-fitting. "You shall know," said Beckwith, "for I hope the knowledge will be bitter and terrible to you, why you have been pursued by one man, and why, when the whole interest that Mr. Sampson represents would have expended any money in hunting you down, you have been tracked to death at a single individual’s charge. I hear you have had the name of Meltham on your lips sometimes?" I saw, in addition to those other changes, a sudden stoppage come upon his breathing. "When you sent the sweet girl whom you murdered (you know with what artfully made-out surroundings and probabilities you sent her), to Meltham’s office, before taking her abroad to originate the transaction that doomed her to the grave, it fell to Meltham’s lot to see her and to speak with her. It did not fall to his lot to save her, though I know he would freely give his own life to have done it. He admired her;—I would say he loved her deeply, if I thought it possible that you could understand the word. When she was sacrificed, he was thoroughly assured of your guilt. Having lost her, he had but one object left in life, and that was to avenge her and destroy you." I saw the villain’s nostrils rise and fall, convulsively; but I saw no moving at his mouth. "That man Meltham," Beckwith steadily pursued, "was as absolutely certain that you could never elude him in this world, if he devoted himself to your destruction with his utmost fidelity and earnestness, and if he divided the sacred duty with no other duty in life, as he was certain that in achieving it he would be a poor instrument in the hands of Providence, and would do well before Heaven in striking you out from among living men. I am that man, and I thank GOD that I have done my work!" If Slinkton had been running for his life from swift-footed savages, a dozen miles, he could not have shown more emphatic signs of being oppressed at heart and labouring for breath, than he showed now, when he looked at the pursuer who had so relentlessly hunted him down. "You never saw me under my right name before; you see me under my right name now. You shall see me once again in the body, when you are tried for your life. You shall see me once again, in the spirit, when the cord is round your neck, and the crowd are crying against you!" When Meltham had spoken these last words, the miscreant suddenly turned away his face, and seemed to strike his mouth with his open hand. At the same instant, the room was filled with a new and powerful odor, and, almost at the same instant, he broke into a crooked run, leap, start,—I have no name for the spasm,—and fell, with a dull weight that shook the heavy old doors and windows in their frames. That was the fitting end of him. When we saw that he was dead, we drew away from the room, and Meltham, giving me his hand, said, with a weary air: "I have no more work on earth, my friend. But I shall see her again, elsewhere." It was in vain that I tried to rally him. He might have saved her, he said; he had not saved her, and he reproached himself; he had lost her, and he was broken-hearted. "The purpose that sustained me is over, Sampson, and there is nothing now to hold me to life. I am not fit for life; I am weak and spiritless; I have no hope and no object; my day is done." In truth, I could hardly have believed that the broken man who then spoke to me was the man who had so strongly and so differently impressed me when his purpose was before him. I used such entreaties with him, as I could; but, he still said, and always said, in a patient, undemonstrative way—nothing could avail him—he was broken-hearted. He died early in the next spring. He was buried by the side of the poor young lady for whom he had cherished those tender and unhappy regrets; and he left all he had, to her sister. She lived to be a happy wife and mother; she married my sister’s son, who succeeded poor Meltham; she is living now, and her children ride about the garden on my walking-stick when I go to see her. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'Hunted Down', Part III Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1859-03-09 Type The nature or genre of the resource Short story Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1859-09-03-Hunted_Down_Part3 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The New York Public Library Digital Collections, <a href="https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/the-new-york-ledger?filters%5Bname%5D=Dickens%2C+Charles%2C+1812-1870&keywords=#/?tab=navigation">https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/the-new-york-ledger?filters%5Bname%5D=Dickens%2C+Charles%2C+1812-1870&keywords=#/?tab=navigation</a>. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All images remain the physical property of NYPL and the intellectual property of the copyright holder, if applicable. Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'Hunted Down', Part III (3 September 1859). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://www.dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1859-09-03-Hunted_Down_Part3">https://www.dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1859-09-03-Hunted_Down_Part3</a>.  Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. V. I had a very particular engagement to breakfast in the Temple. It was a bitter north-easterly morning, and the sleet and slush lay inches deep, in the streets. I could get no conveyance, and was soon wet to the knees; but I should have been true to that appointment though I had had to wade to it, up to my neck in the same impediments. The appointment took me to some chambers in the Temple. They were at the top of a lonely corner house overlooking the river. The name, MR. ALFRED BECKWITH was painted on the outer door. On the door opposite, on the same landing, the name MR. JULIUS SLINKTON. The doors of both sets of chambers stood open, so that anything said aloud in one set, could be heard in the other. I had never been in those chambers before. They were dismal, close, unwholesome, and oppressive; the furniture, originally good, and not yet old, was faded and dirty—the rooms were in great disorder; there was a strong prevailing smell of opium, brandy and tobacco; the grate and fire-irons were splashed all over, with unsightly blotches of rust; and on a sofa by the fire, in the room where breakfast had been prepared, lay the host, Mr. Beckwith, a man with all the appearances of the worst kind of drunkard, very far advanced upon his shameful way to death. "Slinkton is not come yet," said this creature, staggering up when I went in; "I’ll call him. Halloa!  Julius Cæsar! Come and drink!" As he hoarsely roared this out, he beat the poker and tongs together in a mad way, as if that were his usual manner of summoning his associate. The voice of Mr. Slinkton was heard through the clatter from the opposite side of the staircase, and he came in. He had not expected the pleasure of meeting me. I have seen several artful men brought to a stand, but I never saw a man so aghast as he was when his eyes rested on mine. "Julius Cæsar," cried Beckwith, staggering between us, "Mist’ Sampson! Mist’ Sampson, Julius Cæsar!  Julius, Mist’ Sampson, is the friend of my soul. Julius keeps me plied with liquor, morning, noon, and night. Julius is a real benefactor. Julius threw the tea and coffee out of window when I used to have any. Julius empties all the water-jugs of their contents, and fills ’em with spirits. Julius winds me up and keeps me going.—Boil the brandy, Julius!" There was a rusty and furred saucepan in the ashes,—the ashes looked like the accumulation of weeks—and Beckwith, rolling and staggering between us as if he were going to plunge headlong into the fire, got the saucepan out, and tried to force it into Slinkton’s hand. "Boil the brandy, Julius Cæsar! Come! Do your usual office. Boil the brandy!" He became so fierce in his gesticulations with the saucepan, that I expected to see him lay open Slinkton’s head with it. I therefore put out my hand to check him. He reeled back to the sofa, and sat there, panting, shaking, and red-eyed, in his rags of dressing-gown, looking at us both. I noticed then, that there was nothing to drink on the table but brandy, and nothing to eat but salted herrings, and a hot, sickly, highly peppered stew." "At all events, Mr. Sampson," said Slinkton, offering me the smooth gravel path for the last time, "I thank you for interfering between me and this unfortunate man’s violence. However you came here, Mr. Sampson, or with whatever motive you came here, at least I thank you for that." "Boil the brandy," muttered Beckwith. Without gratifying his desire to know how I came there, I said, quietly: "How is your niece, Mr. Slinkton?" He looked hard at me, and I looked hard at him. "I am sorry to say, Mr. Sampson, that my niece has proved treacherous and ungrateful to her best friend. She left me without a word of notice or explanation. She was misled, no doubt, by some designing rascal. Perhaps you may have heard of it." "I did hear that she was misled by a designing rascal. In fact, I have proof of it." "Are you sure of that?" said he. "Quite." "Boil the brandy," muttered Beckwith. "Company to breakfast, Julius Cæsar. Do your usual office—provide the usual breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper.—Boil the brandy!" The eyes of Slinkton looked from him to me, and he said, after a moment’s consideration: "Mr. Sampson, you are a man of the world, and so am I. I will be plain with you." "Oh, no, you won’t," said I, shaking my head. "I tell you, sir, I will be plain with you." "And I tell you you will not," said I. "I know all about you. You plain with any one? Nonsense, nonsense!" "I plainly tell you, Mr. Sampson," he went on, with a manner almost composed, "that I understand your object. You want to save your funds, and escape from your liabilities; these are old tricks of trade with you Office-gentlemen. But you will not do it, sir; you will not succeed. You have not an easy adversary to play against, when you play against me. We shall have to inquire, in due time, when and how Mr. Beckwith fell into his present habits. With that remark, sir, I put this poor creature and his incoherent wanderings of speech, aside, and wish you a good morning and a better case next time." While he was saying this, Beckwith had filled a half pint glass with brandy. At this moment, he threw the brandy at his face, and threw the glass after it. Slinkton put his hands up, half blinded with the spirit, and cut with the glass across the forehead. At the sound of the breakage, a fourth person came into the room, closed the door, and stood at it; he was a very quiet but very keen-looking man, with iron-grey hair, and slightly lame. Slinkton pulled out his handkerchief, assuaged the pain in his smarting eyes, and dabbled the blood on his forehead. He was a long time about it, and I saw that, in the doing of it, a tremendous change came over him, occasioned by the change in Beckwith—who ceased to pant and tremble, sat upright, and never took his eyes off him. I never in my life saw a face in which abhorrence and determination were so forcibly painted, as in Beckwith’s then. "Look at me, you villain," said Beckwith, "and see me as I really am. I took these rooms, to make them a trap for you. I came into them as a drunkard, to bait the trap for you. You fell into the trap, and you will never leave it alive. On the morning when you last went to Mr. Sampson’s office, I had seen him first. Your plot has been known to both of us, all along, and you have been counterplotted all along. What? Having been cajoled into putting that prize of two thousand pounds in your power, I was to be done to death with brandy, and, brandy not proving quick enough, with something quicker? Have I never seen you, when you thought my senses gone, pouring from your little bottle into my glass? Why, you Murderer and Forger, alone here with you in the dead of night, as I have so often been, I have had my hand upon the trigger of a pistol, twenty times, to blow your brains out!" This sudden starting up of the thing that he had supposed to be his imbecile victim into a determined man, with a settled resolution to hunt him down and be the death of him, mercilessly expressed from head to foot, was, in the first shock, too much for him. Without any figure of speech, he staggered under it. But, there is no greater mistake than to suppose that a man who is a calculating criminal, is, in any phase of his guilt, otherwise than true to himself and perfectly consistent with his whole character. Such a man commits murder, and murder is the natural culmination of his course; such a man has to outface murder, and will do it with hardihood and effrontery. It is a sort of fashion to express surprise that any notorious criminal, having such crime upon his conscience, can so brave it out. Do you think that if he had it on his conscience at all, or had a conscience to have it upon, he would ever have committed the crime? Perfectly consistent with himself, as I believe all such monsters to be, this Slinkton recovered himself, and showed a defiance that was sufficiently cold and quiet. He was white, he was haggard, he was changed; but, only as a sharper who had played for a great stake and had been outwitted and had lost the game. "Listen to me, you villain," said Beckwith, "and let every word you hear me say, be a stab in your wicked heart. When I took these rooms, to throw myself in your way and lead you on to the scheme that I knew my appearance and supposed character and habits would suggest to such a devil, how did I know that? Because you were no stranger to me.  I knew you well. And I knew you to be the cruel wretch who, for so much money, had killed one innocent girl while she trusted him implicitly, and who was by inches, killing another." Slinkton took out a snuff-box, took a pinch of snuff, and laughed. "But, see here," said Beckwith, never looking away, never raising his voice, never relaxing his face, never unclenching his hand. "See what a dull wolf you have been, after all! The infatuated drunkard who never drank a fiftieth part of the liquor you plied him with, but poured it away, here, there, everywhere—almost before your eyes; who bought over the fellow you set to watch him and to ply him, by outbidding you in his bribe, before he had been at his work three days—with whom you have observed no caution, yet who was so bent on ridding the earth of you as a wild beast, that he would have defeated you if you had been ever so prudent—that drunkard whom you have, many a time, left on the floor of this room, and who has even let you go out of it, alive and undeceived, when you have turned him over with your foot—has, almost as often, on the same night, within an hour, within a few minutes, watched you awake, had his hand at your pillow when you were asleep, turned over your papers, taken samples from your bottles and packets of powder, changed their contents, rifled every secret of your life!" He had had another pinch of snuff in his hand, but had gradually let it drop from between his fingers to the floor: where he now smoothed it out with his foot, looking down at it the while. "That drunkard," said Beckwith, "who had free access to your rooms at all times, that he might drink the strong drinks that you left in his way and be the sooner ended, holding no more terms with you than he would hold with a tiger, has had his master-key for all your locks, his test for all your poisons, his clue to your cipher writing. He can tell you, as well as you can tell him, how long it took to complete that deed, what doses there were, what intervals, what signs of gradual decay upon mind and body; what distempered fancies were produced, what observable changes, what physical pain. He can tell you, as well as you can tell him, that all this was recorded day by day, as a lesson of experience for future service. He can tell you, better than you can tell him, where that journal is at this moment." Slinkton stopped the action of his foot, and looked at Beckwith. "No," said the latter, as if answering a question from him. "Not in the drawer of the writing-desk that opens with a spring; it is not there, and it never will be there again." "Then you are a thief!" said Slinkton. Without any change whatever in the inflexible purpose which it was quite terrific even to me to contemplate, and from the power of which I had always felt convinced it was impossible for this wretch to escape, Beckwith returned: "And I am your niece’s shadow, too." With an imprecation, Slinkton put his hand to his head, tore out some hair, and flung it to the ground. It was the end of the smooth walk; he destroyed it in the action, and it will soon be seen that his use for it was past. Beckwith went on: ‘Whenever you left here, I left here. Although I understood that you found it necessary to pause in the completion of that purpose, to avert suspicion, still I watched you close, with the poor confiding girl. When I had the diary, and could read it word by word—it was only about the night before your last visit to Scarborough—you remember the night? you slept with a small flat vial tied to your wrist—I sent to Mr. Sampson, who was kept out of view. This is Mr. Sampson’s trusty servant standing by the door. We three saved your niece among us." Slinkton looked at us all, took an uncertain step or two from the place where he had stood, returned to it, and glanced about him in a very curious way—as one of the meaner reptiles might, looking for a hole to hide in. I noticed at the same time, that a singular change took place in the figure of the man—as if it collapsed within his clothes, and they consequently became ill-shapen and ill-fitting. "You shall know," said Beckwith, "for I hope the knowledge will be bitter and terrible to you, why you have been pursued by one man, and why, when the whole interest that Mr. Sampson represents would have expended any money in hunting you down, you have been tracked to death at a single individual’s charge. I hear you have had the name of Meltham on your lips sometimes?" I saw, in addition to those other changes, a sudden stoppage come upon his breathing. "When you sent the sweet girl whom you murdered (you know with what artfully made-out surroundings and probabilities you sent her), to Meltham’s office, before taking her abroad to originate the transaction that doomed her to the grave, it fell to Meltham’s lot to see her and to speak with her. It did not fall to his lot to save her, though I know he would freely give his own life to have done it. He admired her;—I would say he loved her deeply, if I thought it possible that you could understand the word. When she was sacrificed, he was thoroughly assured of your guilt.  Having lost her, he had but one object left in life, and that was to avenge her and destroy you." I saw the villain’s nostrils rise and fall, convulsively; but I saw no moving at his mouth. "That man Meltham," Beckwith steadily pursued, "was as absolutely certain that you could never elude him in this world, if he devoted himself to your destruction with his utmost fidelity and earnestness, and if he divided the sacred duty with no other duty in life, as he was certain that in achieving it he would be a poor instrument in the hands of Providence, and would do well before Heaven in striking you out from among living men.  I am that man, and I thank GOD that I have done my work!" If Slinkton had been running for his life from swift-footed savages, a dozen miles, he could not have shown more emphatic signs of being oppressed at heart and labouring for breath, than he showed now, when he looked at the pursuer who had so relentlessly hunted him down. "You never saw me under my right name before; you see me under my right name now. You shall see me once again in the body, when you are tried for your life.  You shall see me once again, in the spirit, when the cord is round your neck, and the crowd are crying against you!" When Meltham had spoken these last words, the miscreant suddenly turned away his face, and seemed to strike his mouth with his open hand. At the same instant, the room was filled with a new and powerful odor, and, almost at the same instant, he broke into a crooked run, leap, start,—I have no name for the spasm,—and fell, with a dull weight that shook the heavy old doors and windows in their frames. That was the fitting end of him. When we saw that he was dead, we drew away from the room, and Meltham, giving me his hand, said, with a weary air: "I have no more work on earth, my friend. But I shall see her again, elsewhere." It was in vain that I tried to rally him. He might have saved her, he said; he had not saved her, and he reproached himself; he had lost her, and he was broken-hearted. "The purpose that sustained me is over, Sampson, and there is nothing now to hold me to life. I am not fit for life; I am weak and spiritless; I have no hope and no object; my day is done." In truth, I could hardly have believed that the broken man who then spoke to me was the man who had so strongly and so differently impressed me when his purpose was before him. I used such entreaties with him, as I could; but, he still said, and always said, in a patient, undemonstrative way—nothing could avail him—he was broken-hearted. He died early in the next spring. He was buried by the side of the poor young lady for whom he had cherished those tender and unhappy regrets; and he left all he had, to her sister. She lived to be a happy wife and mother; she married my sister’s son, who succeeded poor Meltham; she is living now, and her children ride about the garden on my walking-stick when I go to see her.