All this has been
accomplished in about six minutes; and the hot contest between above and
below is steadily but fervently proceeding. Murderer is working hard in
the parlor; journeyman is working hard in the bedroom. Miscreant is
getting on famously down-stairs; one batch of bank-notes he has already
bagged; and is hard upon the scent of a second. He has also sprung a covey
of golden coins. Sovereigns as yet were not; but guineas at this period
fetched thirty shillings a-piece; and he has worked his way into a little
quarry of these. Murderer is almost joyous; and if any creature is still
living in this house, as shrewdly he suspects, and very soon means to
know, with that creature he would be happy, before cutting the creature's
throat, to drink a glass of something. Instead of the glass, might he not
make a present to the poor creature of its throat? Oh no! impossible!
Throats are a sort of thing that he never makes presents of; business--
business must be attended to. Really the two men, considered simply as men
of business, are both meritorious. Like chorus and semi-chorus, strophe
and antistrophe, they work each against the other. Pull journeyman, pull
murderer! Pull baker, pull devil! As regards the journeyman, he is now
safe. To his sixteen feet, of which seven are neutralized by the distance
of the bed, he has at last added six feet more, which will be short of
reaching the ground by perhaps ten feet--a trifle which man or boy may
drop without injury.
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