As he looked down at it, and felt the fragrant rum steaming softy into his nostrils, his face expanded, and while his left hand unsteadily conveyed the tumbler to his lips, his right reached across the table and fraternally extended itself to Mat. "My dear friend," said Mr. Blyth affectionately, "how kind you are! Pray how do you make the Squaw's mixture?"
"I say, Mat, leave off smoking, and tell us something," interposed Zack. "Bowl away at once with one of your tremendous stories, or Blyth will be bragging again about his rickety old legs. Talk, man! Tell us your famous story of how you lost your scalp."
Mat laid down his pipe, and for a moment looked very attentively at Mr. Blyth--then, with the most uncharacteristic readiness and docility, began his story at once, without requiring another word of persuasion. In general, the very reverse of tedious when he related any experiences of his own, he seemed, on this occasion, perversely bent on letting his narrative ooze out to the most interminable length. Instead of adhering to the abridged account of his terrible adventure, which he had given Zack when they first talked together on Blackfriars Bridge, he now dwelt drowsily on the minutest particulars of the murderous chase that had so nearly cost him his life, enumerating them one after the other in the same heavy droning voice which never changed its tone in the slightest degree as he went on. After about ten minutes' endurance of the narrative-infliction which he had himself provoked, young Thorpe was just beginning to feel a sensation of utter oblivion stealing over him, when a sound of lusty snoring close at his back startled him into instant wakefulness. He looked round. There was Mr. Blyth placidly and profoundly asleep, with his mouth wide open and his head resting against the wall.
"Stop!" whispered Mat, as Zack seized on a half-squeezed lemon and took aim at Valentine's mouth. "Don't wake him yet. What do you say to some oysters?"
"Give us a dish, and I'll show you," returned young Thorpe. "Sally's in bed by this time--I'll fetch the oysters myself from over the way. But, I say, I must have a friendly shot with something or other, at dear old Blyth's gaping mouth."
"Try him with an oyster, when you come back," said Mat, producing from the cupboard behind him a large yellow pie-dish. "Go on! I'll see you down stairs, and leave the candle on the landing, and the door on the jar, so as you can get in quietly. Steady, young 'un! and mind the dish when you cross the road." With these words Mat dismissed Zack from the street-door to the oyster shop; and then returned immediately to his guest upstairs.
Valentine was still fast asleep and snoring vehemently. Mat's hand descended again into his pocket, reappearing, however, quickly enough on this occasion, with the piece of wax which he had purchased that morning. Steadying his arms coolly on the table, he detached the little chain which held the key of Mr. Blyth's bureau, from the watchguard to which it was fastened, took off on his wax a perfect impression of the whole key from the pipe to the handle, attached it again to the sleeper's watchguard, pared away the rough ends of the piece of wax till it fitted into an old tin tobacco-box which he took from the chimney-piece, pocketed this box, and then quietly resumed his original place at the table.
"Now," said Mat, looking at the unconscious Mr. Blyth, after he had lit his pipe again; "Now, Painter-Man! wake up as soon as you like."
It was not long before Zack returned. A violent bang of the street-door announced his entry into the passage--a confused clattering and stumbling marked his progress up stairs--a shrill crash, a heavy thump, and a shout of laughter indicated his arrival on the landing. Mat ran out directly, and found him prostrate on the floor, with the yellow pie-dish in halves at the bottom of the stairs, and dozens of oyster.-shells scattered about him in every direction.
"Hurt?" inquired Mat, pulling him up by the collar, and dragging him into the room.
"Not a bit of it," answered Zack. "I've woke Blyth, though (worse luck!) and spoilt our shot with the oyster, havn't I? Oh, Lord! how he stares!"
Valentine certainly did stare. He was standing up, leaning against the wall, and looking about him in a woefully dazed condition. Either his nap, or the alarming manner in which he had been awakened from it, had produced a decided change for the worst in him. As he slowly recovered what little sense he had left to make use of, all his talkativeness and cordiality seemed to desert him. He shook his head mournfully; refused to eat or drink anything; declared with sullen solemnity, that his digestion was "a perfect wreck in consequence of his keeping drunken society;" and insisted on going home directly, in spite of everything that Zack could say to him. The landlord, who had been brought from his shop below by the noise, and who thought it very desirable to take the first opportunity that offered of breaking up the party before any more grog was consumed, officiously ran down stairs, and called a cab--the result of this maneuver proving in the sequel to be what the tobacconist desired. The moment the sound of wheels was heard at the door, Mr. Blyth clamored peremptorily for his hat and coat; and, after some little demur, was at last helped into the cab in the most friendly and attentive manner by Mat himself.
"Just see the lights out upstairs, and the young 'un in bed, will ye?" said Mat to his landlord, as they stood together on the door-step. "I'm going to blow some of the smoke out of me by taking a turn in the fresh air."
He walked away briskly, as he said the last words; but when he got to the end of the street, instead of proceeding northwards towards the country, and the cool night-breeze that was blowing from it, he perversely turned southwards towards the filthiest little lanes and courts in the whole neighborhood.
Stepping along at a rapid pace, he directed his course towards that particular row of small and vile houses which he had already visited early in the day; and stopped, as before, at the second-hand iron shop. It was shut up for the night; but a dim light, as of one farthing candle, glimmered through the circular holes in the tops of the shutters; and when Mat knocked at the door with his knuckles; it was opened immediately by the same hump-backed shopman with whom he had conferred in the morning.
"Got it?" asked the hunch-back in a cracked querulous voice the moment the door was ajar.
"All right," answered Mat in his gruffest bass tones, handing to the little man the tin tobacco-box.
"We said to-morrow evening, didn't we?" continued the squalid shopman.
"Not later than six," added Mat.
"Not later than six," repeated the other, shutting the door softly as his customer walked away--northward this time--to seek the fresh air in good earnest.
CHAPTER XI.
THE GARDEN DOOR.
"Hit or miss, I'll chance it to-night" Those words were the first that issued from Mat's lips on the morning after Mr.