I was miserably depressed in spirits, which the cold, sleety weather that greeted us on emerging from the hot and crowded court considerably increased. I was thinking--excuse the seeming bathos--I was only a clerk, and used to such tragedies; I was thinking, I say, that a glass of brandy and water might not be amiss, when whom should I rudely jostle against but Cyclops, _alias_ Thomas Burnham. He was going the same way as myself in prodigious haste--his eye bright and flaming as a live coal, and his whole manner denoting intense excitement. "Is that you?" he broke out. "Come along, then, and quick, for the love of God! I've missed Sims and his clerk, but you'll do as well; perhaps better." I had no power, if I had the inclination to refuse, for the enthusiastic man seized me by the arm, and hurried me along at a tremendous rate toward the outskirts of the city. "This is the place," he exclaimed, as he burst into a tavern parlor, where two trunks had been deposited. "He's not come yet," Burnham went on, "but the coach is to call for him here. He thinks to be off to London this very night." "Whom are you talking of? Who's off to London to-night?" "James Berry, if he's clever enough! Look there!" "I see; 'James Berry, Passenger, London.' These, then, are his trunks, I suppose." "Right, my boy; but there is nothing of importance in _them_. Sly, steady-going Margery has well ascertained that. You know Margery?--but hush! here he comes." Berry--it was he--could not repress a nervous start, as he unexpectedly encountered Burnham's burly person and fierce glare. "You here?" he stammered, as he mechanically took a chair by the fire. "Who would have thought it?" "Not you, Jim, I'm sure; it must be, therefore, an unexpected pleasure. I'm come to have a smoke and a bit of chat with you, Berry--there isn't a riper Berry than you are in the kingdom--before you go to London, Jim--do you mark?--before you go to London--ha, ha! ho, ho! But, zounds! how pale and shaky you're looking, and before this rousing fire, too! D--n thee, villain!" shouted Burnham, jumping suddenly up from his chair, and dashing his pipe to fragments on the floor. "I can't play with thee any longer. Tell me--when did the devil teach thee to stuff coat-collars with the spoils of murdered men, eh?" A yell of dismay escaped Berry, and he made a desperate rush to get past Burnham. Vainly did so. The fierce publican caught him by the throat, and held him by a grip of steel. "You're caught, scoundrel!--nicked, trapped, found out, and by whom, think you? Why, by deaf, paralytic, Margery, whose old eyes have never wearied in watching you from the hour you slew and robbed her good old master till to-day, when you dreamed yourself alone, and she discovered the mystery of the coat-collar." "Let me go!" gasped the miscreant, down whose pallid cheeks big drops of agony were streaming. "Take all, and let me go."