I undressed, after testing the walls for secret panels and looking for assassins in the usual place, but was haunted all the time by an unnatural sound of laughter. At length, groping my way to the bed, I jumped hastily in, and would have sought some suspension of anguish by creeping far underneath the clothes. But even this refuge was denied to your wretched Catherine! I could not stretch my limbs; for the sheet, my dear Eleanor, had been so arranged, in some manner which I do not understand, as to render this impossible. The laughter seemed to redouble. I heard a footstep at my door. I hurried on my frock and shawl and crept into the gallery. A strange dark figure was gliding in front of me, stooping at each door; and every time it stooped, came _a low gurgling noise_! Inspired by I know not what desperation of courage, I rushed on the figure and seized it by the neck. It was Miss Eyre, the governess, filling the boots of all the guests with water, which she carried in a can. When she saw me she gave a scream and threw herself against a door hung with a curtain of Tyrian dye. It yielded, and there poured into the passage a blue cloud of smoke, with a strong and odious smell of cigars, into which (and to what company?) she vanished. I groped my way as well as I might to my own chamber: where each hour the clocks, as they struck, found an echo in the apprehensive heart of THE ILL-FATED CATHERINE MORLAND. XII. _From Montague Tigg_, _Esq._, _to Mr. David Crimp_. The following letter needs no explanation for any who have studied the fortunes and admired the style of that celebrated and sanguine financier, Mr. Montague Tigg, in “Martin Chuzzlewit.” His chance meeting with the romantic Comte de Monte Cristo naturally suggested to him the plans and hopes which he unfolds to an unsympathetic capitalist. 1542 Park Lane, May 27, 1848. MY PREMIUM POMEGRANATE,—Oracles are not in it, David, with you, my pippin, as auspicious counsellors of ingenious indigence. The remark which you uttered lately, when refusing to make the trumpery advance of half-a-crown on a garment which had been near to the illustrious person of my friend Chevy Slime, that remark was inspired. “Go to Holborn!” you said, and the longest-bearded of early prophets never uttered aught more pregnant with Destiny. I went to Holborn, to the humble establishment of the tuneful tonsor, Sweedle-pipe. All things come, the poet says, to him who knows how to wait—especially, I may add, to him who knows how to wait behind thin partitions with a chink in them. Ensconced in such an ambush—in fact, in the back shop—I bided my time, intending to solicit pecuniary accommodation from the barber, and studying human nature as developed in his customers.