The baronet grasped his wrist tightly with one hand--and both feeble and attenuated was that poor wrist--the baronet, we say, grasped it, and in an instant had regained possession of the mask, which he deliberately replaced on his face, after which he seized the unfortunate young man by the neck, and pressed it with such force as almost to occasion suffocation. Still he (Sir Thomas) uttered not a syllable, a circumstance which in the terrified mind of his unhappy victim caused his position as well as that of his companion to assume a darker, and consequently a more terrible mystery. “Ah!” he exclaimed, in a low and trembling voice, “I know you now. You are the stranger who came to stop in the 'Mitre.' Yes, you came down to stop in the 'Mitre.' I know you by your strong grasp. I care not, however, for your attempt to strangle me. I forgive you--I pardon you; and I will tell you why--treat me as violently as you may--I feel that there is goodness in your face, and mercy in your heart. But I did see a face, one day, in the inn,” he added, in a voice that gradually became quite frantic--“a face that was dark, damnable, and demoniac--oh, oh! may God of heaven ever preserve me from seeing that face again!” he exclaimed, shuddering wildly. “Open me up the shrouded graves, my friend; I will call you so notwithstanding what has happened, for I still think you are a gentleman; open me up, I say, the shrouded graves--set me among the hideous dead, in all their ghastly and loathsome putrefaction--lay me side by side with the sweltering carcass of the gibbeted murderer--give me such a vision, and expose me to the anger of the Almighty when raging in his vengeance; or, if there be a pitch of horror still beyond this, then I say--mark me, my friend--then I say, open me up all hell at full work--hissing, boiling, bubbling, scalding, roasting, frying, scorching, blazing, burning, but ever-consuming hell, sir, I say, in full operation--the whole dark and penal machinery in full play--open it up--there they are--the yell, the scream, the blasphemy, the shout, the torture, the laughter of despair--with the pleasing consciousness that all this is to be eternal; hark ye, sir, open me up a view of this aforesaid spectacle upon the very brow of perdition, and having allowed me time to console myself by a contemplation of it, fling me, soul and body, into the uttermost depths of its howling tortures; do any or all of these things, sooner than let me have a sight of that face again--it bears such a terrible resemblance to that which blighted me.”