“I understand you, holy father,” returned the steward;--“money will be necessary.” “Money shall not be wanting,” said the Confessor. “This note procrastinates, but does not avert the crisis.” The steward nodded his head. “‘Tis a breathing-time, that shall not be thrown away;--I’m off to London immediately.” “Heaven speed thee!” said the monk; and the hand of God’s minister, imprecating a blessing, was laid upon a wretch’s head whose avowed embassy was--murder! ***** To my humble counsellors, the keeper and the sergeant, I communicated what we all considered the decided failure of my experiment. I resolved to return direct to town--and a place was booked accordingly in the stage. Another passenger accompanied me--and how different are the ends which influence men’s actions! I hurried back to town to bask in the smiles of my young and artless Isidora. The object of my _compagnon du voyage_ was very opposite,--the gentleman was Mr. Morley; and his embassy--nothing but to accomplish my assassination. CHAPTER XX. A MEETING BETWEEN MEN OF BUSINESS. “_What a dickens is the man always whimpering about murder for? If business cannot be carried on without it, what would you have a gentleman to do?” Beggars’ Opera._ |The scene has changed; and we must request the gentle reader to accompany us into a close dark alley, with no thoroughfare connecting it to the opener streets around, save two narrow and crooked passages scarcely three feet wide. The houses are high and old-fashioned, and front each other so closely, that from roof to roof an active man might spring. Their general appearance betokens fear or wretchedness; for, while some of the windows are so jealously blinded, as to prevent all chance of _espionage_ from without, others are recklessly exposed to the eye of the passenger, as if it were intended to display the extent of the dirt and poverty within. The large brick dwelling at the bottom of the court is curiously situated. At either gable, it opens by a side door into one of the foul dark passages we have described; the front is to the court; and the back abuts upon one of those small and half-forgotten cemeteries, not larger than a modern drawing-room, which may still be seen, studding here and there the more ancient portions of that “mighty mass of wood, and brick, and mortar,” ycleped “the great metropolis.” Within this dwelling, there was a semblance of opulence that formed a striking contrast to the squalid poverty that was perceptible in every other building around it. The rooms were crowded with ill-assorted furniture, and the walls covered with mirrors and pictures. On the tables and mantelpiece, clocks, china, and fancy-ornaments were incongruously heaped together; the whole looking liker a broker’s store-room than the private dwelling of a man in trade. The place was a receptacle for stolen property--or in thieves’ parlance, the house of “a fence.”