gradually hushed; the house was quiet as a sepulchre; the dead of night was coffined in the silent city.
Oh, weary, weary hour! Oh, haggard mind, groping darkly through the past; incapable of detaching itself from the miserable present; dragging its heavy chain of care through imaginary feasts and revels, and scenes of awful pomp; seeking but a moment's rest among the long-forgotten haunts of childhood, and the resorts of yesterday; and dimly finding fear and horror everywhere! Oh, weary, weary hour! What were the wanderings of Cain, to these!
Still, without a moment's interval, the burning head tossed to and fro. Still, from time to time, fatigue, impatience, suffering, and surprise, found utterance upon that rack, and plainly too, though never once in words. At length, in the solemn hour of midnight, he began to talk; waiting awfully for answers sometimes; as though invisible companions were about his bed; and so replying to their speech and questioning again.
Mrs. Gamp awoke, and sat up in her bed: presenting on the wall the shadow of a gigantic night constable, struggling with a prisoner.
"Come! Hold your tongue!" she cried, in sharp reproof. "Don't make none of that noise here."
There was no alteration in the face, or in the incessant motion of the head, but he talked on wildly.
"Ah!" said Mrs. Gamp, coming out of the chair with an impatient shiver; "I thought I was a sleepin' too pleasant to last! The devil's in the night, I think, it's turned so chilly."
"Don't drink so much!" cried the sick man. "You 'll ruin us all. Don't you see how the fountain sinks? Look at the mark where the sparkling water was just now!"
"Sparkling water indeed!" said Mrs. Gamp. "I 'll have a sparkling cup o' tea, I think. I wish you'd hold your noise!"
He burst into a laugh, which, being prolonged, fell off into a dismal wail. Checking himself, with fierce inconstancy he began to count—fast.
"One—two—three—four—five—six."
"'One, two, buckle my shoe,'" said Mrs. Gamp, who was now on her knees, lighting the fire, "three, four, shut the door'—I wish you'd shut your mouth, young man—'five, six, picking up sticks. 'If I'd got a few handy, I should have the kettle biling all the sooner."
Awaiting this desirable consummation, she sat down so close to the fender (which was a high one) that her nose rested upon it; and for some time she drowsily amused herself by sliding that feature backwards and forwards along the brass top, as far as she could, without changing her position to do it. She maintained, all the while, a running commentary upon the wanderings of the man in bed.
"That makes five hundred and twenty-one men, all dressed alike, and with the same distortion on their faces, that have passed in at the window, and out at the door," he cried, anxiously. "Look there! Five hundred and twenty-two—twenty-three—twenty-four. Do you see them!"
"Ah! I see 'em," said Mrs. Gamp; "all the whole kit of 'em numbered like hackney-coaches—an't they?"
