"I am not afraid of anything," replied the other, whose looks and manner were in flat contradiction to his words. "But we'll keep together."
"You were mighty anxious about the boy, a minute ago," said Jonas. "I suppose you know that he may die in the mean time?"
"Aye, aye. I know. But we 'll keep together."
As it was clear that he was not to be moved from this determination, Jonas made no other rejoinder than such as his face expressed; and they proceeded in company. They had three or four good miles to travel; and the way was not made easier by the state of the road, the burden by which they were embarrassed, or their own stiff and sore condition. After a sufficiently long and painful walk, they arrived at the Inn; and having knocked the people up (it being yet very early in the morning), sent out messengers to see to the carriage and its contents, and roused a surgeon from his bed to tend the chief sufferer. All the service he could render, he rendered promptly and skilfully. But he gave it as his opinion that the boy was labouring under a severe concussion of the brain, and that Mr. Bailey's mortal course was run.
If Montague's strong interest in the announcement could have been considered as unselfish, in any degree; it might have been a redeeming trait in a character that had no such lineaments to spare. But it was not difficult to see that for some unexpressed reason best appreciated by himself, he attached a strange value to the company and presence of this mere child. When, after receiving some assistance from the surgeon himself, he retired to the bed-room prepared for him, and it was broad day, his mind was still dwelling on this theme.
"I would rather have lost," he said, " a thousand pounds than lost the boy just now. But I 'll return home alone; I am resolved upon that. Chuzzlewit shall go forward first, and I will follow in my own time. I 'll have no more of this," he added, wiping his damp forehead. "Twenty-four hours of this would turn my hair gray!"
After examining his chamber, and looking under the bed, and in the cupboards, and even behind the curtains, with unusual caution; although it was, as has been said, broad day; he double-locked the door by which he had entered, and retired to rest. There was another door in the room, but it was locked on the outer side; and with what place it communicated, he knew not.
His fears or evil conscience reproduced this door in all his dreams. He dreamed that a dreadful secret was connected with it: a secret which he knew, and yet did not know, for although he was heavily responsible for it, and a party to it, he was harassed even in his vision by a distracting uncertainty in reference to its import. Incoherently entwined with this dream was another, which represented it as the hiding-place of an enemy, a shadow, a phantom; and made it the business of his life to keep the terrible creature closed up, and prevent it from forcing its way in upon him. With this view Nadgett, and he, and a strange man with a bloody smear upon his head (who told him that he had been his playfellow, and told him, too, the real name of an old school-mate, forgotten until then), worked with iron plates and nails to make
