Martin was the first to speak. "What terrible history is this?" he demanded.
"Ask him," said Nadgett. "You 're his friend, Sir. He can tell you, if he will. He knows more of it than I do, though I know much."
"How do you know much?"
"I have not been watching him so long for nothing," returned Nadgett. "I never watched a man so close as I have watched him."
Another of the phantom forms of this terrific Truth! Another of the many shapes in which it started up about him, out of vacancy. This man, of all men in the world, a spy upon him; this man, changing his identity: casting off his shrinking, purblind, unobservant character, and springing up into a watchful enemy! The dead man might have come out of his grave, and not confounded and appalled him so.
The game was up. The race was at an end; the rope was woven for his neck. If by a miracle he could escape from this strait, he had but to turn his face another way, no matter where, and there would rise some new avenger front to front with him: some infant in an hour grown old, or old man in an hour grown young, or blind man with his sight restored, or deaf man with his hearing given him. There was no chance. He sank down in a heap against the wall, and never hoped again, from that moment.
"I am not his friend, although I have the dishonour to be his relative," said Mr. Chuzzlewit. "You may speak to me. Where have you watched, and what have you seen?"
"I have watched in many places," returned Nadgett, "night and day. I have watched him lately, almost without rest or relief: "his anxious face and bloodshot eyes confirmed it. "I little thought to what my watching was to lead. As little as he did when he slipped out in the night, dressed in those clothes which he afterwards sunk in a bundle at London Bridge!"
Jonas moved upon the ground like a man in bodily torture. He uttered a suppressed groan, as if he had been wounded by some cruel weapon; and plucked at the iron band upon his wrists, as though (his hands being free) he would have torn himself.
"Steady, kinsman!" said the chief officer of the party. "Don't be violent."
"Whom do you call kinsman?" asked old Martin sternly.
"You," said the man, "among others."
Martin turned his scrutinising gaze upon him. He was sitting lazily across a chair with his arms resting on the back; eating nuts, and throwing the shells out of window as he cracked them, which he still continued to do, while speaking.
"Ay," he said, with a sulky nod. "You may deny your nephews till you die; but Chevy Slyme is Chevy Slyme still, all the world over. Perhaps even you may feel it some disgrace to your own blood to be employed in this way. I'm to be bought off."
"At every turn?" cried Martin. "Self, self, self. Every one among them for himself!"
"You had better save one or two among them the trouble then, and be for them as well as yourself," replied his nephew. "Look here at
