"I say! he's taking his time!" he remonstrated.
"I allowed him five minutes," said Slyme. "Time's more than up, though, I 'll bring him down."
He withdrew from the window accordingly, and walked on tiptoe to the door in the partition. He listened. There was not a sound within. He set the candles near it, that they might shine through the glass.
It was not easy, he found, to make up his mind to the opening of the door. But he flung it wide open suddenly, and with a noise; then retreated. After peeping in and listening again, he entered.
He started back as his eyes met those of Jonas, standing in an angle of the wall, and staring at him. His neck-kerchief was off; his face was ashy pale.
"You 're too soon," said Jonas, with an abject whimper. "I 've not had time. I have not been able to do it. I—five minutes more—two minutes more!—Only one!"
Slyme gave him no reply, but thrusting the purse upon him and forcing it back into his pocket, called up his men.
He whined, and cried, and cursed, and entreated them, and struggled, and submitted, in the same breath, and had no power to stand. But they got him away and into the coach, where they put him on a seat, but he soon fell moaning down among the straw at the bottom, and lay there.
The two men were with him; Slyme being on the box with the driver; and they let him lie. Happening to pass a fruiterer's on their way; the door of which was open, though the shop was by this time shut; one of them remarked how faint the peaches smelt.
The other assented at the moment, but presently stooped down in quick alarm, and looked at the prisoner.
"Stop the coach! He has poisoned himself! The smell comes from this bottle in his hand!"
The hand had shut upon it tight. With that rigidity of grasp with which no living man, in the full strength and energy of life, can clutch a prize he has won.
They dragged him out, into the dark street; but jury, judge, and hangman could have done no more, and could do nothing now. Dead, dead, dead.
CHAPTER LII.
IN WHICH THE TABLES ARE TURNED, COMPLETELY UPSIDE DOWN.
Old Martin's cherished projects, so long hidden in his own breast, so frequently in danger of abrupt disclosure through the bursting forth of the indignation he had hoarded up, during his residence with Mr. Pecksniff, were retarded, but not beyond a few hours, by the occurrences just now related. Stunned, as he had been at first by the intelligence conveyed to him through Tom Pinch and John Westlock, of the supposed manner of his brother's death; overwhelmed as he was by the subsequent
