The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 323: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE OLD FENCE’S ABODE 297 him commence his preparations for retiring to rest, he went back to the laboratory in order to rejoin his friend the Swag Chovey Bloak. As soon as the Hangman found himself alone, he stopped in the midst of taking off his garments, and sitting down upon the truckle-bedstead in the sordid little chamber to which he had been conducted, began meditating very seriously upon the circumstances of his position. His guilty conscience was naturally prone to conjure up a thousand terrors akin to those which had arisen in his mind while alone at Taggarty’s, but which had been allayed, or, at all events, temporarily absorbed, by the excitement of the walk from Mutton Hill to Whitechapel, and also so long as he was in the society of his mistress, Sally Melmoth. But now that he was plunged into the solitude of this miserable chamber, without a soul to speak to, and without even a .drop of spirits to give him an artificial stimulant, he rapidly fell into despondency, and a myriad phantoms of evil rose up in his active imagination. What if Sally Melmoth was to betray him? She had hitherto been faithful to him for some years and through many vicissitudes; but he had frequently made her the victim of his brutality, and when anything thwarted him, had vented his spite upon her. Then her brother Dick, too, had also been compelled to put up with his coarse invectives, and even with his blows; and being of so treacherous and vindictive a character himself, the Hangman naturally dreaded to find treachery and revenge in others. He had a considerable sum of money concealed at his house in Fleet Lane, and though he had ever most studiously avoided giving any hint either to his mistress or her brother of this circumstance, yet they must know that he had money, the proceeds of the many desperate but lucrative matters in which he had been engaged, and what if they were, under present circumstances, to institute a search for it, now that he was compelled to absent himself from his dwelling? These reflections began to torture the Hangman most poignantly, most goadingly, and in the solitude of that little chamber, he clenched his fist and gnashed his teeth with rage. Then he endeavoured to console himself, as men will do in such eases, by conjuring up every argument he could possibly think of in favour of the fidelity of Sally Melmoth (C(O) nn) GDoOo <Si in