Heyling, whispering the officer to remain below, crept gently upstairs,

and, opening the door of the front room, entered at once.

The object of his search and his unrelenting animosity, now a

decrepit old man, was seated at a bare deal table, on which stood a

miserable candle. He started on the entrance of the stranger, and rose

feebly to his feet.

'‘What now, what now?’ said the old man. ‘What fresh misery is this?

What do you want here?’

‘A word with YOU,’ replied Heyling. As he spoke, he seated himself at

the other end of the table, and, throwing off his cloak and cap,

disclosed his features.

The old man seemed instantly deprived of speech. He fell backward in

his chair, and, clasping his hands together, gazed on the apparition

with a mingled look of abhorrence and fear.

'‘This day six years,’ said Heyling, ‘I claimed the life you owed me for

my child's. Beside the lifeless form of your daughter, old man, I swore

to live a life of revenge. I have never swerved from my purpose for a

moment's space; but if I had, one thought of her uncomplaining,

suffering look, as she drooped away, or of the starving face of our

innocent child, would have nerved me to my task. My first act of

requital you well remember: this is my last.’

'The old man shivered, and his hands dropped powerless by his side.

‘

‘I leave England to-morrow,’ said Heyling, after a moment's pause.

To-night I consign you to the living death to which you devoted her - a

hopeless prison - ’

He raised his eyes to the old man's countenance, and paused. He

lifted the light to his face, set it gently down, and left the apartment.

‘You had better see to the old man,’ he said to the woman, as he

opened the door, and motioned the officer to follow him into the street.

I think he is ill.’ The woman closed the door, ran hastily upstairs, and

found him lifeless.

‘

'Beneath a plain gravestone, in one of the most peaceful and secluded

churchyards in Kent, where wild flowers mingle with the grass, and

the soft landscape around forms the fairest spot in the garden of

England, lie the bones of the young mother and her gentle child. But

the ashes of the father do not mingle with theirs; nor, from that night

forward, did the attorney ever gain the remotest clue to the

subsequent history of his queer client.' As the old man concluded his

The Pickwick Papers