Chapter VII Snared
Hope Deferred—Motes in the Sunbeam—Mynheer makes an Offer—Sherebiah on Guard—New Quarters—Tumblers—Solvitur Ambulando—Doubling—Sick at Heart—Too Late—A Debit Balance—Gloom—Cold Streets—Three Sailors—Muffled
Several days passed—days of unfailing happiness for Harry. Though he spent hours in roaming the town, there was always something fresh to see, something novel to capture his interest. He saw the state entrance of the new Venetian ambassador. He visited the Tower, the Abbey, and St. Paul’s, saw Winstanley’s water-works in Piccadilly near Hyde Park, and witnessed a football match at Covent Garden. He accompanied Fanshawe several times to the theatre, and somewhat offended that sparkish young gentleman by constantly refusing to join him in card-parties and night escapades in the streets. He saw a back-sword match at the Bear Garden in Hockley in the Hole, and a billiard match at the Greyhound Coffee-house near Monmouth Street. Apart from these public sights, he found endless diversion in the ordinary street scenes: the markets, the itinerant vendors, the acrobats, or posture-masters as they were then called, who performed their dancing and tumbling in squares remote from the traffic. It amused Harry that Sherebiah never tired of these mountebank tricks, but would stand and watch them with unflagging interest by the hour, applauding every neatly executed feat, and criticising with unsparing severity every instance of clumsiness or bungling. Soldiers, on the other hand, apparently did not interest Sherebiah. Harry liked to watch them drilling on the Horse Guards’ parade or in Hyde Park; but on these occasions Sherebiah always strolled away, waiting with impatience until his young master had satisfied his curiosity.
“They won’t kill you, Sherry,” said Harry once, laughing as the man sheered off. “Their muskets are not loaded.”
“True. But ’tis no pleasure to me to see such men o’ war. Feyther o’ mine were a trooper; he be always talken on it; I be a man o’ peace, I be.”
Every day when he came down to breakfast, and when he returned in the evening, Harry eagerly looked for a message from Lord Marlborough. But the days passed; a week flew by; and still no message came. After the second day he made no reference to the matter; Sherebiah and Grootz considerately forbore to allude to it. But they watched him with shrewd eyes, and saw, through all the curiosity and pleasure he took in his new life, a growing sense of disappointment and anxiety. He had built high hopes upon the interview at Godolphin’s; as boys will, he had allowed his fancy to outstrip his judgment, and had added a good deal of embroidery to the simple facts. Already in imagination he saw himself carrying the Queen’s colours, performing heroic deeds in the field, winning golden opinions from the general, coming home laden with honour and substantial rewards, perhaps to gain, as the acme of bliss, an approving smile from the Queen herself. And he would wake from these day-dreams to the sober reality—-that the desired message from Marlborough had not come, and meanwhile time was fleeting by, and every day saw his little stock of money diminished.
He had resisted Fanshawe’s recommendation to change his lodging. Charges were higher, Sherebiah informed him, in the more fashionable parts, and he knew that he could not afford to run risks. At first he had not been parsimonious; he was not extravagant by nature, but he had not hesitated to buy a trifle that pleased him, to give largesse to the ballad-singers and street musicians, to pay his eighteenpence for a seat in the pit at Drury Lane or Lincoln’s Inn Fields. But he gave all this up, and thought twice about spending a penny. He bought only the strictest necessaries, and for his amusement depended on the sights of the streets, the parks, and the river, and such entertainment as could be had at the coffee-houses, where for a penny he could obtain a dish of coffee, read the Daily Courant with its manuscript supplement, or Dawks’s News Letter, and hear all the news of the day discussed with more heat than information by arm-chair politicians.
One day the Courant announced that the Queen had been pleased to confer the dignity of a dukedom upon the Earl of Marlborough, and that the House of Commons would be asked to grant him an annual pension to match his new rank. Harry remembered what he had heard pass between Marlborough and Godolphin, and when the coffee-house gossips supplemented the official intimation with the rumour that the Countess Sarah had been violently opposed to her husband’s elevation in the peerage, he understood the meaning of the peculiar tone in which Marlborough had spoken of acquainting her ladyship. The new duchess was the theme of much conversation and many jests in these free-spoken assemblies. Marlborough was a very great general; everybody was agreed on that; but it was doubted whether he was master in his own house; some said he was henpecked; one plain blunt fellow declared in Harry’s hearing that the duke was as much afraid of his missis as any Thames bargee. Harry was not interested in Marlborough’s domestic affairs, but his heart sank when he reflected on his own insignificance beside the great man whom the Queen was delighting to honour. After all, how could he expect a man of such eminence, immersed in state affairs, with all the responsibility for conducting a great campaign, to remember a country youth whom he had seen once, and who had made, perhaps, as deep an impression on him as a fly might make on a lion.
That night Harry was eating his supper, somewhat moodily, when Mynheer Grootz, sitting opposite, made him a sudden proposition.
“I tell you dis,” he said. “I go back to my country zoon. I have business wid de armies; I sell hay for de horses, meal for de men. You are quick, I see dat; you speak French, enough for my purpose; I give you good wages if you come and help me in my business.”
Harry flushed. The Dutchman dipped a hunk of bread into his soup and filled his mouth with it, looking down at the bare deal board the while.
“I thank you, Mynheer,” said Harry with some constraint. “I have another purpose, as you know.”
Up came the fat forefinger, moist with gravy.
“I speak plain to you. You have pride; I alzo. But I have mills, and ships, and vields; dey are mine; I am rich—ja, rich; I, Jan Grootz. My fader, he was a poor weaver in Dort; he work hard and die poor; I work hard, and grow rich. I have what for to be proud. You are a gentleman; dat is zo; it is good to be a gentleman; it is not good to be poor. And more, it is not good to zee money go every day, every day, and wait for some prince to fill de empty purse. You have pride; for what? For white hands, and by and by an empty stomach. My hands, dey are not white, naturlik; but my stomach is full, and I stand up before any prince; Jan Grootz; zo!”
He spread his broad hands before Harry, as though he were proud even of their horny skin. The action brought a smile to the lad’s gloomy face and dulled the edge of his irritation.
“I won’t debate the matter with you,” he said. “I’m not afraid of work, I hope, and maybe my white hands may be red enough before long. I won’t despair of my lord Marlborough yet; and I know your intention is friendly, Mynheer.”
The Dutchman grunted, and applied himself again to his meal.
Great as were Harry’s anxieties, Sherebiah’s were perhaps even greater. He also was disappointed by the forgetfulness or neglect of Marlborough, and concerned at the constant drain upon his young master’s purse; but he had further causes of trouble of which Harry was unaware. Ever since their arrival in London Sherebiah had been possessed by a dread of impending ill. He had always in mind the interview between Captain Aglionby and the squire’s man at the White Hart tavern, and day by day expected it to bear fruit to Harry’s harm; but for reasons of his own he hesitated to tell him the plain truth. He stuck like a leech to Harry when he went walking, and many times when the lad would rather have been alone with his dismal thoughts he found Sherebiah at his heel, like the watch-dog to which he had compared him. He did not know that even when he succeeded in eluding his too solicitous henchman, it was only in appearance; for Sherebiah, armed with a stout ash cudgel, was seldom many yards behind. Many a night after Harry had gone disconsolate to his bed, the man wended his way to Southwark in the hope of making a further discovery; but he never saw the captain or anyone whom he knew to be connected with him, and when at last he found an opportunity of making a discreet enquiry at the hostelry, he was more alarmed than pleased to find that Captain Aglionby had departed some time before, and that nothing had since been heard of him.
One morning, when they had been for about a month in London, when Parliament had been prorogued, and a new year had opened, Sherebiah surprised Harry by suggesting that they should remove to an inn near Leicester fields.
“Why, you were against it when Mr. Fanshawe proposed it. How is it that you have changed your mind, Sherry?”
“Well, sir, ’tis this way, if I med be so bold. Your money be gwine fast, and ’twould never do to begin a more humble way o’ liven here. Nay, what I say is, if you must pare and scrape, go where you bean’t so well known, and then nobody’ll think the worse on ’ee for’t.”
“Hang me, who talked of paring and scraping, Sherry?” cried Harry impatiently.
“I axe your pardon, sir,” said Sherebiah earnestly, “but I were not born yesterday. Here are we, four weeks in Lun’on, and you know yourself how many golden guineas you brought wi’ ’ee, and how many be left. Sure I bean’t a great eater myself, but even my little small morsel ha’ got to be paid for. Master Harry, ’twill be best for ’ee to do as I say. Ay, an’ if I knowed ’ee wouldn’t up and rate me, I’d say another thing, I would so.”
“Well—what’s that?”
“Why, I’d say, hand over your purse to me. Nay, sir, don’t be angry; ye’re not wasteful, no; but if we go to another house, I can save ’ee many a penny here and penny there in ways you wouldn’t so much as dream on. I know Lun’on folk, you see; ay, I know ’em well.”
In the upshot, Sherebiah had his way on both points. The reason for his change of front was that on the previous afternoon he had seen the squire’s man Jock hanging about the inn, and had found out subsequently that Captain Aglionby had returned to his old quarters at the White Hart. It was just as well, he thought, to take one step further from danger by changing their lodging. When this was done, and Sherebiah kept the purse, Harry was amazed to find how much further his money went. It would not have surprised him if the weekly bill had been reduced by a small amount; but when he discovered that, though he fared quite as well, the expenses were not half what they had been, he began to think that Sherebiah possessed some talisman against the cupidity of London innkeepers. He found, too, that he was left much more to himself, and wondered why, with the change of lodging, Sherebiah’s watchfulness appeared to have diminished.
He was walking with Godfrey Fanshawe one cold January afternoon by Pye Corner, when he was attracted by a crowd of people gazing at a street show that, to judge by their laughter and applause, was exceedingly entertaining. Elbowing their way through the stragglers on the outskirts, the two young fellows arrived at a position whence they could see what was going on. A group of posture-masters were performing, and at the moment of Harry’s arrival, a short thickset man, dressed in fantastic costume, and with painted face, was dancing on his knees with his toes in his hands, keeping time to the music of a flute and a violin. The tune was a merry one, and the movements of the acrobat irresistibly funny, so that every member of the crowd roared with laughter.
“Adzooks!” exclaimed Fanshawe, “the fellow’s face is the funniest part of the performance. Look’ee, Harry, ’tis as sober as a judge’s on assize; one would think ’twere a hanging matter.”
Harry had been so tickled by this odd mode of dancing that he had not noticed the performer’s features. He glanced at them now, started with a sudden gasp, and cried:
“By the Lord Harry, ’tis——”
“’Tis what?” said Fanshawe, looking at him in surprise.
“Oh, nothing!”
“Come, I scent a mystery. Unravel, sir!”
“’Tis nothing. See, Fanshawe, the dance is over. Let us go on.”
Without waiting for his companion, he pushed his way back through the crowd.
“Faith, I don’t understand you of late, Rochester,” said Fanshawe in a half-vexed tone, when he overtook him. “You’re moody, full of whimsies, all starts and surprises. Would to Heaven that the duke would bethink him of that paper you gave him! You need settling in life. Why don’t you go to him, or to Lord Godolphin again? ’Tis few suitors but would show more perseverance.”
“Not I. ’Twas against the grain to beg even one favour. I’d rather earn my bread by scraping a fiddle, or dancing on my knees like—like the poor fellow there.”
“Well, let me tell you, you’ll rue your independence. Adsbud, who would get on in this world if he didn’t pay court to the great! Your starveling poet writes a flattering dedication to a lord—for pay! Your snivelling parson toadies to the lord of the manor—for a meal! I except your father, Harry; he was a rare one. ’Tis the way o’ the world; we must all do it, or pay the penalty.”
“Be the penalty what it will, I’ll pay it rather than play lick-spittle to any man.”
Fanshawe shrugged. “By the way,” he said, “Mr. Berkeley is in town—to pay his court to someone, I swear. ’Tis said he is buying a commission for that cub his son; pray Heaven it be not in my regiment! That’s the way o’ the world again. Here’s Piers Berkeley, the young popinjay, all grins and frippery, like to carry the Queen’s colours in a fine regiment because his father has a long purse, and you, a deal more fit for it, kicking your heels for want of a rich father or a richer patron. I fear ’tis all up with your chances now; but I wish you luck. I go to Flanders in a week; home to-morrow to say good-bye; who knows when we may meet again!”
The two friends bade each other a cordial farewell; then Harry returned sadly to his lodging. Some two hours later Sherebiah came back.
“What do ’ee think, Master Harry?” he said. “I ha’ seed old Squire.”
“I knew he was in town,” replied Harry. “And what do you think I’ve seen, Sherry?”
Detecting a something strange in his tone, Sherebiah gave him a hard look.
“I never was no good at guessen,” he said. “Mebbe the German giant at Hercules’ Pillars, or the liven fairy in Bridges Street.”
“No, ’twas no giant and no fairy, but a short man—about your height, Sherry—with a round face—just as round as yours—and a solemn look—like yours at whiles; and what think you he was doing? He was dancing on his knees, with a crowd of numskulls round him grinning at his capers, and——”
“There now, ’twas sure to be found out, I knowed it. ’Twas me—I don’t deny it, ’cos bean’t no good.”
“Now I know why you wanted to keep the purse, you old dissembler. You eke out my little store with the pence your antics fetch. Sherry, I love thee; I do indeed. But how did you learn those fantastic tricks with your knees?”
“Oh, I ha’ done a bit o’ tumblen in my time; ay sure.”
“You seem to have done a bit of everything. But when? and why? You must tell me all about it.”
“Some day mebbe. Ha’ led a motley life for a man o’ peace; so ’tis. ’Twould make old feyther o’ mine drop all his old bones in a heap if so be as he knowed all my lines o’ life. The time’ll come to tell ’ee, sir, but ’tis not yet, no.”
That was the end of Sherebiah’s acrobatic performances. From that day he stuck to Harry more closely than ever; and the weekly bills increased. They had been in town now for nearly two months, and by dint of the greatest economy Sherebiah thought that the money might last for a fortnight longer. Then the wolf would be at the door. Harry had not told his man of Jan Grootz’s offer, though he surmised, from a word Sherebiah let fall, that he knew of it. Hoping against hope, he waited and longed for some sign from the duke. Every day Sherebiah went to the Angel and Crown to see if a letter had come, and every day he came back disappointed. He had not given the host his new address, for reasons of his own; and when on one of his visits he learnt that a man had enquired for the present whereabouts of Mr. Harry Rochester, he hugged himself on his prudence. He would not have been so well pleased if he had known that on the very next day, when he returned from the Angel and Crown by a roundabout way to his inn in Leicester Fields, he was shadowed by a man who had waited for several hours for the opportunity. And he would undoubtedly have counselled a second change of abode if he had known that the spy, after assuring himself that Harry Rochester was a guest of the inn, had gone hotfoot to Captain Aglionby.
Another week went by. On Saturday night Sherebiah counted up the contents of his purse, and found that by the end of the next week he would have spent the uttermost farthing.
“I give it back to ’ee, sir,” he said. “Come Monday morn, I go to find work.”
“Not so fast, Sherry. We share alike; when you go to find work, I go too. The duke may send for me even at the eleventh hour.”
“A plague on the duke! I wish I may never hear of dukes again to th’ end o’ my mortal days. A duke’s a bubble, and that’s the truth on’t. Better be an honest man, as Mynheer Grootz says.”
“’Tis mere forgetfulness, I am sure, Sherry. He has mislaid the paper, I suspect, and his mind being filled with weightier matters, has forgotten that even so insignificant a person as myself exists.”
“’Tis my belief he never did a kindness to man, woman, or child in all his born days. Why, all the chairmen and hackney coachmen know un; ay, and madam his duchess too. My lady will haggle with an oyster-wench over a ha’penny, and the only thing my lord gives away for nowt is his smile. Hang dukes and duchesses, say I!”
“Well, Sherry, I can’t gainsay you, because I don’t know. We’ll give him three days’ grace, and then——”
He sighed. The world looked black to him. He knew no trade, had practised no art, had no means to enter a profession. He turned over in his mind the possible openings. He could not apprentice himself to a merchant or handicraftsman, for that needed money. He might perhaps get a clerkship in a goldsmith’s or a warehouse; Sir Godfrey Fanshawe, no doubt, would vouch for his respectability! He almost envied the footmen of gentlemen of quality, who wore a livery, earned six pounds a year, and a crown a week extra for gloves and powder. He writhed on his sleepless bed that night as he contrasted his present circumstances with his former prospects and his recent imaginings. A clergyman,—an officer of the Queen’s, forsooth! he was a pauper, a beggar, with nothing but his health and his wits. Then he rated himself for his despondency. “Fancy snivelling,” he said to himself, “because a duke hasn’t the grace or the time to remember a promise! What would my father think of me? Here have I wasted precious time waiting on a duke’s pleasure when I might have been turning the weeks to some profit. And I was too proud to accept the Dutchman’s friendly offer. Egad, I’ll go to him on Monday and beg him to give me employment; sink my pride for good and all.”
So possessed was he by his determination that Sunday passed all too slowly. On Monday morning he walked early to the Angel and Crown and asked for Mynheer Grootz. The landlord replied that Mynheer Grootz had left the inn on Friday, removing all his baggage. He was about to sail for Holland, and, as the wind favoured, it was probable that his ship had already left the Thames. This news was a terrible damper. Harry had built confidently on the anticipated interview. Mingled with his gratitude for the coming favour, he even felt a pleasant glow at his condescension in accepting service so much beneath him. And now this new house of cards was toppled down! He turned gloomily away, and wandered aimlessly through the streets, disposed, under the first sting of the disappointment, to believe that fate had indeed a spite against him. He was glad he had said nothing to Sherebiah of his intention, being in no mood to endure condolences, in word or look. “What a useless loon I am!” he said to himself bitterly. “Sherry can earn his living by tumbling in the streets, and maybe in dozens of other ways; I can do nothing. Even Piers Berkeley has a commission in the army—that puppy!”
But Harry was never long in the dumps. He was only a boy, and the misfortunes that had befallen him so suddenly were sufficient excuse for his passing fits of moodiness; but his was naturally a sanguine temper, and by the time he reached the inn his brow had cleared and he was able to eat his dinner with good appetite.
“The last but one, Sherry,” he said with a smile. “After to-morrow the purse will be all but dry, and then I shall have to earn my bread. What do you say? Will you teach me to stand on my head, to begin with?”
“Zooks, sir, dont’ee put it so terrible low. Look’ee, now, I ha’ some score o’ guineas behind my belt; ye’re welcome to the loan on ’em till your ship do come home.”
“You’re a good fellow, Sherry, but I couldn’t think of it. Do you want to make me still more ashamed of myself?”
“Well then, sir, why not go to my lord Marlborough’s noble house and walk up and down outside till the duke comes out, and stand full in his path and catch his eye—or mebbe his missis’; her med be taken wi’ ’ee and command her good man to remember ’ee, for by all accounts she——”
“Hold your tongue, sirrah!” cried Harry with a touch of anger. “Hang about a great man’s door, like Lazarus waiting for the offal! No indeed. Nay. To-morrow we shall be adrift; pray God a fair breeze will carry us into port. Sherry, you had better go and tell the landlord we shall leave him to-morrow. Ask for the reckoning; we will pay the score and begin the morning at least free men.”
In half an hour Sherebiah returned with the bill. Harry pulled a long face as he glanced at it. He untied the purse-strings and laid his money out on the table.
“’Tis worse than I thought,” he said ruefully. “In some unconscionable fashion the bill mounts higher this week; I am ten shillings short without vails to the servants.”
“Ah, I know Lun’on folk, I do. But don’t let that trouble ’ee, sir; ten shillens won’t make a great hole in my store.”
“But I won’t have your money. Nay, Sherry, call it a whim of mine; ’tis our last day; the charges are mine; to-morrow we must start afresh. I have some trinkets in my box; their worth I know not; but you can take one or two to a goldsmith’s and place them with him until the luck turns. You will do that better than I.”
He left the room and came back with a miniature set in gold and a brooch of antique make. Sherebiah looked at them with a deliberative air.
“Baubles like these sell for next to nowt,” he said. “’Tis not all gold that glitters. But I’ll take ’em, sir, and cheapen ’em as best I may. Be I to pledge ’em in my name or yours?”
“It doesn’t matter—whichever you like. I’ll sit by the fire and read while you are gone.”
“Ay, ’tis a raw and nippen afternoon, and there be true comfort in a log fire.”
He flung his cloak over his shoulders and was gone. Harry went to his room and brought down a volume of his father’s containing Mr. John Milton’s poem of “Samson Agonistes”. In the dark afternoon he read for some time by the light of the fire, finding a certain melancholy pleasure in fitting Samson’s woeful laments to his own case.
“So much I feel my genial spirits droop,
My hopes all flat”,
he murmured, and then closed the book over his finger and gazed into the ruddy cavern of the fire till his eyes ached. Sherebiah seemed a long time gone; a feeling of restlessness stole upon Harry. He let the book fall from his hand, rose, and paced about the room, stopping once or twice at the narrow window to look out into the street. The air was misty, the pavement sticky with mud; every passing horse stepped under a blanket of vapour; the wayfarers were muffled about their necks and walked as though bent under a load. Harry fidgeted, wondering why Sherebiah was so long. His reading had not cheered him; his musing did but increase his gloom. At last, unable to endure inaction longer, he put on his cloak and hat, took up the cudgel without which, in deference to Sherebiah’s advice, he seldom went abroad, and sallied forth into the street, to walk off his fit of the dumps, if that might be.
By the flickering light above the door he saw three sailors lurching up the street. He passed them, giving them but a casual glance, turned into the Strand, and spent some time looking listlessly into the lighted shops. At the door of a coffee-house he noticed a group gathered about a newspaper pasted on the wall. A manuscript supplement had just been affixed to it. When he could get near enough to see the writing, he felt a momentary interest in the announcement he read.
“The Duke of Marlborough has rid post to Cambridge, call’d thither by the desperate state of the Marquis of Blandford. It is now ’stablish’d beyond doubt that the young Lord is suffering from the Small-Pox.”
Even the great duke had his troubles. Lord Blandford was, as Harry knew, Marlborough’s only son; he was the Lord Churchill who had written to Godolphin with boyish curiosity to know what his title would be when his father became a duke. Harry passed on, more than ever convinced that the great man, beset by cares public and domestic, could have no time to think of the small concerns of a country parson’s son.
He turned into the Savoy and came by and by to the Temple Gardens, forlorn and desolate in the chill February evening. Not far behind him three sailors were sauntering in the same direction, on their way perhaps to rejoin their vessel in the Thames. The damp cold air struck Harry to the bone; he shivered and drew his cloak closer around him, and was on the point of turning to retrace his steps when there suddenly stood before him a woman, thin-clad, bare-headed, with a whining child in her arms.
“Spare a penny, kind sir, to buy bread. My lips have not touched food the livelong day, and my little boy is fair starved. Oh, sir, have pity on a poor lone woman; spare a penny, kind sir.”
Harry stopped and looked at the thin haggard cheeks, the dark-rimmed eyes, the hair hanging in loose damp wisps over the brow. The child’s feeble moans stabbed him like a knife; its poor pinched wizened face was a speaking tale of woe. Loosening his cloak, the woman all the while continuing her monotonous complaint, he untied his purse. It contained a guinea and one crown piece. At that moment the three sailors passed him, talking loudly, and laughing coarsely as they jostled the woman in their path.
“The poor creature’s need is greater than mine,” he thought. “Sherry will bring back some money. Here you are,” he said, handing her the guinea. “And for God’s sake take your little one out of the damp and cold! Good-night!”
Harry moved on, impressed by the spectacle of a misery deeper than his own, and pursued by the voluble thanks of the poor woman. He had forgotten his purpose to turn back; and was only recalled to it by the sight of the three sailors rolling on ahead. They were walking arm in arm, and from their gait Harry concluded that the middle one of the three was intoxicated, and needed the support of his comrades. One of them glanced back over his shoulder just as Harry was turning. The next moment there was a heavy thud; the drunken sailor was on the ground, the others bending over him. A hoarse cry for help caused Harry to hasten to the group.
“What is amiss?” he asked.
“Be you a surgeon, mate?” replied the man, a thickset and powerful salt. “Bill be taken wi’ a fit, sure enough. A’s foaming at the mouth.”
“No, I’m not a surgeon. I thought he was drunk.”
“Not him. Belay there; let the gentleman see.”
Harry went to the man’s head and leant over, peering into his face. Instantly the fallen sailor flung his arms round Harry’s legs and pulled them violently towards him. Unable to recover himself Harry fell backward, and before he could cry out a cloak was flung over his head and a brawny hand had him by the throat. Through the folds of cloth he heard the men with many oaths congratulate themselves on the ease with which they had accomplished their job. For a few moments he struggled violently, until he felt that resistance was hopeless. Then the cloak was tied about his neck, and he felt himself carried by two of the three, one having him by the head, the other by the heels. They walked swiftly along, and, not troubling to keep step, jolted him unpleasantly. There was a singing in his ears; he gasped for breath; and soon his physical discomfort and his fears were alike annihilated. He had lost consciousness.