Charles Dickens: Barnaby Rudge

Chapter 16 (continued)

At last, one man--he was one of those whose commerce lay among the graves--resolved to question this strange companion. Next night, when he had eat his poor meal voraciously (he was accustomed to do that, they had observed, as though he had no other in the day), this fellow sat down at his elbow.

'A black night, master!'

'It is a black night.'

'Blacker than last, though that was pitchy too. Didn't I pass you near the turnpike in the Oxford Road?'

'It's like you may. I don't know.'

'Come, come, master,' cried the fellow, urged on by the looks of his comrades, and slapping him on the shoulder; 'be more companionable and communicative. Be more the gentleman in this good company. There are tales among us that you have sold yourself to the devil, and I know not what.'

'We all have, have we not?' returned the stranger, looking up. 'If we were fewer in number, perhaps he would give better wages.'

'It goes rather hard with you, indeed,' said the fellow, as the stranger disclosed his haggard unwashed face, and torn clothes. 'What of that? Be merry, master. A stave of a roaring song now'--

'Sing you, if you desire to hear one,' replied the other, shaking him roughly off; 'and don't touch me if you're a prudent man; I carry arms which go off easily--they have done so, before now--and make it dangerous for strangers who don't know the trick of them, to lay hands upon me.'

'Do you threaten?' said the fellow.

'Yes,' returned the other, rising and turning upon him, and looking fiercely round as if in apprehension of a general attack.

His voice, and look, and bearing--all expressive of the wildest recklessness and desperation--daunted while they repelled the bystanders. Although in a very different sphere of action now, they were not without much of the effect they had wrought at the Maypole Inn.