Charles Dickens: Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit

47. Chapter Forty-seven (continued)

The sun was welcome to him. There were life and motion, and a world astir, to divide the attention of Day. It was the eye of Night--of wakeful, watchful, silent, and attentive Night, with so much leisure for the observation of his wicked thoughts--that he dreaded most. There is no glare in the night. Even Glory shows to small advantage in the night, upon a crowded battle-field. How then shows Glory's blood-relation, bastard Murder!

Aye! He made no compromise, and held no secret with himself now. Murder. He had come to do it.

'Let me get down here' he said

'Short of the town, eh!' observed the coachman.

'I may get down where I please, I suppose?'

'You got up to please yourself, and may get down to please yourself. It won't break our hearts to lose you, and it wouldn't have broken 'em if we'd never found you. Be a little quicker. That's all.'

The guard had alighted, and was waiting in the road to take his money. In the jealousy and distrust of what he contemplated, he thought this man looked at him with more than common curiosity

'What are you staring at?' said Jonas.

'Not at a handsome man,' returned the guard. 'If you want your fortune told, I'll tell you a bit of it. You won't be drowned. That's a consolation for you.'

Before he could retort or turn away, the coachman put an end to the dialogue by giving him a cut with his whip, and biddig him get out for a surly dog. The guard jumped up to his seat at the same moment, and they drove off, laughing; leaving him to stand in the road and shake his fist at them. He was not displeased though, on second thoughts, to have been taken for an ill-conditioned common country fellow; but rather congratulated himself upon it as a proof that he was well disguised.