The String of Pearls (1850), p. 68

smith's basket, consisted of two files and a chisel. He ran his fingers over them with some feeling of satisfaction.
"Now," he muttered, " if the feeling to die were upon me, here are the means; but it has passed away, and even with these small weapons, and in a cell of Newgate, I do not feel quite so helpless as I was. It will be time to die if all should fail else, but yet if I could only for a time live for revenge, what a glorious thing it would be! How I should like yet to throttle Tobias. What a pleasure it would be to me to hold that girl by the throat, who so hoodwinked me as to impose herself upon me for a boy, and hear and see her choking, How I should like to see the blood of Sir Richard Blunt weltering forth while his colour faded, and he expired gradually!"
Todd ground his teeth together in his rage.
"Yes," he added, while he moved with difficulty under the weight of his iron. "Yes, I have bidden adieu to wealth and the power that wealth would have given me. I have carried on my life of crimes for nothing, and in blood I have waded to accomplish only this world of danger that now surrounds me—to give to myself the poor privilige of suicide; but yet how fain I would live for vengeance!"
His chains rattled upon his limbs.
"Yes, for revenge. I would fain live for revenge. There are some five or six that I would like to kill! Yes, and I would gloat over their death-agonies, and shriek in their ears, 'I did it! I, Sweeney Todd, did it!'"
The fetters entangled about his legs, and threw him heavily to the floor of the cell.
He raved and cursed frightfully, until he was too much exhausted to continue such a course, and then he sat upon the floor, and with one of the files he began
working away assiduously at the iron, in order to free himself from those clogs to his movements.
As he so worked, he heard the prison clock strike ten.
"Ten," he said. "Ten already. Of a truth I did not think it was so late. I must be quick. Others have escaped from Newgate, and why should not I? The attempt will and shall be made ; and who knows but that it may be successful? A man may do much when he is resolved that he will do all he wishes or die."
Todd filed away at the chains.
"Who will stop me," he said, "with the feeling that will possess me? Who will say, "I will stop this man, or he shall kill me? No one—no one!"
The file was a good one, and it bit fairly into the iron. In the course of a quarter of an hour Todd had one wrist at liberty, and that was a great thing. He was tired, however, of the comparatively slow progress of the file, and he made a great effort to break the chains from his ankles; but he only bruised himself in the attempt to do so without succeeding.
With a feeling of exhaustion, he paused.
"Oh, that I could find an opportunity of exerting so much force against those whom I hate!" he sad.
At this moment he fancied he heard a slight noise not far from him, and every faculty was immediately strained to assist in listening for a repetition of it. It did not come again then.
"It must have been imagination," he said, "or some sound far off in the prison conveyed by echoes to this spot. I will not suffer myself to be alarmed or turned from my purpose. It is nothing—nothing. I will use the file again."
He commenced now upon the other wrist, and by the little experience he had gathered from his practice at the one which he had already filed in two, he got on more quickly with this one. He found that a long light movement of the file did more work than a rapid grating process. In much less time, then, this other wrist manacle was off, and he could lift up both his arm in freedom.
"This is something," he said. "Nay, it is much, very much indeed. I feel it, and accept it as a kind of earnest of success. Where is the man—where are the two or three men, that will dare to stand in my desperate way, when I have