The String of Pearls (1850), p. 613

little did he suspect that that odd customer was the criminal with whose name all London was ringing, and upon whose head—with or without a wig—so heavy a price was set.
After this, Todd made his way to a shop where second-hand clothing was bought and sold, and there he got accommodated with an old gray coat that reached down to the calves of his legs, and he bought likewise a very voluminous white cravat; and when he got into the street with these articles, and purchased at another shop a walking cane, with a great silver top to it, and put one hand behind his back and stooped very much, and moved along as if he were afflicted with all the corns and bunions that his toes could carry, and by bending his knees, decreased his height six inches, no one could have known him.
At least, so Todd flattered himself.
In this way he tottered on until he got to the immediate nighbourhood of Fleet Street. To be sure, with all his coolness and courage, he could not help shaking a little when he came to that well remembered neighbourhood.
"And I," he thought to himself, "and I by this time hoped and expected to be far over the sea, instead of being such a wretch as I am now, crawling about, as it were, amid pitfalls and all sorts of dangers! Alas! alas!"
He really shook now, and it was quite astonishing how, with his old wig, and his old gray coat and his stick, and his stooping posture, old and venerable, yes, positively venerable, Sweeny Todd actually looked.
"Ain't you well?" said a respectable man, stepping up to him. "Can I assist you?"
Todd perpetrated about half a dozen wheezing coughs, and then, no sorry for an opportunity of trying his powers of imitation of age, he replied in a tremulous voice—
"Ah, sir! Yes—old age—old age ; sir—eugh!—eugh!—oh, dear me, I feel that I am on my last legs, and that they are on the shake—old age, sir, will come on; but its a comfort to look back upon a long life well spent in deeds of charity."
"Not a doubt of it," said the stranger. "I was only afraid, sir, you were taken suddenly ill, as you stood there."
"Oh, no—no—eugh!—no. Thank you, sir."
"Good evening, sir."
"Good evening, my good sir. Oh, if I had you only in my old shop with a razor at your throat, wouldn't I polish you off!" mutterred Todd, as the stranger left him.
In the course of another minute, Todd was on the Fleet Street side of Temple Bar.
He could almost see his old house—that house in which he had passed years of deep iniquity, and which he had hoped, ere that time, would have been a heap of ruins. There it was, tall, dismal, and gaunt looking. The clock of St. Dunstan's struck eleven.
"Eleven," he muttered. "A good hour. The streets are getting deserted now, and no one will know me. I will stoop yet more, and try to look older—older still."
Todd a little over acted his part, as he tottered down Fleet Street, so that some individuals turned to look after him, which was a thing he certainly did not wish, as his great object was to escape all observation if possibly he could; so he corrected that, and went on rather more strongly ; and finally he came exactly opposite to his own house, and getting partially into a door-way, he looked long and fixedly at it.
What thoughts, at that time, chased each other through the guilty mind of that man, it is hard to say; but he stood like a statue, fixing his regards upon the house for the space of about a quarter of an hour.
Once only he clapped his teeth together, and gave a sort of savage growl.
It was lucky for Todd that no one saw him just then, or they would have bought him rather an extraordinary old man.