The String of Pearls (1850), p. 618

that bolt the plank slowly moved, and then Todd caught the end of it in his hand, and pulled it right down, so that it assumed a perpendicular aspect completely. Holding then the piece of wood to which he had attached the wax light in his mouth, he climbed carefully and noiselessly up into his old shop; and when there he replaced the plank, and on the end of the board which was the counterpoise to the chair, he placed a weight, which he knew where to lay his hands upon, and which kept the chair in its place, although a very little would have overcome the counterpoise, and sent it down to the cellar below.
Todd extinguished his light, and the moment he did so, he saw a very faint illumination coming from the parlour through a portion of the door, into which a square of glass was let in, and through which he, Todd, used to glare at poor Tobias.
The sound of voices, too, came upon his ears, and he laid himself flat down on the floor, close to the wall, under a kind of bench that ran along it for a considerable distance.
"I am certain I heard something," said a voice, and then the parlour-door was opened, and a broad flash of light came into the shop. "I am quite sure I heard an odd noise."
"Oh, nonsense," said some one else. "Nonsense."
"But I did, I tell you."
"Yes, you fancied it half-an-hour ago, and it turned out to be nothing at all. Lord bless you, if I were to go on fancying things out of what I have heard since I have been in this house, minding it for Sir Richard Blunt, I should have been out of my mind long before this, I can tell you."
"But it was very odd."
"Well, the shop is not so large; you can soon see if Todd is in it. Ha! ha! ha!"
"No, no, I don't expect to see Todd there exactly, I confess; it would not be a very likely place in which to find him."
"Well, is there anything now?"
"No—no. It all seems much as usual, and yet I thought I did hear a noise; but I suppose it was nothing, or a rat, perhaps, for there are lots, they say, below. It might have been a rat. I did not think of that before, and I feel all the easier now at the idea."
"Then, come and finish our game."
"Very good—all's right. You make a little drop of brandy-and-water, and we will just have this game out before we go to rest, for I am getting tired and it's late."
"Not quite twelve yet."
"Ain't it? There it goes by St. Dunstan's clock."
Todd counted the strokes of the clock, and by the time they ceased to reverberate in the night air, the man who most unquestionably had heard a noise in the shop, had gone into the parlour again, half satisfied that it was a rat, and sat down to the game at cards that had been interrupted.
These were two men that had been put into the house to mind it, until the authorities should determine what to do with it, by Sir Richard Blunt. They were not officers of any skill or repute, although they were both constables; but then bar Richard did not consider that anything in the shape of great intelligence was required in merely taking care of an empty house—for the idea of Todd ever visiting that place again had certainly been one that did not even enter the far-seeing brain of the magistrate.
"It's my deal," Todd heard one of them say, "but you go on, while I mix the brandy-and-water."
"Indeed!" muttered Todd, as he gathered up his gaunt for from under the bench. "Indeed! So there are two of you, are there? Well, if there is another world, you can keep each other company on your road to it, for I am not going to let your lives stand in the way of my projects. No—no, I shall yet polish somebody off in my old place, and it is a pleasure that it should be two