badger people's lives out. It would be blame to me, and not praise,
if I had. People are put in the Hulks because they murder, and be-
cause they rob, and forge, and do all sorts of bad; and they always
begin by asking questions. Now, you get along to bed!'

I was never allowed a candle to light me to bed, and, as I went
upstairs in the dark, with my head tingling--from Mrs. Joe's
thimble having played the tambourine upon it, to accompany her
last words--I felt fearfully sensible of the great convenience that
the hulks were handy for me. I was clearly on my way there.
I had begun by asking questions, and I was going to rob Mrs.
Joe.

Since that time, which is far enough away now, I have often
thought that few people know what secrecy there is in the young
under terror. No matter how unreasonable the terror, so that it be
terror. I was in mortal terror of the young man who wanted my
heart and liver; I was in mortal terror of my interlocutor with the
iron leg; I was in mortal terror of myself, from whom an awful
promise had been extracted; I had no hope of deliverance through
my all-powerful sister, who repulsed me at every turn; I am afraid
to think of what I might have done on requirement, in the secrecy
of my terror.

If I slept at all that night, it was only to imagine myself drift-
ing down the river on a strong springtide, to the Hulks; a ghostly
pirate calling out to me through a speaking-trumpet, as I passed the
gibbet-station, that I had better come ashore and be hanged there
at once, and not put it off. I was afraid to sleep, even if I had been
inclined, for I knew that at the first faint dawn of morning I must
rob the pantry. There was no doing it in the night, for there was
no getting a light by easy friction then; to have got one, I must
have struck it out of flint and steel, and have made a noise like
the very pirate himself rattling his chains.

As soon as the great black velvet pall outside my little window
was shot with grey, I got up and went downstairs; every board
upon the way, and every crack in every board, calling after me,
'Stop thief!' and 'Get up, Mrs. Joe!' In the pantry, which was
far more abundantly supplied than usual, owing to the season, I
was very much alarmed, by a hare hanging up by the heels, whom
I rather thought I caught, when my back was half turned, winking.

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