about his inflamed visage in wild elf locks, the animal predominating
throughout; his eyes were small, red, and wolfish, and glared
suspiciously from beneath his scarred and tufted eyebrows; while certain
of his teeth projected, like the tusks of a boar, from out his
coarse-lipped, sensual mouth. Dwarfish in stature, and deformed in
person, Jem was built for strength; and what with his width of shoulder
and shortness of neck, his figure looked as square and as solid as a
cube. His throat and hirsute chest, constantly exposed to the weather,
had acquired a glowing tan, while his arms, uncovered to the shoulders,
and clothed with fur, like a bear's hide, down, almost, to the tips of
his fingers, presented a knot of folded muscles, the concentrated force
of which few would have desired to encounter in action.

It was now on the stroke of midnight; and Jem, who had been lying
extended upon the floor of his hovel, suddenly aroused by that warning
impulse which never fails to awaken one of his calling at the exact
moment when they require to be upon the alert, now set about fanning
into flame the expiring fuel upon his hearth. Having succeeded in
igniting further portions of the turf, Jem proceeded to examine the
security of his door and window, and satisfied that lock and bolt were
shot, and that the shutter was carefully closed, he kindled a light at
his fire, and walked towards his bedroom. But it was not to retire for
the night that the ferryman entered his dormitory. Beside his crazy
couch stood a litter of empty bottles and a beer cask, crowding the
chamber. The latter he rolled aside, and pressing his foot upon the
plank beneath it, the board gave way, and a trap-door opening,
discovered a ladder, conducting, apparently, into the bowels of the
earth. Jem leaned over the abyss, and called in hoarse accents to some
one below.

An answer was immediately returned, and a light became soon afterwards
visible at the foot of the ladder. Two figures next ascended; the first
who set foot within the ferryman's chamber was Alan Rookwood: the other,
as the reader may perhaps conjecture, was his grandson.

"Is it the hour?" asked Luke, as he sprang from out the trap-door.

"Ay," replied Jem, with a coarse laugh, "or I had not disturbed myself
to call you. But, maybe," added he, softening his manner a little,
"you'll like some refreshments before you start? A stoup of Nantz will
put you in cue for the job, ha, ha!"

"Not I," rep