tige of the deeds, not even a drop of blood.

"Come, take up your cutlass, come!" repeated the voice of the chief, as
with his dim lantern--now the sole light of the vault--he stood in the
shadow of the doorway.

Morton rose, took up the weapon mechanically, and followed that terrible
guide, mute and unconscious, as a Soul follows a Dream through the House
of Sleep!

CHAPTER X.

"Sleep no more!"--Macbeth

After winding through gloomy and labyrinthine passages, which conducted
to a different range of cellars from those entered by the unfortunate
Favart, Gawtrey emerged at the foot of a flight of stairs, which, dark,
narrow, and in many places broken, had been probably appropriated to
servants of the house in its days of palmier glory. By these steps the
pair regained their attic. Gawtrey placed the lantern on the table and
seated himself in silence. Morton, who had recovered his self-possession
and formed his resolution, gazed on him for some moments, equally
taciturn. At length he spoke:

"Gawtrey!"

"I bade you not call me by that name," said the coiner; for we need
scarcely say that in his new trade he had assumed a new appellation.

"It is the least guilty one by which I have known you," returned Morton,
firmly. "It is for the last time I call you by it! I demanded to see by
what means one to whom I had entrusted my fate supported himself. I have
seen," continued the young man, still firmly, but with a livid cheek and
lip, "and the tie between us is rent for ever. Interrupt me not! it is
not for me to blame you. I have eaten of your bread and drunk of your
cup. Confiding in you too blindly, and believing that you were at
least free from those dark and terrible crimes for which there is no
expiation--at least in this life--my conscience seared by distress, my
very soul made dormant by despair, I surrendered myself to one leading a
career equivocal, suspicious, dishonourable perhaps, but still not, as
I believed, of atrocity and bloodshed. I wake at the brink of the
abyss--my mother's hand beckons to me from the grave; I think I hear her
voice while I address you--I recede while it is yet time--we part, and
for ever!"

Gawtrey, whose stormy passion was still deep upon his soul, had listened
hitherto in sullen and dogged silence, with a gloomy frown on his
knitted brow; he now rose with an oath--

"Part! that I may let loose on the world a new traitor! Part! when you
have seen me fresh from an