y
dream through all our after life: a warm-hearted, harmless, affectionate
creature, who never offended you, or did you wrong, but on whom you have
vented the malice and hatred you have conceived for your nephew, and
whom you have made an instrument for wreaking your bad passions upon
him: what if we tell you that, sinking under your persecution, sir, and
the misery and ill-usage of a life short in years but long in suffering,
this poor creature has gone to tell his sad tale where, for your part in
it, you must surely answer?'

'If you tell me,' said Ralph; 'if you tell me that he is dead, I forgive
you all else. If you tell me that he is dead, I am in your debt and
bound to you for life. He is! I see it in your faces. Who triumphs now?
Is this your dreadful news; this your terrible intelligence? You see
how it moves me. You did well to send. I would have travelled a hundred
miles afoot, through mud, mire, and darkness, to hear this news just at
this time.'

Even then, moved as he was by this savage joy, Ralph could see in the
faces of the two brothers, mingling with their look of disgust and
horror, something of that indefinable compassion for himself which he
had noticed before.

'And HE brought you the intelligence, did he?' said Ralph, pointing
with his finger towards the recess already mentioned; 'and sat there,
no doubt, to see me prostrated and overwhelmed by it! Ha, ha, ha! But I
tell him that I'll be a sharp thorn in his side for many a long day to
come; and I tell you two, again, that you don't know him yet; and that
you'll rue the day you took compassion on the vagabond.'

'You take me for your nephew,' said a hollow voice; 'it would be better
for you, and for me too, if I were he indeed.'

The figure that he had seen so dimly, rose, and came slowly down. He
started back, for he found that he confronted--not Nicholas, as he had
supposed, but Brooker.

Ralph had no reason, that he knew, to fear this man; he had never feared
him before; but the pallor which had been observed in his face when he
issued forth that night, came upon him again. He was seen to tremble,
and his voice changed as he said, keeping his eyes upon him,

'What does this fellow here? Do you know he is a convict, a felon, a
common thief?'

'Hear what he has to tell you. Oh, Mr Nickleby, hear what he has to
tell you, be he what he may!' cried the brothers, with such emphatic
earnestness, that Ralph turned to them in wonder. They point