he stretched himself recumbent on two chairs, and
groaned; and then he started up.

'Invisible insects of diabolical activity swarm in this place. I am
tickled and twitched all over. Mentally, I have now committed a burglary
under the meanest circumstances, and the myrmidons of justice are at my
heels.'

'I am quite as bad,' said Lightwood, sitting up facing him, with a
tumbled head; after going through some wonderful evolutions, in which
his head had been the lowest part of him. 'This restlessness began with
me, long ago. All the time you were out, I felt like Gulliver with the
Lilliputians firing upon him.'

'It won't do, Mortimer. We must get into the air; we must join our dear
friend and brother, Riderhood. And let us tranquillize ourselves by
making a compact. Next time (with a view to our peace of mind) we'll
commit the crime, instead of taking the criminal. You swear it?'

'Certainly.'

'Sworn! Let Tippins look to it. Her life's in danger.'

Mortimer rang the bell to pay the score, and Bob appeared to transact
that business with him: whom Eugene, in his careless extravagance, asked
if he would like a situation in the lime-trade?

'Thankee sir, no sir,' said Bob. 'I've a good sitiwation here, sir.'

'If you change your mind at any time,' returned Eugene, 'come to me at
my works, and you'll always find an opening in the lime-kiln.'

'Thankee sir,' said Bob.

'This is my partner,' said Eugene, 'who keeps the books and attends to
the wages. A fair day's wages for a fair day's work is ever my partner's
motto.'

'And a very good 'un it is, gentlemen,' said Bob, receiving his fee, and
drawing a bow out of his head with his right hand, very much as he would
have drawn a pint of beer out of the beer engine.

'Eugene,' Mortimer apostrophized him, laughing quite heartily when they
were alone again, 'how CAN you be so ridiculous?'

'I am in a ridiculous humour,' quoth Eugene; 'I am a ridiculous fellow.
Everything is ridiculous. Come along!'

It passed into Mortimer Lightwood's mind that a change of some sort,
best expressed perhaps as an intensification of all that was wildest and
most negligent and reckless in his friend, had come upon him in the last
half-hour or so. Thoroughly used to him as he was, he found something
new and strained in him that was for the moment perplexing. This passed
into his mind, and passed out again; but he remembered it afterwards.

'There's where she sits, you see,' said Eugene