back again. They were still fishing perseveringly, when he peeped

in at the gate for the second time; but now they seemed to have got

a bite. There was a screwing and complaining sound down below,

and their bent figures were strained, as if by a weight. By slow

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

degrees the weight broke away the earth upon it, and came to the

surface. Young Jerry very well knew what it would be; but, when

he saw it, and saw his honoured parent about to wrench it open,

he was so frightened, being new to the sight, that he made off

again, and never stopped until he had run a mile or more.

He would not have stopped then, for anything less necessary

than breath, it being a spectral sort of race that he ran, and one

highly desirable to get to the end of. He had a strong idea that the

coffin he had seen was running after him; and, pictured as

hopping on behind him, bolt upright, upon its narrow end, always

on the point of overtaking him and hopping on at his side

perhaps taking his armit was a pursuer to shun. It was an

inconsistent and ubiquitous fiend too, for, while it was making the

whole night behind him dreadful, he darted out into the roadway

to avoid dark alleys, fearful of its coming hopping out of them like

a dropsical boy’s-Kite without tail and wings. It hid in doorways

too, rubbing its horrible shoulders against doors, and drawing

them up to its ears, as if it were laughing. It got into shadows on

the road, and lay cunningly on its back to trip him up. All this time

it was incessantly hopping on behind and gaining on him, so that

when the boy got to his own door he had reason for being half

dead. And even then it would not leave him, but followed him

upstairs with a bump on every stair, scrambled into bed with him,

and bumped down, dead and heavy, on his breast when he fell

asleep.

From his oppressed slumber, Young Jerry in his closet was

awakened after daybreak and before sunrise by the presence of

his father in the family room. Something had gone wrong with

him; at least so Young Jerry inferred, from the circumstance of his

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

holding Mrs. Cruncher by the ears, and knocking the back of her

head against the headboard of the bed.

“I told you I would,” said Mr. Cruncher, “and I did.”

“Jerry, Jerry, Jerry!” his wife implored.

“You oppose yourself to the profit of the business,” said Jerry,

“and me and my partners suffer. You was to honour and obey;

why the devil don’t you?”

“I try to be a good wife, Jerry,” the poor woman protested, with

tears.

“Is it being a good wife to oppose your husband’s business? Is it

honouring your husband to dishonour his business? Is it obeying

your husband to disobey him on the wital subject of his business?”

“You hadn’t taken to the dreadful business then, Jerry.”

“It’s enough for you,” retorted Mr. Cruncher, “to be the wife of

a honest tradesman, and not occupy your female mind with