Nevertheless he noticed that as they still rumbled on and on, the lights grew less and less brilliant and frequent and that the travellers grew less and less numerous; that the streets grew crookeder and narrower, and the dark and gloomy houses upon either hand more ancient and crazy.
Suddenly, in a space of darkness, a hand was laid upon his knee, and a voice spoke his name--"Oliver!" He started wide awake, and a keen, sharp pang shot through him. Just then they again passed a lantern, and as the light traversed the interior of the great coach it flashed across the face of his companion thrust close to his own. The cloak which he had wrapped around him after nightfall had fallen away, his eyes shone with a strange light, and his lips were parted with a strange smile. "Were you frightened at what you saw last night?" he said.
Oliver felt as though a thunder-bolt had fallen. Twice or thrice he strove to speak, but his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth, and refused to utter a sound; he could only nod his head. The very worst thing that he feared had happened to him. He was so frightened that it gave him the stomachache. What was to befall him next? It was through a veil of dizzy terror that he looked into that face shut up with him in the narrow confines of the coach. All had become darkness again; but in the humming silence the eyeballs of his soul still saw that strangely smiling face as the eyes of his body had seen it when the lantern light flashed upon it. He crouched in his corner, shrunk together like a rabbit before the face of a serpent. Again there came another traversing flash of light, and then he saw that the face had widened to a grin.
"And you know that I am not your rich uncle from the Americas?"
The other began laughing. "Come," said he; "you are frightened. But I am not so bad as you take me to be, or Gaspard either, for the matter of that, though he has strange habits. Also you saw what he did last night?"
For the third time Oliver nodded his head. His throat grew tighter and tighter, and he felt as though he would choke.
"Very well," said the other. "Then you understand that Gaspard and I are not to be trifled with. We are now at the end of our journey, and there is something that I would have you do for me. It was for that that I hunted you up at Flourens, and it was for that that I brought you here to Paris. If you do my bidding, no harm shall happen to you; if not--" The hand which rested upon Oliver's knee gripped it like the clutch of a hawk. "Do you understand?"