Suddenly he stopped and turned. And then perceiving Athelstan Taylor as he stood by the half-open door watching him intently, he addressed him exactly as though he were one of a succession of applicants or customers, whom he had satisfied so far.
"Now who might you be, master? 'And over your job! I'll be answerable to see to it by to-morrow forenoon." He seemed for the moment quite composed and businesslike, then suddenly changed to shrewd suspicion. "Unless you're--unless you're--unless you're.... No!--would you? That's not playing fair, by Goard! Come--you're a gentleman!--give a beggar his fair chance...." For a sort of wily approach, as though to somehow circumvent an object of suspicion, had been promptly intercepted, and he found himself firmly held as before. Then an intolerable horror seemed to seize on him quite suddenly. "God's mercy--keep him off--keep him off! I'll never let on about him to no one. I promise. Only give me a blooming Testament. I'll swear!" He asked several times for a Testament, variously described, rather to the amusement than otherwise of his hearer, whose sense of language discriminated between words with meanings and expletives without. The drunkard's manner seemed to him to throw doubt on the validity of any affidavit made on an unstained volume.
But there was no amusement--nothing but a shudder--to be got out of the intense conviction of his delirium that there was some horror--some spectre or nightmare, God knows what!--in ambush behind the man who held him. Those who have nursed any ordinary fever-patient through the hours of low vitality in the night, know how hard it is to struggle against a sort of belief in the reality of his delusions--against the sympathetic dread, at least, that all but does duty for a real belief. In _delirium tremens_ this conviction is overwhelming, and the Rev. Athelstan almost felt it would be an easement, just once, to glance round behind him, and make sure there was no one else in the room. And this, although the drunkard's description seemed to apply to a conjurer (with the usual drawback) who had escaped from his coffin, but might be got back if we was sharp. His conviction of the reality of this person was too fervid to be ridiculous, or anything but unearthly; even when he added, as confirmatory, that he was a Hebrew conjuror, as well as a sanguinary one. Simon Magus, perhaps?--thought the Rev. Athelstan. And when he told his friend Gus Fossett of this after, he pretended it had made him laugh.