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 re