is! I was chained night and day once to a chap jist like you. Didn't I
break his spurit; didn't I spile his sleep! Ho, ho! you looks a bit less
varmently howdacious now, my flash cove!"

Varney hitherto had not known one pang of fear, one quicker beat of the
heart before. But the image presented to his irritable fancy (always
prone to brood over terrors),--the image of that companion chained to him
night and day,--suddenly quelled his courage; the image stood before him
palpably like the Oulos Oneiros,--the Evil Dream of the Greeks.

He breathed loud. The body-stealer's stupid sense saw that he had
produced the usual effect of terror, which gratified his brutal self-
esteem; he retreated slowly, inch by inch, to the door, followed by
Varney's appalled and staring eye, and closed it with such violence that
the candle was extinguished.

Varney, not daring,--yes, literally not daring,--to call aloud to Grabman
for another light, crept down the dark stairs with hurried, ghostlike
steps; and after groping at the door-handle with one hand, while the
other grasped his pistol with a strain of horror, he succeeded at last in
winning access to the street, and stood a moment to collect himself in
the open air,--the damps upon his forehead, and his limbs trembling like
one who has escaped by a hairbreadth the crash of a falling house.