cold.

I asked of myself, what was it that this desperate Being was
resolved to grow. My breast made no response.

I ventured to implore him to explain his meaning. With a scornful
laugh, he uttered this dark prophecy:

'I'LL GROW ONE. AND, MARK MY WORDS, IT SHALL HAUNT YOU!'

We parted in the storm, after I had forced half-a-crown on his
acceptance, with a trembling hand. I conclude that something
supernatural happened to the steamboat, as it bore his reeking
figure down the river; but it never got into the papers.

Two years elapsed, during which I followed my profession without
any vicissitudes; never holding so much as a motion, of course. At
the expiration of that period, I found myself making my way home to
the Temple, one night, in precisely such another storm of thunder
and lightning as that by which I had been overtaken on board the
steamboat - except that this storm, bursting over the town at
midnight, was rendered much more awful by the darkness and the
hour.

As I turned into my court, I really thought a thunderbolt would
fall, and plough the pavement up. Every brick and stone in the
place seemed to have an echo of its own for the thunder. The
waterspouts were overcharged, and the rain came tearing down from
the house-tops as if they had been mountain-tops.