The Gift of the Sailor: The String of Pearls & Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street — page 18: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

teeth, he made his way to the door, and carried in his hand a long knife, which he thought a more efficient weapon against the dog’s teeth than the iron bludgeon he had formerly used. “T hope he will attack me,” said Todd, to himself as he thought; but Tobias, who had come back from the place where they sold the preserved figs, heard him, and after devoutly in his own mind wishing that the dog would actually devour Sweeney, and aloud— “Oh dear, sir; you don’t wish that, I’m sure!” “Who told you what I wished, or what I did not? Remember, Tobias, and keep your own counsel, or it will be the worse for you, and your mother too—remember that.” The boy shrunk back. How had Sweeney Todd terrified the boy about his mother? He must have done so, or Tobias would never have shrunk as he did. Then that rascally ® barber, who we begin to suspect of more crimes than fall ordinarily to the share of man, went cautiously out of his shop door: we cannot pretend to account for why it was so, but, as faithful recorders of facts we have to state that Hector did not fly at him, but with a melancholy and subdued expression of countenance he looked up in the face of Sweeney Todd; then he whined piteously, as if he would have said, “Give me my master, and I will forgive you all that you have done; give me back my beloved master, and you shall see that I am neither revengeful nor ferocious.” This kind of expression was as legibly written in the poor creature’s countenance as if he had actually been endowed with speech, and uttered the words themselves. This was what Sweeney Todd certainly did not expect, and, to tell the truth, it staggered and astonished® him a little. He would have been glad of an excuse to commit some act of violence, but he had now none, and as he looked in the faces of the people who were around, he felt quite convinced that it would not be the most prudent thing in the world to interfere with the dog in any way that savoured of violence. “Where’s the dog’s master?” said one. “Ah, where indeed?” said Todd; “I should not wonder if he had come to some foul end!” “But I say, old soap-suds,” cried a boy; “the dog says you did it.” There was a general laugh, but the barber was by no means disconcerted, and he shortly replied. “Does he? he is wrong then.” Sweeney Todd had no desire to enter into anything like a controversy with the people, so he tured again and entered his own shop, in a distant comer of which he sat down, and folding his great gaunt-looking arms over his chest, he gave himself up to thought, and if we may judge from the expression of his countenance, those thoughts were of a pleasant anticipatory character, for now and then he gave such a grim sort of smile as might well have sat upon the features of some ogre. And now we will turn to another scene, of a widely different character. @9OOOOGOOO CORniclooo S CO)