Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 148: what you’re looking at

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

THE DUNGEON 131 significaney, the candle sank down in its socket and was extinguished. A panic terror seized upon the commercial traveller; for the scene of death which he had just witnessed, and to the contemplation whereof he had been so suddenly and un- expectedly impelled by circumstances, was horrible and shocking. There was likewise something appalling in the simultaneousness with which the living man had changed into a breathless corpse and the chamber was plunged into total darkness; and the state of excitement in which Page had been kept for many, many hours now underwent a rapid and fearful reaction. Grasping, however, the pocketbook which he had taken from beneath the old man’s pillow, he hastened precipitately down the stairs, his almost frantic speed accelerated by the horrible thought that somebody or something was pursuing him, and that the cold hand of a corpse would suddenly be laid upon his shoulder or would clutch the skirts of his coat. On reaching the front door, he began to breathe a little more freely; and while he paused for an instant to secure the pocketbook about his person, a sense of all the danger with which his egress from the house would be attended rushed back to his mind. The death-scene had temporarily driven from his recollection the previous incidents of the night; but now he remembered that he had escaped from a horrible dungeon, and that should he encounter any of the Magsman’s party while issuing forth into the street, his recapture and renewed imprisonment were inevitable. Nevertheless, he could not remain longer in this house of death, for the echoes of his own footsteps appeared to be the sounds of the corpse descending the stairs in pursuit of him! Opening the door, therefore, with the courage of utter desperation, Mr. Page stepped across the threshold, and a rapid glance up and down the narrow court in which he now found himself afforded the encouraging assurance that his movements were unobserved. That hurried, anxious glance was sufficient to show the commercial traveller that the houses enclosing this vile alley into which he had emerged were poor and wretched in out- ward appearance, and that the locality was evidently a low and disreputable neighbourhood. For an instant his eyes GOMmiicdooks (S©)