The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 33: what you’re looking at

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

16 REYNOLDS’ WORKS so awfully repulsive, something so bloodthirsty and cruel, in Chiffin’s look, that to meet him even in the crowded street and at broad noonday would startle the most courageous and self-possessed. Indeed, Ralph Farefield himself could never look upon this man without experiencing a cold chill creep over him and penetrate to his very heart’s core; but yet he admitted him into his confidence, because he was just the unscrupulous demon fitted for his purpose. By the time all Ralph’s arrangements were made with Chiffin the Cannibal, the emissary returned from Lincoln- shire, and gave such a report that there seemed not the shghtest doubt of being enabled to carry the nefarious project into successful execution. Chiffin accordingly set off for Lincolnshire, simultaneously with three of his most faithful confederates. They took different routes, so as to avoid suspicion, but having previously settled upon the point where they were te meet in the neighbourhood of Saxondale. Chiffin’s instructions were positive and fearfully definite. The child was to be carried off from its nurse, put to death by means of a poison procured for the purpose, and then left in some public place or thoroughfare where it was sure to be discovered, so that its death might be a fact not merely established but also of notoriety. True to the plan which he had chalked out, Ralph Fare- field now appeared in such public places in London as to secure the certainty of a host of witnesses being enabled to testify that he did not at this period quit the metropolis even for a single day. He passed the forenoon at billiard- tables, visited Tattersall’s and the parks in the afternoon, dined in the evening in the coffee-rooms of hotels, and spent the greater portion of his nights at gaming-tables. Thus ten days passed, during which interval he endured no small amount of suspense. He had forbidden his villainous agents to communicate with him by letter, for fear of miscarriage or any other accident which might lead to discovery; and thus during these ten days he knew nothing of what passed. At the expiration of that time he received an intimation that Chiffin had returned to London, and he at once proceeded to the low public-house, or boozing-ken, where he was to meet that dreadful man. On arriving at the place of appointment, he found Chiffin alone in a private room, and as the ruffian’s countenance was too diabolical to betray any deeper vil- CONNIE DOO KS (E(0)