The Dangers thicken, and the Worst is told.

　　Instead of going home, Ralph threw himself into the first streetcabriolet he could find, and, directing the driver towards thepolice-office of the district in which Mr Squeers’s misfortuneshad occurred, alighted at a short distance from it, and, dischargingthe man, went the rest of his way thither on foot. Inquiring for theobject of his solicitude, he learnt that he had timed his visit well;for Mr Squeers was, in fact, at that moment waiting for a hackneycoach he had ordered, and in which he purposed proceeding to hisweek’s retirement, like a gentleman.

　　Demanding speech with the prisoner, he was ushered into akind of waiting-room in which, by reason of his scholasticprofession and superior respectability, Mr Squeers had beenpermitted to pass the day. Here, by the light of a guttering andblackened candle, he could barely discern the schoolmaster, fastasleep on a bench in a remote corner. An empty glass stood on atable before him, which, with his somnolent condition and a verystrong smell of brandy and water, forewarned the visitor that MrSqueers had been seeking, in creature comforts, a temporaryforgetfulness of his unpleasant situation.

　　It was not a very easy matter to rouse him: so lethargic andheavy were his slumbers. Regaining his faculties by slow and faintglimmerings, he at length sat upright; and, displaying a veryyellow face, a very red nose, and a very bristly beard: the jointeffect of which was considerably heightened by a dirty white  1093handkerchief, spotted with blood, drawn over the crown of hishead and tied under his chin: stared ruefully at Ralph in silence,until his feelings found a vent in this pithy sentence:

　　‘I say, young fellow, you’ve been and done it now; you have!’

　　‘What’s the matter with your head?’ asked Ralph.

　　‘Why, your man, your informing kidnapping man, has been andbroke it,’ rejoined Squeers sulkily; ‘that’s what’s the matter with it.

　　You’ve come at last, have you?’

　　‘Why have you not sent to me?’ said Ralph. ‘How could I cometill I knew what had befallen you?’

　　‘My family!’ hiccuped Mr Squeers, raising his eye to the ceiling:

　　‘my daughter, as is at that age when all the sensibilities is a-coming out strong in blow—my son as is the young Norval ofprivate life, and the pride and ornament of a doting willage—here’s a shock for my family! The coat-of-arms of the Squeerses istore, and their sun is gone down into the ocean wave!’

　　‘You have been drinking,’ said Ralph, ‘and have not yet sleptyourself sober.’

　　‘I haven’t been drinking your health, my codger,’ replied MrSqueers; ‘so you have nothing to do with that.’

　　Ralph suppressed the indignation which the schoolmaster’saltered and insolent manner awakened, and asked again why hehad not sent to him.

　　‘What should I get by sending to you?’ returned Squeers. ‘To beknown to be in with you wouldn’t do me a deal of good, and theywon’t take bail till they know something more of the case, so heream I hard and fast: and there are you, loose and comfortable.’

　　‘And so must you be in a few days,’ retorted Ralph, withaffected good-humour. ‘They can’t hurt you, man.’

　　  1094‘Why, I suppose they can’t do much to me, if I explain how itwas that I got into the good company of that there cadaverous oldSlider,’ replied Squeers viciously, ‘who I wish was dead andburied, and resurrected and dissected, and hung upon wires in aanatomical museum, before ever I’d had anything to do with her.

　　This is what him with the powdered head says this morning, in somany words: “Prisoner! As you have been found in company withthis woman; as you were detected in possession of this document;as you were engaged with her in fraudulently destroying others,and can give no satisfactory account of yourself; I shall remandyou for a week, in order that inquiries may be made, and evidencegot. And meanwhile I can’t take any bail for your appearance.”

　　Well then, what I say now is, that I can give a satisfactory accountof myself; I can hand in the card of my establishment and say, “Iam the Wackford Squeers as is therein named, sir. I am the manas is guaranteed, by unimpeachable references, to be a out-andouter in morals and uprightness of principle. Whatever is wrong inthis business is no fault of mine. I had no evil design in it, sir. I wasnot aware that anything was wrong. I was merely employed by afriend, my friend Mr Ralph Nickleby, of Golden Square. Send forhim, sir, and ask him what he has to say; he’s the man; not me!”’

　　‘What document was it that you had?’ asked Ralph, evading, forthe moment, the point just raised.

　　‘What document? Why, the document,’ replied Squeers. ‘TheMadeline What’s-her-name one. It was a will; that’s what it was.’

　　‘Of what nature, whose will, when dated, how benefiting her, towhat extent?’ asked Ralph hurriedly.

　　‘A will in her favour; that’s all I know,’ rejoined Squeers, ‘andthat’s more than you’d have known, if you’d had them bellows on  1095your head. It’s all owing to your precious caution that they gothold of it. If you had let me burn it, and taken my word that it wasgone, it would have been a heap of ashes behind the fire, instead ofbeing whole and sound, inside of my great-coat.’

　　‘Beaten at every point!’ muttered Ralph.

　　‘Ah!’ sighed Squeers, who, between the brandy and water andhis broken head, wandered strangely, ‘at the delightful village ofDotheboys near Greta Bridge in Yorkshire, youth are boarded,clothed, booked, washed, furnished with pocket-money, providedwith all necessaries, instructed in all languages living and dead,mathematics, orthography, geometry, astronomy, trigonometry—this is a altered state of trigonomics, this is! A double 1—all,everything—a cobbler’s weapon. U-p-up, adjective, not down. S-qu-double e-r-s-Squeers, noun substantive, a educator of youth.

　　Total, all up with Squeers!’

　　His running on, in this way, had afforded Ralph an opportunityof recovering his presence of mind, which at once suggested tohim the necessity of removing, as far as possible, theschoolmaster’s misgivings, and leading him to believe that hissafety and best policy lay in the preservation of a rigid silence.

　　‘I tell you, once again,’ he said, ‘they can’t hurt you. You shallhave an action for false imprisonment, and make a profit of this,yet. We will devise a story for you that should carry you throughtwenty times such a trivial scrape as this; and if they want securityin a thousand pounds for your reappearance in case you should becalled upon, you shall have it. All you have to do is, to keep backthe truth. You’re a little fuddled tonight, and may not be able tosee this as clearly as you would at another time; but this is whatyou must do, and you’ll need all your senses about you; for a slip  1096might be awkward.’

　　‘Oh!’ said Squeers, who had looked cunningly at him, with hishead stuck on one side, like an old raven. ‘That’s what I’m to do, isit? Now then, just you hear a word or two from me. I an’t a-goingto have any stories made for me, and I an’t a-going to stick to any.

　　If I find matters going again me, I shall expect you to take yourshare, and I’ll take care you do. You never said anything aboutdanger. I never bargained for being brought into such a plight asthis, and I don’t mean to take it as quiet as you think. I let you leadme on, from one thing to another, because we had been mixed uptogether in a certain sort of a way, and if you had liked to be ill-natured you might perhaps have hurt the business, and if youliked to be good-natured you might throw a good deal in my way.

　　Well; if all goes right now, that’s quite correct, and I don’t mind it;but if anything goes wrong, then times are altered, and I shall justsay and do whatever I think may serve me most, and take advicefrom nobody. My moral influence with them lads,’ added MrSqueers, with deeper gravity, ‘is a tottering to its basis. Theimages of Mrs Squeers, my daughter, and my son Wackford, allshort of vittles, is perpetually before me; every other considerationmelts away and vanishes, in front of these; the only number in allarithmetic that I know of, as a husband and a father, is numberone, under this here most fatal go!’

　　How long Mr Squeers might have declaimed, or how stormy adiscussion his declamation might have led to, nobody knows.

　　Being interrupted, at this point, by the arrival of the coach and anattendant who was to bear him company, he perched his hat withgreat dignity on the top of the handkerchief that bound his head;and, thrusting one hand in his pocket, and taking the attendant’s  1097arm with the other, suffered himself to be led forth.

　　‘As I supposed from his not sending!’ thought Ralph. ‘Thisfellow, I plainly see through all his tipsy fooling, has made up hismind to turn upon me. I am so beset and hemmed in, that they arenot only all struck with fear, but, like the beasts in the fable, havetheir fling at me now, though time was, and no longer ago thanyesterday too, when they were all civility and compliance. But theyshall not move me. I’ll not give way. I will not budge one inch!’

　　He went home, and was glad to find his housekeepercomplaining of illness, that he might have an excuse for beingalone and sending her away to where she lived: which was hardby. Then, he sat down by the light of a single candle, and began tothink, for the first time, on all that had taken place that day.

　　He had neither eaten nor drunk since last night, and, inaddition to the anxiety of mind he had undergone, had beentravelling about, from place to place almost incessantly, for manyhours. He felt sick and exhausted, but could taste nothing save aglass of water, and continued to sit with his head upon his hand;not resting nor thinking, but laboriously trying to do both, andfeeling that every sense but one of weariness and desolation, wasfor the time benumbed.

　　It was nearly ten o’clock when he heard a knocking at the door,and still sat quiet as before, as if he could not even bring histhoughts to bear upon that. It had been often repeated, and hehad, several times, heard a voice outside, saying there was a lightin the window (meaning, as he knew, his own candle), before hecould rouse himself and go downstairs.

　　‘Mr Nickleby, there is terrible news for you, and I am sent tobeg you will come with me directly,’ said a voice he seemed to  1098recognise. He held his hand above his eyes, and, looking out, sawTim Linkinwater on the steps.

　　‘Come where?’ demanded Ralph.

　　‘To our house, where you came this morning. I have a coachhere.’

　　‘Why should I go there?’ said Ralph.

　　‘Don’t ask me why, but pray come with me.’

　　‘Another edition of today!’ returned Ralph, making as thoughhe would shut the door.

　　‘No, no!’ cried Tim, catching him by the arm and speaking mostearnestly; ‘it is only that you may hear something that hasoccurred: something very dreadful, Mr Nickleby, which concernsyou nearly. Do you think I would tell you so or come to you likethis, if it were not the case?’

　　Ralph looked at him more closely. Seeing that he was indeedgreatly excited, he faltered, and could not tell what to say or think.

　　‘You had better hear this now, than at any other time,’ saidTim; ‘it may have some influence with you. For Heaven’s sakecome!’

　　Perhaps, at, another time, Ralph’s obstinacy and dislike wouldhave been proof against any appeal from such a quarter, howeveremphatically urged; but now, after a moment’s hesitation, he wentinto the hall for his hat, and returning, got into the coach withoutspeaking a word.

　　Tim well remembered afterwards, and often said, that as RalphNickleby went into the house for this purpose, he saw him, by thelight of the candle which he had set down upon a chair, reel andstagger like a drunken man. He well remembered, too, that whenhe had placed his foot upon the coach-steps, he turned round and  1099looked upon him with a face so ashy pale and so very wild andvacant that it made him shudder, and for the moment almostafraid to follow. People were fond of saying that he had some darkpresentiment upon him then, but his emotion might, perhaps, withgreater show of reason, be referred to what he had undergone thatday.

　　A profound silence was observed during the ride. Arrived attheir place of destination, Ralph followed his conductor into thehouse, and into a room where the two brothers were. He was soastounded, not to say awed, by something of a mute compassionfor himself which was visible in their manner and in that of the oldclerk, that he could scarcely speak.

　　Having taken a seat, however, he contrived to say, though inbroken words, ‘What—what have you to say to me—more than hasbeen said already?’

　　The room was old and large, very imperfectly lighted, andterminated in a bay window, about which hung some heavydrapery. Casting his eyes in this direction as he spoke, he thoughthe made out the dusky figure of a man. He was confirmed in thisimpression by seeing that the object moved, as if uneasy under hisscrutiny.

　　‘Who’s that yonder?’ he said.

　　‘One who has conveyed to us, within these two hours, theintelligence whic............