“You was always in Old Orlick's way since ever you was a child. You goes out of his way this present night.

He'll have no more on you. You're dead.”

I felt that I had come to the brink of my grave. For a moment I looked wildly round my trap for any chance of escape; but there was none.

“More than that,” said he, folding his arms on the table again, “I won't have a rag of you, I won't have a bone of you, left on earth. I'll put your body in the kiln, — I'd carry two such to it, on my Shoulders, — and, let people suppose what they may of you, they shall never know nothing.”

My mind, with inconceivable rapidity followed out all the consequences of such a death.