It was about eleven o'clock in the night of the first Saturday of June, that the Resurrection Man—the terrible Anthony Tidkins—issued from the dwelling of Mr. Banks, the undertaker in Globe Lane, Globe Town.

Mr. Banks followed him to the threshold, and, ere he bade him good night, said, as he retained him by the sleeve, "And so you are determined to go back to the old crib?"

"Yes—to be sure I am," returned Tidkins. "I've been looking after that scoundrel Crankey Jem for the last two years, without even being able so much as to hear of him. The Bully Grand has set all his Forty Thieves to work for me; and still not a trace—not a sign of the infernal villain!"

"Well," observed Banks, "it does look as if the cussed wessel had made his-self scarce to some foreign part, where it's to be hoped he's dead, buried, and resurrectionised by this time."

"Or else he's living like a fighting-cock on all the tin he robbed me of," exclaimed Tidkins, with a savage growl. "But I'm sure he's not in London; and so I don't see any reason to prevent me from going back to my old crib. I shall feel happy again there. It's now two years and better since I left it—and I'm sick of doing nothing but hunt after a chap that's perhaps thousands of miles off."

"And all that time, you see," said Banks, "you've been doing no good for yourself or your friends; and if it wasn't for them blessed coffins on economic principles, which turn me in a decent penny, I'm sure I don't know what would have become of me and my family."

"You forget the swag we got from the old woman in Golden Lane," whispered Tidkins, impatiently. "Didn't I give you a fair half, although you never entered the place, but only kept watch outside?"

"Yes—yes," said Mr. Banks; "I know you treated me very well, Tony—as you've always done. But I'm sorry you used the wicked old creetur as you did."

"Why did she resist, then, damn her!" growled the Resurrection Man.

"Ah! well-a-day," moaned the hypocritical undertaker: "she's a blessed defunct now—a wenerable old carkiss—and all packed up nice and cozy in a hospital coffin too! But they can't get up them coffins as well as me: I can beat 'em all at that work—'cause its the economic principles as does it."

"Hold your stupid tongue, you infernal old fool!" muttered Tidkins; "and get yourself to bed at once, so that you may be up early in the morning and come to me by eight o'clock."

"You don't mean to do what you was telling me just now?" said Banks, earnestly. "Depend upon it, he'll prove too much for you."

"Not he!" exclaimed Tidkins. "I've a long—long score to settle up with him; and if he has neither seen nor heard of me for the last two years, it was only because I wanted to punish Crankey Jem first."

"And now that you can't find that cussed indiwidual," said Banks, "you mean to have a go in earnest against the Prince?"

"I do," answered Tidkins, with an abruptness which was in itself expressive of demoniac ferocity. 'You come to me to-morrow morning; and see if I won't invent some scheme that shall put Richard Markham in my power. I tell you what it is, Banks," added the Resurrection Man, in a hoarse—hollow whisper, "I hate that fellow to a degree I cannot explain; and depend upon it, he shall gnash his teeth in one of the dark cells yonder before he's a week older."

"And what good will that do you?" asked the undertaker.

"What good!" repeated Tidkins, scornfully: then, after a short pause, he turned towards Banks, and said in a low voice, "We'll make him pay an immense sum for his ransom—a sum that shall enrich us both, Ned: and then——"

"And then?" murmured Banks, interrogatively.

"And then—when I've got all I can from him," replied Tidkins, "I'll murder him!"

With these words—uttered in a tone of terrible ferocity—the Resurrection Man hastened away from the door of the undertaker's dwelling.

The sky was overcast with dark clouds of stormy menace: the night was dark; and big drops of rain began to patter down, as Tidkins hurried along the streets leading towards his own abode—that abode which he was now on the point of revisiting after an absence of two years!

At length he reached the house; and though he stopped for a few minutes to examine its outward appearance from the middle of the street, the night was so dark that he could not distinguish whether its aspect had undergone any change.

Taking from his pocket the door-key, which he had carefully retained ever since he abandoned the place after the discovery of the loss of his treasure, he soon effected an entrance into the house.

Having closed the door, he immediately lighted a lantern which he had brought with him; and then, holding it high above his head, he hastily scrutinized the walls, the stairs, and as much of the landing above the precipitate steps, as his range of vision could embrace.

There was not the least indication of the presence of intruders: the dust had accumulated upon the stairs, undisturbed by the print of footsteps; and the damp had covered the walls with a white mildew.

Tidkins was satisfied with this scrutiny, and ascended to the first-floor rooms, the doors of which were closed—as if they had never been opened during his absence of two years.

The interior appearance of the two chambers was just the same as when he was last there—save in respect to the ravages of the damp, the accumulation of the dust, and the effects of the rain which had forced its way through the roof.

"Well, nothing has been disturbed up here—that's certain enough," said Tidkins to himself. "Now for a survey of the vaults."

Taking from a shelf the bunch of skeleton-keys, which had suffered grievously from the damp, the Resurrection Man descended the stairs, issued forth into the street, and turned up the alley running along the side of the house.

His first attempt to open the door in that alley was unsuccessful, there being evidently some impediment in the lock: but a moment's reflection reminded him that he himself had broken a key in the lock, ere he had quitted the premises at the end of May, 1841.

Nearly ten minutes were occupied in picking the lock, which was sadly rusted; but at length this task was accomplished—and the Resurrection Man entered the ground-floor of his abode.

The condition in which he had found the lock of the door in the alley would have been a sufficient proof, in the estimation of any less crafty individual, that no intrusive footstep had disturbed that department of the dwelling: but Tidkins was resolved to assure himself on all points relative to the propriety of again entrusting his safety to that abode.

"I think it's all right," he muttered, holding up his lantern, and glancing around with keen looks. "Still the lock might have been picked since I was here last, and another key purposely broken in it to stave off suspicion. At any rate, it is better to examine every nook and corner of the whole place—and so I will!"

He entered the front room on the ground-floor: the resurrection tools and house-breaking implements, which were piled up in that chamber, had not been disturbed. Huge black cob-webs, dense as filthy rags, were suspended from mattock to spade, and from crow-bar to long flexible iron rod.

Tidkins turned with an air of satisfaction into the back room, where the dust lay thick upon the floor, and the walls were green with damp.

"Yes—it is all right!" he exclaimed, joyfully: "no one has been here during my absence. I suppose that villain Jem Cuffin was content with all the gold and jewels he got, and took no farther steps to molest me. But, by Satan! if ever I clap my eyes on him again!"—and the Resurrection Man ground his teeth furiously together. "Well," he continued, speaking aloud to himself in a musing strain, "it's a blessing to be able to come back and settle in the old crib! There's no place in London like it: the house in Chick Lane is nothing to it. And now that I have returned," he added, his hideous countenance becoming ominously dark and appallingly threatening, as the glare of the lantern fell upon it,—"one of these deep, cold, cheerless dungeons shall soon become the abode of Richard Markham!"

As he uttered these last words in a loud, measured, and savage voice, the Resurrection Man raised the stone-trap, and descended into the subterranean.

The detestable monster gloated in anticipation upon the horrible revenge which he meditated; and as he now trod the damp pavement of the vaulted passage, he glanced first at the four doors on the right, then at the four doors on the left, as if he were undecided in which dungeon to immure his intended victim.

At length he stopped before one of the doors, exclaiming, "Ah! this must be the cell! It's the one, as I have been told, where so many maniacs dashed their brains out against the wall, when this place was used as an asylum—long before my time."

Thus musing, Tidkins entered the cell, holding the lantern high up so as to embrace at a glance all the gloomy horrors of its aspect.

"Yes—yes!" he muttered to himself: "this is the one for Richard Markham! All that he has ever done to me shall soon be fearfully visited on his own head! Ah, ah! we shall see whether his high rank—his boasted virtues—his immense influence—and his glorious name can mitigate one pang of all the sufferings that he must here endure! Yes," repeated Tidkins, a fiendish smile relaxing his stern countenance,—"this is the dungeon for Richard Markham!"

"No—it is thine!" thundered a voice; and at the same moment the door of the cell closed violently upon the Resurrection Man.

Tidkins dropped the lantern, and flung himself with all his strength against the massive door;—but the huge bolt on the outside was shot into its iron socket too rapidly to permit that desperate effort to prove of the least avail.