CHAPTER VIII.
SOMEBODY HAS GOT INTO THE HOUSE.
People remarked that the Judge was in the vapours. His doctor said he should go for a fortnight to Buxton.
Whenever the Judge fell into a brown study, he was always conning over the terms of the sentence pronounced upon him in his vision—”in one calendar month from the date of this day;” and then the usual form, “and you shall be hanged by the neck till you are dead,” &c. “That will be the 10th—I’m not much in the way of being hanged. I know what stuff dreams are, and I laugh at them; but this is continually in my thoughts, as if it forecast misfortune of some sort. I wish the day my dream gave me were passed and over. I wish I were well purged of my gout. I wish I were as I used to be. ‘Tis nothing but vapours, nothing but a maggot.” The c
