The String of Pearls (1850), p. 656

"Ah, dear me. Conwulsions! I tried to pursuade my wife to come; and dust the communion table and the pulpit-cushions for to-morrow, but she politely declined; she needn't have thrown the bellows at my head though, for all that."
"Dust the pulpit- cushions!" thought Todd. "The wretch is coming up here!"
"I shall have to cut his throat, and leave him at the bottom of the pulpit for the parson to tread upon the first thing he does to-morrow, upon coming up here to preach."
As Todd spoke, he took a clasped knife out of his pocket, and opened it with his teeth. "Oh, yes, my old friend, I shall, I see, be under the painful necessity of cutting your throat, that I shall, and I shall not hesitate about it at all."
"Yes," added the beadle, "I mean to say that to throw the bellows at the man is like adding insult to injury, for it is blowing him up in a kind of way that's anything but agreeable. Lor! how cold and rum the church does feel. Rum? why did I say rum and put myself in mind of it? Oh, don't I like it, rather! If I only now had a glass of real fine old Jamaica rum at this moment, I'd be as happy as a bishop."
"Oh, I'll rum you!" growled Todd.
"Eh? Eh?"
The beadle turned round three times, as though he were going to begin a game at blind-man's-buff, and then he said—
"I thought I heard something. Oh dear, how shivery I do get to be sure, when I'm alone in the church. I'll just get through the dusting job as quick as I can, and no mistake. Amen! Amen! I'm a miserable sinner—Amen!"

CHAPTER CLIV.
DETAILS THE PERILOUS SITUATION OP THE BEADLE.

Todd had heard all this with anger and impatience rankling at his heart. He began to have the most serious thoughts of sacrificing the beadle—indeed, if any good could have been got to himself by so doing, he would not have scrupled to do so with the greatest speed. As it was, however, he could not concoct any plan of proceedings quickly which would benefit him, and so he was compelled to remain an auditor of the beadle's private thoughts, and a spectator of what he was about, when he chose to peep over the edge of the pulpit.
"Well, it's astonishing," continued the beadle, "what a fever that fellow Todd has kept me in for I don't know how long, one way or another: me and Fleet Street have been regularly bothered by him. First of all, I was in all sorts of doubts and uncertainties about the matter before they took him and tried him, and was a-g oing to hang him, and then I did think that he was as—good—as done—for—"
As he uttered these last words, the beadle was banging one of the cushions of the communion-table, so that he was compelled for want of breath to utter them at intervals.
"Oh, confound you!'' muttered Todd, "if I only had hold of you, I would throttle you, and then think of what to do afterwards."
Todd's great difficulty arose from the fact that he thought if he tried to descend;end from the pulpit, the beadle might see him and get the start of him in leaving the church, in which even the alarm that he would raise in Fleet Street would be such, that any attempt to escape would be attended by the greatest hazard."
"There is nothing for it but to wait," said Todd to himself gloomily. "I can do nothing else ; but woe to him when I do catch him!"
"This dusting job on a Saturday," said the beadle, "does seem to me to be one of the most disagreeable of all that has to be done with the church. I don't mind one's duty on a Sunday, but this is horrid. On a Sunday there's lots of