CHAPTER LIII.A Mother’s Care.—The Pursuit.—A Successful Ruse.—The Second Visit.Witha faltering voice the terrified female commenced the strain which Gray had overheard her singing to her child before it was placed in the fearful jeopardy she now considered it in.The men’s footsteps sounded on the staircase, as in trembling accents she softly repeated the words,—“My babe, if I had offers three,From gentle heavenly powers,To bless thee, who, with aching heart,I’ve watched so many hours—”There was then a slight pause—a knock from without—a broad glare of light, and Jacob Gray’s pursuers were in the room.The mother rose from her chair, and cried,—“What do you mean?—What is the meaning of all this?”“We are pursuing a man, who is hiding in one of these houses,” replied a stern voice. “I am an officer. There has been murder done, my good woman.”“Murder!”“Yes. A man has been savagely murdered at the bottom of the steps, and he who committed the deed is somewhere about here. Have you heard any alarm?”“I have heard many voices.”“I mean have you heard any one on the stairs, or has any one been here?”“I was singing to my child. Pray do not speak so loud, or you will awaken it.”“Search the room,” cried the man.The mother walked to the side, of the cot, and appeared to be regarding the features of her sleeping babe, but she was in reality endeavouring to hide the expression of terror which she felt was upon her face.The men raised the torches they carried high above their heads, and glanced round the miserable apartment.“Open that cupboard,” said one.It was opened and then shut again.“Move that cot,” cried he who appeared to be in authority.“No,” cried the mother, suddenly looking up, “do your duty in discovering the criminal, but do not in doing it commit a needless act of cruelty.”“Cruelty!”“Yes; you see my babe is sleeping. Why move his cot and awaken him? He has been ill. The fever spot is still upon his cheek. The quiet slumber he is now enjoying is the first he has had for many weary nights and days. How could a murderer hide with a sleeping child? Some of you perhaps have little ones of your own, if you have, you will think of them, and not harm mine.”“Was it you singing just now?“ asked the officer.“It was. My voice, I think, soothes him, even in sleep. Hush! Do not speak so loud, or you will wake him.”“Leave her alone,” said the officer. “My good woman, we don’t want to disturb your child. We have our duty, however, to do; but I am quite satisfied he whom we seek is not here.”“A mother’s blessing be upon you, sir,” said the woman. “You have, perhaps, saved the very life of my child by not disturbing it.”“What, has it been so bad as that?” remarked another.“Oh, quite, quite!”“The turn of a fever in those young things is always a ticklish affair,” remarked another.“Come on,” said the officer, “come on. We are sorry for disturbing you. If any strange man should walk in here, be sure you give an immediate alarm.”“Yes, yes,” gasped the young mother, scarcely yet believing that her infant was safe.In a few moments more the room was clear of the men, and then the woman covered her face with her hands and burst into such a hysterical passion of weeping, that Gray was dreadfully alarmed lest it should be heard, and induce a return of his pursuers.“Peace, woman—peace,” he said, in a hoarse whisper, from his hiding-place. “I am not yet out of danger, nor is your child yet safe from my vengeance.”“Man, man!” cried the mother, “I have saved your life. Be grateful and depart.”“Not yet—not yet,” said Jacob Gray, slowly and cautiously emerging from his hiding-place, “not yet. This place is now the safest I can remain in for sometime, because it has been visited.”“You are wrong.”“I cannot be.”“I say you are wrong. I have a husband, and when he returns, he may not be so weak as his wife.”Gray started, and replied in accents of fear,—“When—when do you expect him?”“Even now—he may be here directly.”“I must go.—I must go,” said Gray. “You are telling me the truth? I will give you gold if you hide me here for another hour.”“My compliance with your commands,” said the woman, “arose from a higher motive than the love of gold. Heaven knows we are poor—wretchedly poor, but gold from your polluted hands would bring with it a curse, instead of a blessing.”“You reject a large sum for an hour’s safety for me?”“I do.”“But your husband may better see his interest in this matter.”“No—my husband is poor, but he was not always so. The feelings and the habits of a gentleman still cling to him in the sad reverse of fortune we are now enduring. Go, wretched man, save yourself if you can, and ask mercy of Heaven for the crime I hear you have committed.”“That crime was in self-defence,” said Gray; “I will risk all, and remain here until this house has been searched.”“I cannot hinder you. On your own head be the risk.”Gray stood near the door, listening attentively, and presently he heard descending footsteps, which from their number, he supposed rightly to be the officers returning from their unsuccessful search in the upper rooms of the house.He drew his pistol from his breast, and pointing to the child, said in a whisper to the weeping mother,—“One word as they pass, and I fire.”His honor may be conceived, but scarcely described, as the door at this moment was opened, pinning him against the wall behind it, and the officer who was conducting the search, put his head into the room, saying,—“No alarm, I suppose?”“None,” said the mother.“Good night, ma’am. We have not got him yet, but he cannot escape. I hope your little one will get better.”“Thank you,” she said, faintly.The door closed again, and the heavy tread of the men going down stairs sounded in the ears of Jacob Gray like a reprieve from immediate execution.His state of mind while the officer was speaking was of the most agonising description, as one step into the room of that personage, or one glance towards him of the young woman’s eye, must have discovered him, and it would have been but a poor satisfaction even to such a mind as Jacob Gray’s, to have taken the life of the infant, even if he had the nerve to do it, which he certainly had not, although a mother’s fears would not permit her to run the risk.“Tell me now,” said Gray, when he could speak, for his fright had almost taken away his breath, “tell me who lives up stairs in this house?”“I know not,” replied the woman, “I am but a stranger here.”“And—and you are sure your husband would not protect me?”“A murderer and the threatener of the life of his child can have little indeed to expect in the way of protection from my husband. Fly, wretched man, while yet you are free to do so.”“They have left the house,” muttered Gray; “will you betray me by an alarm when I leave you?”“Let Heaven punish you in its own good time,” replied the young female. “Base and guilty as you are, I will not have your blood upon my head.”“You will be silent?”“I will strive to forget you.”“Then I go, I—I think I am safer away, as you are sure your husband will not take a hundred gold pieces to protect and save me.”Gray glanced at the woman as he named the sum of money, to see what effect it had upon her, but there was nothing but a shudder of disgust, and he gave up all hope of purchasing safety from her.Without another word, he cautiously opened the door, and listened. All was comparatively quiet, and he passed from the room.In a moment he heard it locked behind him in the inside, and his place of refuge was at once cut off.“Curses on her,” he muttered. “She may have no husband coming after all. What can I do to free myself from the mazes of these courts? Ada—Ada—if ever we meet again, I will have a deep—a bloody revenge on thee. Beware of Jacob Gray!”He shook his clenched hand as he spoke, and ground his teeth with concentrated anger. The question now was whether to ascend or descend in the house, and after some moments of anxious consideration, he thought his better chance would be to descend, and make an effort to pass himself as one of the crowd which had come from the Strand in pursuit of the murderer.He wiped the blood, as he thought, well from his hands, and the dust and mud from his face; then arranging his disordered apparel, he fancied he might pass muster without much suspicion, as he was confident none of those who followed him could have obtained more than a transitory glance at him.He then carefully groped his way in the pitchy darkness to the top of the stairs and began slowly to descend.It was many minutes before he reached the passage, and when he did, he felt for the wall of the passage, and glided along it towards the open doorway.As he neared it, he heard two persons conversing, and the theme of their conversation struck a chill to his heart.“Yes, you may pass in,” said a voice; “my orders are to let nobody out. We are hunting up a fellow who has committed a murder.”“Indeed!”“Yes. If the people in the parlour here know you, you can pass.”“I live in the house,” said the other speaker, “they will recognise me directly.”Some little bustle now ensued, and a third voice inquired,—“Do you know this person?” said the person who was keeping guard.“Oh yes,” was the reply, “he lives up stairs.”“Very well. Sorry to have detained you sir.”“Never mind that; I hope you may catch the scoundrel.”Jacob Gray shrank as close to the wall as he could, and some one brushed quite against him in passing along the passage, without, however, noticing him, although the imminent danger almost made him faint upon the spot.
A Mother’s Care.—The Pursuit.—A Successful Ruse.—The Second Visit.
Witha faltering voice the terrified female commenced the strain which Gray had overheard her singing to her child before it was placed in the fearful jeopardy she now considered it in.
The men’s footsteps sounded on the staircase, as in trembling accents she softly repeated the words,—
“My babe, if I had offers three,
From gentle heavenly powers,
To bless thee, who, with aching heart,
I’ve watched so many hours—”
There was then a slight pause—a knock from without—a broad glare of light, and Jacob Gray’s pursuers were in the room.
The mother rose from her chair, and cried,—
“What do you mean?—What is the meaning of all this?”
“We are pursuing a man, who is hiding in one of these houses,” replied a stern voice. “I am an officer. There has been murder done, my good woman.”
“Murder!”
“Yes. A man has been savagely murdered at the bottom of the steps, and he who committed the deed is somewhere about here. Have you heard any alarm?”
“I have heard many voices.”
“I mean have you heard any one on the stairs, or has any one been here?”
“I was singing to my child. Pray do not speak so loud, or you will awaken it.”
“Search the room,” cried the man.
The mother walked to the side, of the cot, and appeared to be regarding the features of her sleeping babe, but she was in reality endeavouring to hide the expression of terror which she felt was upon her face.
The men raised the torches they carried high above their heads, and glanced round the miserable apartment.
“Open that cupboard,” said one.
It was opened and then shut again.
“Move that cot,” cried he who appeared to be in authority.
“No,” cried the mother, suddenly looking up, “do your duty in discovering the criminal, but do not in doing it commit a needless act of cruelty.”
“Cruelty!”
“Yes; you see my babe is sleeping. Why move his cot and awaken him? He has been ill. The fever spot is still upon his cheek. The quiet slumber he is now enjoying is the first he has had for many weary nights and days. How could a murderer hide with a sleeping child? Some of you perhaps have little ones of your own, if you have, you will think of them, and not harm mine.”
“Was it you singing just now?“ asked the officer.
“It was. My voice, I think, soothes him, even in sleep. Hush! Do not speak so loud, or you will wake him.”
“Leave her alone,” said the officer. “My good woman, we don’t want to disturb your child. We have our duty, however, to do; but I am quite satisfied he whom we seek is not here.”
“A mother’s blessing be upon you, sir,” said the woman. “You have, perhaps, saved the very life of my child by not disturbing it.”
“What, has it been so bad as that?” remarked another.
“Oh, quite, quite!”
“The turn of a fever in those young things is always a ticklish affair,” remarked another.
“Come on,” said the officer, “come on. We are sorry for disturbing you. If any strange man should walk in here, be sure you give an immediate alarm.”
“Yes, yes,” gasped the young mother, scarcely yet believing that her infant was safe.
In a few moments more the room was clear of the men, and then the woman covered her face with her hands and burst into such a hysterical passion of weeping, that Gray was dreadfully alarmed lest it should be heard, and induce a return of his pursuers.
“Peace, woman—peace,” he said, in a hoarse whisper, from his hiding-place. “I am not yet out of danger, nor is your child yet safe from my vengeance.”
“Man, man!” cried the mother, “I have saved your life. Be grateful and depart.”
“Not yet—not yet,” said Jacob Gray, slowly and cautiously emerging from his hiding-place, “not yet. This place is now the safest I can remain in for sometime, because it has been visited.”
“You are wrong.”
“I cannot be.”
“I say you are wrong. I have a husband, and when he returns, he may not be so weak as his wife.”
Gray started, and replied in accents of fear,—
“When—when do you expect him?”
“Even now—he may be here directly.”
“I must go.—I must go,” said Gray. “You are telling me the truth? I will give you gold if you hide me here for another hour.”
“My compliance with your commands,” said the woman, “arose from a higher motive than the love of gold. Heaven knows we are poor—wretchedly poor, but gold from your polluted hands would bring with it a curse, instead of a blessing.”
“You reject a large sum for an hour’s safety for me?”
“I do.”
“But your husband may better see his interest in this matter.”
“No—my husband is poor, but he was not always so. The feelings and the habits of a gentleman still cling to him in the sad reverse of fortune we are now enduring. Go, wretched man, save yourself if you can, and ask mercy of Heaven for the crime I hear you have committed.”
“That crime was in self-defence,” said Gray; “I will risk all, and remain here until this house has been searched.”
“I cannot hinder you. On your own head be the risk.”
Gray stood near the door, listening attentively, and presently he heard descending footsteps, which from their number, he supposed rightly to be the officers returning from their unsuccessful search in the upper rooms of the house.
He drew his pistol from his breast, and pointing to the child, said in a whisper to the weeping mother,—
“One word as they pass, and I fire.”
His honor may be conceived, but scarcely described, as the door at this moment was opened, pinning him against the wall behind it, and the officer who was conducting the search, put his head into the room, saying,—
“No alarm, I suppose?”
“None,” said the mother.
“Good night, ma’am. We have not got him yet, but he cannot escape. I hope your little one will get better.”
“Thank you,” she said, faintly.
The door closed again, and the heavy tread of the men going down stairs sounded in the ears of Jacob Gray like a reprieve from immediate execution.
His state of mind while the officer was speaking was of the most agonising description, as one step into the room of that personage, or one glance towards him of the young woman’s eye, must have discovered him, and it would have been but a poor satisfaction even to such a mind as Jacob Gray’s, to have taken the life of the infant, even if he had the nerve to do it, which he certainly had not, although a mother’s fears would not permit her to run the risk.
“Tell me now,” said Gray, when he could speak, for his fright had almost taken away his breath, “tell me who lives up stairs in this house?”
“I know not,” replied the woman, “I am but a stranger here.”
“And—and you are sure your husband would not protect me?”
“A murderer and the threatener of the life of his child can have little indeed to expect in the way of protection from my husband. Fly, wretched man, while yet you are free to do so.”
“They have left the house,” muttered Gray; “will you betray me by an alarm when I leave you?”
“Let Heaven punish you in its own good time,” replied the young female. “Base and guilty as you are, I will not have your blood upon my head.”
“You will be silent?”
“I will strive to forget you.”
“Then I go, I—I think I am safer away, as you are sure your husband will not take a hundred gold pieces to protect and save me.”
Gray glanced at the woman as he named the sum of money, to see what effect it had upon her, but there was nothing but a shudder of disgust, and he gave up all hope of purchasing safety from her.
Without another word, he cautiously opened the door, and listened. All was comparatively quiet, and he passed from the room.
In a moment he heard it locked behind him in the inside, and his place of refuge was at once cut off.
“Curses on her,” he muttered. “She may have no husband coming after all. What can I do to free myself from the mazes of these courts? Ada—Ada—if ever we meet again, I will have a deep—a bloody revenge on thee. Beware of Jacob Gray!”
He shook his clenched hand as he spoke, and ground his teeth with concentrated anger. The question now was whether to ascend or descend in the house, and after some moments of anxious consideration, he thought his better chance would be to descend, and make an effort to pass himself as one of the crowd which had come from the Strand in pursuit of the murderer.
He wiped the blood, as he thought, well from his hands, and the dust and mud from his face; then arranging his disordered apparel, he fancied he might pass muster without much suspicion, as he was confident none of those who followed him could have obtained more than a transitory glance at him.
He then carefully groped his way in the pitchy darkness to the top of the stairs and began slowly to descend.
It was many minutes before he reached the passage, and when he did, he felt for the wall of the passage, and glided along it towards the open doorway.
As he neared it, he heard two persons conversing, and the theme of their conversation struck a chill to his heart.
“Yes, you may pass in,” said a voice; “my orders are to let nobody out. We are hunting up a fellow who has committed a murder.”
“Indeed!”
“Yes. If the people in the parlour here know you, you can pass.”
“I live in the house,” said the other speaker, “they will recognise me directly.”
Some little bustle now ensued, and a third voice inquired,—
“Do you know this person?” said the person who was keeping guard.
“Oh yes,” was the reply, “he lives up stairs.”
“Very well. Sorry to have detained you sir.”
“Never mind that; I hope you may catch the scoundrel.”
Jacob Gray shrank as close to the wall as he could, and some one brushed quite against him in passing along the passage, without, however, noticing him, although the imminent danger almost made him faint upon the spot.
CHAPTER LIV.The Staircase.—The Old Attic.—A Friend in Need.—Fair Play.—Gray’s Despair.For severalmoments now Gray stood in the passage quite incapable of thought or action; his only impulse was by a kind of natural instinct to stand as close to the damp passage wall as he possibly could, to decrease the chances of any one seeing him or touching him in the act of passing.His brain seemed to be in a complete whirl, and many minutes must have elapsed before he acquired a sufficient calmness to reflect with any degree of rationality upon his present very precarious position.When he could think, his terrors by no means decreased; for what plausible course of action was there now open to him, as he could not leave the house? The thought then occurred to him, that if he could make his way into the cellars, he might have a chance of lying concealed until the guard at the door was removed, and with this feeling he crept along the passage, with the hope of finding some staircase leading to the lower part of the premises.He was still engaged in this task when the door of a room leading into the passage suddenly opened, and a flood of light immediately dissipated the pitchy darkness of the place.Fortunately for him, Gray was within one pace of the bottom of the staircase he had so recently descended; and, with the fear of instant discovery upon his mind, from the person who was coming with the light, he bounded up the staircase, nor paused till he reached the first landing, from whence he had entered the room containing the mother and her child.There he stopped; but, to his extreme fright, the flashing of the light evidently indicated that its bearer was coming up the stairs. With a stifled groan Gray cautiously ascended the next flight, and again paused on the narrow landing.Still the light came on, and he could not conceal from himself the fact that the person was still ascending, and that he had no other resource than to continue his flight to the very upper part of the house. The next flight of stairs was steep, narrow, and crazy, so that, tread where he would, they wheezed, creaked, and groaned under the pressure of his feet.There was, however, no resource, and onward he went, until he was stopped by a door exactly at the top: he pressed it, and it yielded to his touch, allowing him to enter a dark attic.Further progress Jacob Gray felt there could not be, and he stood in the doorway, listening attentively if he could detect any sounds of approaching feet.A gush of blood to his heart, and an universal tremor of all his limbs, seized him as he saw the light coming, and felt convinced that the destination of the person approaching was one of the attics, if not the very one he had sought refuge in. All hope appeared to die within him. There was no time for the briefest reflection. With his eyes fixed upon the door, and the pistol in his grasp, he retreated backwards into the room as the footsteps came nearer and nearer to the door.Then there was a slight pause; after which the door was flung open, and a tall, heavy, coarse-looking man entered the room, carrying in his hand a light.One glance convinced Jacob Gray that the man was by far his superior in strength—his only chance lay in the loaded pistol he had, and that he was resolved to use should he not be able to bribe the man to connive at his presence, and aid his escape.It was a moment before the man observed the figure of Jacob Gray with his back to the wall opposite to the door, and the pistol in his grasp. When he did, he by no means betrayed the emotion that might have been expected; but shading the light with his disengaged hand, he cried in a loud voice,—“Hilloa! Who are you when you are at home?”“Do you love gold?” said Gray.“Rather,” replied the man.“Will it tempt you to assist me to escape from this place? If so, name your price.”“That’s business like,” said the man. “I suppose it’s you they are making all the rout about below there?”“It is. They are hunting me, and, with your assistance, I may yet escape.”“The devil doubt it. Curse me if I don’t actually love you. Why, I have been poking about for this half hour to do you a good turn.”“Is that possible?”“To be sure. Why that fellow, whose crown you have cracked so handsomely below there, was the pest of all the cracksmen in the neighbourhood. I love you. I tell you.”“Then you are—”“Jem Batter, the cracksman.”“Then you will befriend me?”“In course—though hang me if I know you. I thought I knew all the hands on town; but I never clapped eyes on your paste-pot of a mug before.”Gray replaced his pistol, as he assumed a sickly smile, and said,—“Then I have really found a friend?”“A friend! Ah, to be sure you have. I say, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll wait till the enemy is gone, and then I’ll poke you out on the roof, and you can get in at Bill Splasher’s attic. It’s only across a dozen houses or so. He’ll let you out then by the cellars of Somerset House, and you’ll be as safe as any gentleman need wish to be.”“I thank you,” said Gray. “I am now faint and weary.”“Sit down then,” cried the man. “Don’t stand upon ceremony here. I suppose you’ve been at some fakement of value—eh?”“Yes, yes—a robbery,” said Gray, who thought it best to fall in with the humour of his new friend.“Plenty o’ swag?”“A trifle, a mere trifle.”“Never mind, better luck next time,” cried the man dealing Gray an encouraging blow upon the back that nearly took his breath away.“Thank you,” said Gray.The thief, for such indeed he was, now proceeded to a cupboard, and handed to Gray therefrom a bottle covered with protective wicker-work, saying,—“Drink; you’ll find that the best stuff.”Gray took a hearty draught of the contents, which consisted of exceedingly strong raw spirit.“Don’t you feel better?” said the man.“Yes,” replied Gray, “a great deal better.”“Very good. Now, you see, short reckonings make long friends.”“What do you mean?”“Oh, you know the reg’lar terms of business. It’s share and share alike with all who help a lame dog over a stile.”“I am quite willing,” said Gray, “to award—”“Oh, bother award,” interrupted the other; “I’m above it. Do you think I’d take anything but my rights of lending a hand to help a poor fellow when the bull dogs are on his track? No, sink me!”“You are very kind,” said Gray, “but still—”“Still, nonsense. There’s you, me, and there will be Bill, and Bill’s young woman—that’ll make four of us. Share and share alike’s the plan.”“Share?”“Yes—the swag. Come, honour bright, now produce it, will you?”“Really, I—I—”“Do you doubt my honour?” cried the ruffian. “If you do, why don’t you say so, you sneak? Take my life, but don’t doubt my honour!”Gray’s hand mechanically moved towards his breast for his pistol, but before he could reach it the brawny hand of the man was upon his throat, and holding Gray as if he had been an infant in his herculean grasp, he himself took the pistol from him and put it in his own pocket, saying,—“Thank you, I’ll mind it for you.”“Let me go,” gasped Gray.“Then you don’t doubt my honour?”“No, no—certainly not.”“Oh, very well, I thought you didn’t mean it.”Gray was then liberated from the grasp which came within one degree of suffocation, and he said,—“I will be candid with you. I have forty pounds with me, which I will divide as you propose.”“Forty? Humph! It’s d—d little; but I hate all grumbling. We can’t have more than a cat and her skin, say I.”“No, certainly,” said Gray. “I didn’t understand you at first you see, or I should never have for a moment hesitated.”“Oh, it’s all right—it’s all right. Never say die, sink me.”“That’ll be ten pounds each,” remarked Gray, who really, as we know, had a very large sum about him—a sum so large indeed as materially to have inconvenienced him in his race down the Strand.“So it will,” replied the man. “Now, you know the rules, my covey, as well as I do, I dare say?”“What rules?”“Why, you must strip and let me examine, for myself and Bill and Bill’s young woman, all your togs, to see whether you haven’t forgot a stray five pound note or so. No offence, my covey; but you know rules is rules all the world over, and fair play is a jewel of very great lustre, my rum ’un.”
The Staircase.—The Old Attic.—A Friend in Need.—Fair Play.—Gray’s Despair.
For severalmoments now Gray stood in the passage quite incapable of thought or action; his only impulse was by a kind of natural instinct to stand as close to the damp passage wall as he possibly could, to decrease the chances of any one seeing him or touching him in the act of passing.
His brain seemed to be in a complete whirl, and many minutes must have elapsed before he acquired a sufficient calmness to reflect with any degree of rationality upon his present very precarious position.
When he could think, his terrors by no means decreased; for what plausible course of action was there now open to him, as he could not leave the house? The thought then occurred to him, that if he could make his way into the cellars, he might have a chance of lying concealed until the guard at the door was removed, and with this feeling he crept along the passage, with the hope of finding some staircase leading to the lower part of the premises.
He was still engaged in this task when the door of a room leading into the passage suddenly opened, and a flood of light immediately dissipated the pitchy darkness of the place.
Fortunately for him, Gray was within one pace of the bottom of the staircase he had so recently descended; and, with the fear of instant discovery upon his mind, from the person who was coming with the light, he bounded up the staircase, nor paused till he reached the first landing, from whence he had entered the room containing the mother and her child.
There he stopped; but, to his extreme fright, the flashing of the light evidently indicated that its bearer was coming up the stairs. With a stifled groan Gray cautiously ascended the next flight, and again paused on the narrow landing.
Still the light came on, and he could not conceal from himself the fact that the person was still ascending, and that he had no other resource than to continue his flight to the very upper part of the house. The next flight of stairs was steep, narrow, and crazy, so that, tread where he would, they wheezed, creaked, and groaned under the pressure of his feet.
There was, however, no resource, and onward he went, until he was stopped by a door exactly at the top: he pressed it, and it yielded to his touch, allowing him to enter a dark attic.
Further progress Jacob Gray felt there could not be, and he stood in the doorway, listening attentively if he could detect any sounds of approaching feet.
A gush of blood to his heart, and an universal tremor of all his limbs, seized him as he saw the light coming, and felt convinced that the destination of the person approaching was one of the attics, if not the very one he had sought refuge in. All hope appeared to die within him. There was no time for the briefest reflection. With his eyes fixed upon the door, and the pistol in his grasp, he retreated backwards into the room as the footsteps came nearer and nearer to the door.
Then there was a slight pause; after which the door was flung open, and a tall, heavy, coarse-looking man entered the room, carrying in his hand a light.
One glance convinced Jacob Gray that the man was by far his superior in strength—his only chance lay in the loaded pistol he had, and that he was resolved to use should he not be able to bribe the man to connive at his presence, and aid his escape.
It was a moment before the man observed the figure of Jacob Gray with his back to the wall opposite to the door, and the pistol in his grasp. When he did, he by no means betrayed the emotion that might have been expected; but shading the light with his disengaged hand, he cried in a loud voice,—
“Hilloa! Who are you when you are at home?”
“Do you love gold?” said Gray.
“Rather,” replied the man.
“Will it tempt you to assist me to escape from this place? If so, name your price.”
“That’s business like,” said the man. “I suppose it’s you they are making all the rout about below there?”
“It is. They are hunting me, and, with your assistance, I may yet escape.”
“The devil doubt it. Curse me if I don’t actually love you. Why, I have been poking about for this half hour to do you a good turn.”
“Is that possible?”
“To be sure. Why that fellow, whose crown you have cracked so handsomely below there, was the pest of all the cracksmen in the neighbourhood. I love you. I tell you.”
“Then you are—”
“Jem Batter, the cracksman.”
“Then you will befriend me?”
“In course—though hang me if I know you. I thought I knew all the hands on town; but I never clapped eyes on your paste-pot of a mug before.”
Gray replaced his pistol, as he assumed a sickly smile, and said,—
“Then I have really found a friend?”
“A friend! Ah, to be sure you have. I say, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll wait till the enemy is gone, and then I’ll poke you out on the roof, and you can get in at Bill Splasher’s attic. It’s only across a dozen houses or so. He’ll let you out then by the cellars of Somerset House, and you’ll be as safe as any gentleman need wish to be.”
“I thank you,” said Gray. “I am now faint and weary.”
“Sit down then,” cried the man. “Don’t stand upon ceremony here. I suppose you’ve been at some fakement of value—eh?”
“Yes, yes—a robbery,” said Gray, who thought it best to fall in with the humour of his new friend.
“Plenty o’ swag?”
“A trifle, a mere trifle.”
“Never mind, better luck next time,” cried the man dealing Gray an encouraging blow upon the back that nearly took his breath away.
“Thank you,” said Gray.
The thief, for such indeed he was, now proceeded to a cupboard, and handed to Gray therefrom a bottle covered with protective wicker-work, saying,—
“Drink; you’ll find that the best stuff.”
Gray took a hearty draught of the contents, which consisted of exceedingly strong raw spirit.
“Don’t you feel better?” said the man.
“Yes,” replied Gray, “a great deal better.”
“Very good. Now, you see, short reckonings make long friends.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, you know the reg’lar terms of business. It’s share and share alike with all who help a lame dog over a stile.”
“I am quite willing,” said Gray, “to award—”
“Oh, bother award,” interrupted the other; “I’m above it. Do you think I’d take anything but my rights of lending a hand to help a poor fellow when the bull dogs are on his track? No, sink me!”
“You are very kind,” said Gray, “but still—”
“Still, nonsense. There’s you, me, and there will be Bill, and Bill’s young woman—that’ll make four of us. Share and share alike’s the plan.”
“Share?”
“Yes—the swag. Come, honour bright, now produce it, will you?”
“Really, I—I—”
“Do you doubt my honour?” cried the ruffian. “If you do, why don’t you say so, you sneak? Take my life, but don’t doubt my honour!”
Gray’s hand mechanically moved towards his breast for his pistol, but before he could reach it the brawny hand of the man was upon his throat, and holding Gray as if he had been an infant in his herculean grasp, he himself took the pistol from him and put it in his own pocket, saying,—
“Thank you, I’ll mind it for you.”
“Let me go,” gasped Gray.
“Then you don’t doubt my honour?”
“No, no—certainly not.”
“Oh, very well, I thought you didn’t mean it.”
Gray was then liberated from the grasp which came within one degree of suffocation, and he said,—
“I will be candid with you. I have forty pounds with me, which I will divide as you propose.”
“Forty? Humph! It’s d—d little; but I hate all grumbling. We can’t have more than a cat and her skin, say I.”
“No, certainly,” said Gray. “I didn’t understand you at first you see, or I should never have for a moment hesitated.”
“Oh, it’s all right—it’s all right. Never say die, sink me.”
“That’ll be ten pounds each,” remarked Gray, who really, as we know, had a very large sum about him—a sum so large indeed as materially to have inconvenienced him in his race down the Strand.
“So it will,” replied the man. “Now, you know the rules, my covey, as well as I do, I dare say?”
“What rules?”
“Why, you must strip and let me examine, for myself and Bill and Bill’s young woman, all your togs, to see whether you haven’t forgot a stray five pound note or so. No offence, my covey; but you know rules is rules all the world over, and fair play is a jewel of very great lustre, my rum ’un.”
CHAPTER LV.The Escape over the Houses.—Many Perils.—Gray’s Great Sufferings.—The Guide Rope.Graywas silent for some moments, then, with, a deep groan, he dropped his head upon his hands, and gave himself up to a bitterness of anguish that must have both alarmed and melted any heart but the stubborn one of the man who now had him in his power.“All I have struggled for,” thought Gray—“all that I have dipped my hands in blood for is about to be wrested from me for the mere doubtful boon of existence.”At that awful moment of misery he did indeed feel that he had chosen the wrong path in life, and the gaudy flowers which had lured him from the right road of virtue to the intricate one of crime and deep iniquity, were but delusion, and had vanished, now leaving him a wanderer in a region of dissolution and gaunt despair. Oh, what would he have not given in that awful moment, when busy memory conjured up all his crimes before him in frightful array, to have been the veriest beggar that ever crept for alms from door to door, so that he could have said, “I am innocent of great wrong—I have shed no man’s blood!”It might be that the evident mortal agony of Jacob Gray really had some effect even upon the hardened and obdurate heart of his companion, for it was several minutes before he spoke, and then when he did, his voice was scarcely so harshly tuned as before, and it is probable he meant to offer something very consolatory when he said,—“Snivelling be bothered, I have cracked never so many cribs, and I never gaved up to the enemy yet. Keep up your heart, old ’un, you’ll light on your feet yet, like a cat as is shied out o’ a attic window.”Gray only groaned and shook his head.“Now, I tell you what I’ll do for you,” continued the man, “you shall go into partnership with me, and we’ll do a lot o’ work together. You’ve got a good sneaking sort o’ face that’ll gammon the flats. You can poke about and insinuate where family plate and such like things is kept, and then I’ll go and crack the cribs. Don’t be groaning here.”The robber then gave Gray another encouraging blow upon the back, which effectually prevented him from groaning for some minutes, by leaving him no breath to groan with. Gray then looked up, and, glancing in the face of the man he said,—“I will own to you that I have about me a larger sum than I at first named.”“I know’d it,” cried the man, “I know’d—you white-mugged fellers always has larger sums than they names.”“In one word,” said Gray, “I have two hundred pounds. Will you take one hundred and leave me at liberty to go from here when the ardour of pursuit has abated?”“Without the search?”“Yes. Without the search. You talk of your honour—why not rely upon mine?”“’Cos I’m a known gentleman, and you isn’t,” replied the fellow. “My word’s respected all through the profession. If I say I’ll crack that crib, I goes and cracks it.”“Exactly. You will agree to my terms?”“Why, you see, I’m rather awkwardly situated just now. It isn’t safe for you to go out by the way you came in. You may think it is, but I can tell you it isn’t. The people down stairs have had a cool hundred offered for nabbing you, and ain’t they on the look-out?”“A hundred?”“Yes. You see that’s all you offer me. Now there’s Bill’s attic to pay for, and Bill’s young woman.”Gray replied by a groan.“There you go, now, groaning away. It’s well for you that you’ve fell among people with fine feelings, and all that sort o’ thing. Some folks now, as know’d as much as, I’m pretty sure, I know, would put a knife in your guts.”“What—what—do—you know?” stammered Gray, shivering at the very idea of such a process.“What do I know? Why, I know you are trying to deceive a gentleman. You’ve got more money then you’ll own to, you know you have.”“You wrong me. Indeed you do.”“Well, well, I’ll take Bill’s opinion. He’s better nor all the lawyers in London, is Bill. If he says as it’s all right and we are to take the hundred only, I consents. Now, my covey, I’ll trouble you to come with me to Bill’s attic.”“But can we go without danger? The people down stairs, you say, are on the watch.”“Let ’em watch—we ain’t a-going down stairs. The window’s the thing for us.”“Is it the next house?”“No, it isn’t—nor the next arter that either—but it’s all the safer for that. You’ve got a few roofs to get over, but I know ’em if well as I know my own pocket.”The man then opened the small latticed window of the room and looked out for a moment. Then, with a satisfied tone, he said,—“It’s a regular dark night. There ain’t a shadow o’ fear.”“You think I shall escape?”“I know it. I’ve said it. Think o’ my honour.”He then took from an old chest a coil of very thick rope, in one end of which he busied himself in making a noose, which, when he had completed, he advanced with it to Gray, saying,—“Just pop your head through.”“Gracious Heavens!” cried Gray, starting up. “What do you mean?”“Mean? Why to take care of you to be sure; I know the way over the roofs, but you don’t. You’ll smash yourself in some of the courts without a guide rope, you will.”“A guide rope?”“Yes. Don’t be making those faces. Do you think I’m going to hang you?”“Oh no—no,” said Gray, with a nervous smile. “No—certainly.”“I wouldn’t do such a ungentlemanly thing. Poke your head through.”The man accompanied these words by seizing Gray by the hair and thrusting his head into the noose, which then he passed over his shoulder down to his waist.“There you are now,” he said, “as safe as if you was a diamond in cotton. Now, mind you, I go first, and you follow arter. You keep coming on in the line of the rope, you understand, as long as you feel me tugging at it; you are sure to be safe if you follow the rope, but so certain as you don’t down you’ll go either into some of the yards o’ the houses, or into some o’ the open courts.”“I understand,” said Gray, who felt anything but pleasantly situated with a thick rope round his middle, by which he was to be hauled over roofs of old houses. There was, however, no alternative, and he strove to assume an air of composure and confidence, which sat but ill upon him, and the ghastly smile which he forced his face to assume, looked like some hideous contortion of the muscles produced by pain, rather than an indication that the heart was at ease within him.The housebreaker now took the coil of rope in his hand, leaving a length between him and Jacob Gray of about three yards merely, and then he nimbly got out at the window.“Follow,” he said to Gray, “and mind ye now, if you say anything until you are spoken to by me, I’ll let you down.”Trembling and alarmed, Gray scrambled out at the window, and found himself standing, or rather crouching in a narrow gutter, full of slime and filth, and only protected from falling by a narrow coping, which cut and scratched his ankles as he moved.His guide crept on slowly and cautiously, and Gray followed guided by the rope, which every now and then was pulled very tight with a jerk, that at first very nearly upset him over the parapet.There was a cold raw air blowing over the house tops, but Gray’s fears produced a heavy perspiration upon him, and he shook excessively from sheer fright at the idea of a false step precipitating him to a great depth on to some stone pavement, where he would lay a hideous mass of broken bones.Tug, tug, went the rope, and now Jacob Gray felt the strain come in an upward direction. He crawled on, and presently found that the rope ascended a sloping roof of slates, which at the first dim sight of it, struck him he would have the greatest difficulty in ascending. He was not, however, left long to his reflections, for a sudden tug at the rope which brought him with his face in violent contact with the sloping roof, admonished him that his guide was getting rather impatient.With something between a curse and a groan, he commenced the slippery and difficult ascent, which, however, by the aid of the rope, he accomplished with greater ease than he had anticipated.It happened that Gray, in the confusion of his mind, did not at all take into consideration that the sloping roof might have a side to descend as well as one to ascend, so that when he arrived at its summit, he rolled over and came down with great speed into a gutter on the other side, and partially upon the back of his guide, who, with a muttered accusation of an awful character, seized him by the throat and held down, in the gutter upon his back to the imminent risk of his strangulation.It seemed that Gray’s fall had given some kind of alarm, for in a moment an attic window at some distance was opened with a creaking sound, and the voice of a female cried,—“Gracious me, what’s that?”“Hush, for your life, hush,” whispered the man in Gray’s ear.“Well, I never did hear such a rumpus,” said the woman’s voice. “It’s those beastly cats again.”She had no sooner uttered this suggestion, than Gray’s companion perpetrated so excellent an imitation of a cat mewing, that Gray was for a moment taken in it himself.“Ah, there you are,” said the woman; “I only wish I was near you. Puss—puss—puss.”This call from the woman was a hypocritical one, and evidently intended to deceive the supposed cat or cats to their serious personal detriment should they venture to the window allured by such pacific sounds.There was a pause of some moments, then the woman exclaimed,—“Oh, you artful wretches; I declare these cats are as knowing as Christians.”The attic window was then shut with a very aggravated bang, and Gray’s companion took his hand from his throat as he said to him,—“Curse you, what the devil made you come down the slope with such a run?““I—I didn’t know it,” said Gray.“Come on and mind what you are about. I didn’t think you were so precious green as you are; come on, I say.”The fellow crept on ahead, and a tug at the rope caused Gray to follow, which he did; so weak from terror and exhaustion that he could scarcely contrive to keep up with his guide, and numerous were the falls he received, as a sudden pull of the rope rebuked his tardy progress. Altogether, it was, to Jacob Gray, an awful means of safety, if safety was to be the result of it.They proceeded along the gutter they were in until they came to the corner house of the court, to turn which was no easy matter, from the circumstance of the coping stones ceasing each way, at about a foot from the absolute corner, down to which the roof came with a point. Round this point the housebreaker stepped with ease, but to Gray, oppressed as his mind was with fears and terrors, and weakened and exhausted as he was from his recent unusual bodily exertion, it was a task of the greatest magnitude and terror.There was, however, no time to deliberate, and it was, perhaps, better for Gray that such was the case, for his mind was not in that state to reason itself out of nervous apprehensions.A sharp tug of the rope settled his cogitations, and clinging with his hands to the angle of the roof, he placed his leg round the corner. It was then a moment or two before he could find, with his foot, the coping stones on the other side, and those few moments seemed to him hours of intense agony. At length he gained a hold with his foot, and rubbing his very face against the roof for fear of overbalancing himself in the outer direction, he contrived to get round.For a moment a deadly sickness came over him, when he had accomplished the, to him, difficult feat; then he felt as if he could have nothing else to fear, and a feeling of congratulation sprang up in his mind, that after all he might not only escape, but preserve the greater part of the large sum he had about him.
The Escape over the Houses.—Many Perils.—Gray’s Great Sufferings.—The Guide Rope.
Graywas silent for some moments, then, with, a deep groan, he dropped his head upon his hands, and gave himself up to a bitterness of anguish that must have both alarmed and melted any heart but the stubborn one of the man who now had him in his power.
“All I have struggled for,” thought Gray—“all that I have dipped my hands in blood for is about to be wrested from me for the mere doubtful boon of existence.”
At that awful moment of misery he did indeed feel that he had chosen the wrong path in life, and the gaudy flowers which had lured him from the right road of virtue to the intricate one of crime and deep iniquity, were but delusion, and had vanished, now leaving him a wanderer in a region of dissolution and gaunt despair. Oh, what would he have not given in that awful moment, when busy memory conjured up all his crimes before him in frightful array, to have been the veriest beggar that ever crept for alms from door to door, so that he could have said, “I am innocent of great wrong—I have shed no man’s blood!”
It might be that the evident mortal agony of Jacob Gray really had some effect even upon the hardened and obdurate heart of his companion, for it was several minutes before he spoke, and then when he did, his voice was scarcely so harshly tuned as before, and it is probable he meant to offer something very consolatory when he said,—
“Snivelling be bothered, I have cracked never so many cribs, and I never gaved up to the enemy yet. Keep up your heart, old ’un, you’ll light on your feet yet, like a cat as is shied out o’ a attic window.”
Gray only groaned and shook his head.
“Now, I tell you what I’ll do for you,” continued the man, “you shall go into partnership with me, and we’ll do a lot o’ work together. You’ve got a good sneaking sort o’ face that’ll gammon the flats. You can poke about and insinuate where family plate and such like things is kept, and then I’ll go and crack the cribs. Don’t be groaning here.”
The robber then gave Gray another encouraging blow upon the back, which effectually prevented him from groaning for some minutes, by leaving him no breath to groan with. Gray then looked up, and, glancing in the face of the man he said,—
“I will own to you that I have about me a larger sum than I at first named.”
“I know’d it,” cried the man, “I know’d—you white-mugged fellers always has larger sums than they names.”
“In one word,” said Gray, “I have two hundred pounds. Will you take one hundred and leave me at liberty to go from here when the ardour of pursuit has abated?”
“Without the search?”
“Yes. Without the search. You talk of your honour—why not rely upon mine?”
“’Cos I’m a known gentleman, and you isn’t,” replied the fellow. “My word’s respected all through the profession. If I say I’ll crack that crib, I goes and cracks it.”
“Exactly. You will agree to my terms?”
“Why, you see, I’m rather awkwardly situated just now. It isn’t safe for you to go out by the way you came in. You may think it is, but I can tell you it isn’t. The people down stairs have had a cool hundred offered for nabbing you, and ain’t they on the look-out?”
“A hundred?”
“Yes. You see that’s all you offer me. Now there’s Bill’s attic to pay for, and Bill’s young woman.”
Gray replied by a groan.
“There you go, now, groaning away. It’s well for you that you’ve fell among people with fine feelings, and all that sort o’ thing. Some folks now, as know’d as much as, I’m pretty sure, I know, would put a knife in your guts.”
“What—what—do—you know?” stammered Gray, shivering at the very idea of such a process.
“What do I know? Why, I know you are trying to deceive a gentleman. You’ve got more money then you’ll own to, you know you have.”
“You wrong me. Indeed you do.”
“Well, well, I’ll take Bill’s opinion. He’s better nor all the lawyers in London, is Bill. If he says as it’s all right and we are to take the hundred only, I consents. Now, my covey, I’ll trouble you to come with me to Bill’s attic.”
“But can we go without danger? The people down stairs, you say, are on the watch.”
“Let ’em watch—we ain’t a-going down stairs. The window’s the thing for us.”
“Is it the next house?”
“No, it isn’t—nor the next arter that either—but it’s all the safer for that. You’ve got a few roofs to get over, but I know ’em if well as I know my own pocket.”
The man then opened the small latticed window of the room and looked out for a moment. Then, with a satisfied tone, he said,—
“It’s a regular dark night. There ain’t a shadow o’ fear.”
“You think I shall escape?”
“I know it. I’ve said it. Think o’ my honour.”
He then took from an old chest a coil of very thick rope, in one end of which he busied himself in making a noose, which, when he had completed, he advanced with it to Gray, saying,—
“Just pop your head through.”
“Gracious Heavens!” cried Gray, starting up. “What do you mean?”
“Mean? Why to take care of you to be sure; I know the way over the roofs, but you don’t. You’ll smash yourself in some of the courts without a guide rope, you will.”
“A guide rope?”
“Yes. Don’t be making those faces. Do you think I’m going to hang you?”
“Oh no—no,” said Gray, with a nervous smile. “No—certainly.”
“I wouldn’t do such a ungentlemanly thing. Poke your head through.”
The man accompanied these words by seizing Gray by the hair and thrusting his head into the noose, which then he passed over his shoulder down to his waist.
“There you are now,” he said, “as safe as if you was a diamond in cotton. Now, mind you, I go first, and you follow arter. You keep coming on in the line of the rope, you understand, as long as you feel me tugging at it; you are sure to be safe if you follow the rope, but so certain as you don’t down you’ll go either into some of the yards o’ the houses, or into some o’ the open courts.”
“I understand,” said Gray, who felt anything but pleasantly situated with a thick rope round his middle, by which he was to be hauled over roofs of old houses. There was, however, no alternative, and he strove to assume an air of composure and confidence, which sat but ill upon him, and the ghastly smile which he forced his face to assume, looked like some hideous contortion of the muscles produced by pain, rather than an indication that the heart was at ease within him.
The housebreaker now took the coil of rope in his hand, leaving a length between him and Jacob Gray of about three yards merely, and then he nimbly got out at the window.
“Follow,” he said to Gray, “and mind ye now, if you say anything until you are spoken to by me, I’ll let you down.”
Trembling and alarmed, Gray scrambled out at the window, and found himself standing, or rather crouching in a narrow gutter, full of slime and filth, and only protected from falling by a narrow coping, which cut and scratched his ankles as he moved.
His guide crept on slowly and cautiously, and Gray followed guided by the rope, which every now and then was pulled very tight with a jerk, that at first very nearly upset him over the parapet.
There was a cold raw air blowing over the house tops, but Gray’s fears produced a heavy perspiration upon him, and he shook excessively from sheer fright at the idea of a false step precipitating him to a great depth on to some stone pavement, where he would lay a hideous mass of broken bones.
Tug, tug, went the rope, and now Jacob Gray felt the strain come in an upward direction. He crawled on, and presently found that the rope ascended a sloping roof of slates, which at the first dim sight of it, struck him he would have the greatest difficulty in ascending. He was not, however, left long to his reflections, for a sudden tug at the rope which brought him with his face in violent contact with the sloping roof, admonished him that his guide was getting rather impatient.
With something between a curse and a groan, he commenced the slippery and difficult ascent, which, however, by the aid of the rope, he accomplished with greater ease than he had anticipated.
It happened that Gray, in the confusion of his mind, did not at all take into consideration that the sloping roof might have a side to descend as well as one to ascend, so that when he arrived at its summit, he rolled over and came down with great speed into a gutter on the other side, and partially upon the back of his guide, who, with a muttered accusation of an awful character, seized him by the throat and held down, in the gutter upon his back to the imminent risk of his strangulation.
It seemed that Gray’s fall had given some kind of alarm, for in a moment an attic window at some distance was opened with a creaking sound, and the voice of a female cried,—
“Gracious me, what’s that?”
“Hush, for your life, hush,” whispered the man in Gray’s ear.
“Well, I never did hear such a rumpus,” said the woman’s voice. “It’s those beastly cats again.”
She had no sooner uttered this suggestion, than Gray’s companion perpetrated so excellent an imitation of a cat mewing, that Gray was for a moment taken in it himself.
“Ah, there you are,” said the woman; “I only wish I was near you. Puss—puss—puss.”
This call from the woman was a hypocritical one, and evidently intended to deceive the supposed cat or cats to their serious personal detriment should they venture to the window allured by such pacific sounds.
There was a pause of some moments, then the woman exclaimed,—
“Oh, you artful wretches; I declare these cats are as knowing as Christians.”
The attic window was then shut with a very aggravated bang, and Gray’s companion took his hand from his throat as he said to him,—
“Curse you, what the devil made you come down the slope with such a run?“
“I—I didn’t know it,” said Gray.
“Come on and mind what you are about. I didn’t think you were so precious green as you are; come on, I say.”
The fellow crept on ahead, and a tug at the rope caused Gray to follow, which he did; so weak from terror and exhaustion that he could scarcely contrive to keep up with his guide, and numerous were the falls he received, as a sudden pull of the rope rebuked his tardy progress. Altogether, it was, to Jacob Gray, an awful means of safety, if safety was to be the result of it.
They proceeded along the gutter they were in until they came to the corner house of the court, to turn which was no easy matter, from the circumstance of the coping stones ceasing each way, at about a foot from the absolute corner, down to which the roof came with a point. Round this point the housebreaker stepped with ease, but to Gray, oppressed as his mind was with fears and terrors, and weakened and exhausted as he was from his recent unusual bodily exertion, it was a task of the greatest magnitude and terror.
There was, however, no time to deliberate, and it was, perhaps, better for Gray that such was the case, for his mind was not in that state to reason itself out of nervous apprehensions.
A sharp tug of the rope settled his cogitations, and clinging with his hands to the angle of the roof, he placed his leg round the corner. It was then a moment or two before he could find, with his foot, the coping stones on the other side, and those few moments seemed to him hours of intense agony. At length he gained a hold with his foot, and rubbing his very face against the roof for fear of overbalancing himself in the outer direction, he contrived to get round.
For a moment a deadly sickness came over him, when he had accomplished the, to him, difficult feat; then he felt as if he could have nothing else to fear, and a feeling of congratulation sprang up in his mind, that after all he might not only escape, but preserve the greater part of the large sum he had about him.
CHAPTER LVI.The Robbers.—The Drugged Wine.—Visions of the Mind Diseased.The pathover the house tops now continued for upwards of a quarter of an hour, without presenting any very extraordinary difficulties to Jacob Gray, and he was about to congratulate himself that really the worst was past, when the rope suddenly slackened, and in a few moments his guide was by his side.“You can jump a bit, I suppose?” he said.“Jump? Jump?”“Yes, jump. What the devil do you repeat my words for?”“I—am no greater jumper,” said Gray. “Where am I to jump?”“Across this court.”“Across a court? I cannot—I cannot.”“You must.”“I am lost—I am lost,” said Gray, wringing his hands, for the feat of jumping across a court at the risk of a fall into the gulph below, appeared to him to be totally impossible.“Well,” cried the man, “if ever I came near such an out-and-out sneak in the whole course of my life. Why you are afraid of what you know nothing about. You’ve only got to jump off a parapet of one house in at Bill’s attic window opposite.”“Only,” said Gray, trembling exceedingly. “Do you call that easy?”“Yes; and if you don’t jump it, I must just ease you of all you have got in the money way on the roofs here, and leave you to your luck.”Gray looked despairingly around him. There was no hope for him. He stood in a drain between the two roofs, and he was as ignorant of the locality of his position as it was possible to be. With a deep groan he sunk grovelling at the feet of the man in whose power he was, and in imploring accents he said,—“Take me back, and let me run my chance of escape from the house you live in. Oh, take me back, for I am unequal to the fearful task you propose to me. I am, indeed—I should falter and fall—I know I should. Then an awful death would be my lot—a death of pain and horror. Oh, take me back—take me back!”“I’ll see you d—d first,” cried the man. “Come on, or I’ll cut your throat where you are. Come on, I say, you whining hound, come on, and look at the jump you are so scared at afore you know anything about it. Come on, I say. Oh, you won’t?”“Spare me—spare me!”The man took a large clasp knife from his pocket and opened it with his teeth.“I’ll go—I’ll go,” cried Gray. “Put up the knife—oh, God! Put up the knife—any death but that!”“Oh! Any death but that. Then it’s my opinion you’ve used such a little article yourself. Speak!”“I—I—have,” gasped Gray. “Take it out of my sight, I cannot bear to look upon it.”“Oh, you’re a tender-hearted piece of goods, certainly. Well, well, we all have our little failings. You’ve had a precious fright about this jump, and now I tell you it’s no jump at all.”“Indeed?”“No. These houses are so built that each story as they go up projects outwards, so that I’m cursed if you couldn’t shake a fist with a pal from some of the opposite attic windows. Come on, now, spooney, and you’ll curse yourself for a fool for being afraid of nothing.”“Is it indeed as you say,” muttered Gray, who still could not get over his great terror, although he well knew that hundreds of houses in narrow thoroughfares in London were so situated, that the attics had scarcely a couple of yards of open space between them.“Come on,” was the only reply, accompanied by a jerk of the rope, and presently one of the roofs ceased upon one side, and turning an angle, Gray, by the very dim light that was cast upwards from the street, saw that he was opposite a row of dirty, squalid-looking attic windows, from some of which lights were streaming, while others were obscured by old clothes hung up in the inside. A very few steps further now brought them to a part where, as the housebreaker had told Gray, the upper story of the house on the top of which they were, projected considerably across the narrow court; here Gray’s guide paused, and pointing to an attic immediately opposite, he said,—“There—that’s not much of a jump.”“No, no,” said Gray. “I could do that.”The distance was scarcely more than a long step from parapet to parapet.The robber now slackened out some of the rope in order that by suddenly jumping across the chasm he might not drag Gray from the slight standing he had. Then, with the remainder of the rope on his arm, he sprung across and alighted in safety in the gutter of the opposite house.“Jump now,” he said to Gray.The distance was too insignificant to give occasion for fear, but still Gray barely cleared it, and fell in the drain where the housebreaker was standing.“Well,” said the latter, “of all the awkward hands at business that ever I saw you are the most awkward. It’s well for you there’s somebody to look after you.”He then undid a fastening on the outside of the attic window, and at once jumped into the room, whither he was followed by Gray.“You remain here,” he then said. “Don’t stir for your life, while I go down stairs to speak to Bill.”“You will not keep me here long?” said Gray.“Not five minutes. Make no noise; but enjoy yourself as well as you can.”The man now left Gray to his meditations after carefully locking him in the room, and these meditations were very far from an agreeable or pleasant charae.Gray’s first idea was that he would hide the money he had about him with the exception of the amount he had averred to, namely, two hundred pound, but then it naturally occurred to him how extremely improbable it was that he should ever have an opportunity of repossessing himself of it.“Still,” he answered, with his usual selfish cunning; “still there may be a remote, although a very remote chance; and, at all events, if I never see it again myself, I may prevent these men from having it.”Deep groans then burst from him, and he smote his breast as the thought came across him that all the gold he had wrung from the guilty fear of Learmont, and hoarded so carefully; might now be about to pass from him in a mass never again to bless his sight.“They will rob me—they will rob me,” he thought, and compared with that, it appeared to him preferable to know that it was hidden from them and undisposed of, although inaccessible to himself.How and where to conceal it then became the object, and he felt about in the dark to discover some loose board, or other means, of placing his ill-gotten money out of sight—where, for all he knew, it might remain until the coins of which it was composed, became blackened into curiosities.Such, however, was not to be the fate of Learmont’s gold, for while Gray was still feeling about in the attic for a place of security in which to deposit it, the door was suddenly opened, and his former companion appeared, along with a shorter man, in whose countenance, nature or education had taken especial pains to stamp villain!“Here you are,” said the man who had guided Gray across the roofs. “This is the gentleman, Bill. He was in an awkward fix, but now we mean to do the thing handsomely by him, eh, Bill, don’t we?”“I should think so,” replied Bill. “Your servant, sir.”“Thank you,” said Gray. “Is the coast clear now? Can I go?”“Lor’ bless you, no!” replied the man who was named Bill. “You must not venture for an hour yet. There’s a watchman put at the end of this court to apprehend any strange gentlemen going out of it; but in the course of an hour we can dispose of him.”“Indeed?” said Gray.“Oh, yes. When Jim Binks comes home, he’ll go and be booked, as safe as a gun.”“I don’t understand you.”“Why, this is it,” continued Bill. “Jim Binks can make himself look so uncommon suspicious a character, that if he likes he is sure to be taken up, if there’s been any regular kick up about anything such as your murder.”Gray started.“Well, well,” continued the ruffian, “damme, it was well done, you needn’t now look as if you couldn’t help it.”“I begin to understand you,” said Gray. “The person you name will allow himself to be taken for me?”“Exactly. They know him well at the watch-house, and will let him go directly again, because it’s well known you are a stranger, as half a dozen officers can swear to.”“Then in the interval I can leave the house,” said Gray.“You can. But Jim must be paid.”“Oh, certainly. I have two hundred pounds, gentlemen; I hope you will accept of one of them for your very great kindness, and leave me the other.”“What do you say to that, Bill?” cried the man who had come with Gray.“I think it’s fair,” said the other.“Well, then, that’s agreed.”“Thank you, gentlemen,” said Gray, breathing a little more freely at the idea of getting off with nearly all his money.“Now then,” said Bill, “come down stairs, as all business matters are settled, and have a bit of supper.”“I shall be grateful for it,” said Gray, “for I have tasted nothing to-day.”He did not perceive the wink that passed between his new friends, but at once followed them from the attic to the lower part of the crazy tenement.In an old wainscoted room on the first floor, there was a bright and cheerful-looking fire, and such scanty articles of furniture as were absolutely requisite for the personal accommodation of three or four persons.A table, on which were several plates, mugs, bottles, and other evidences of some recent meal, stood close by the fire.Bill, the proprietor of all this display of dirt and dinginess, took up the poker from the fire-side, and beat it heavily against the floor, observing at the same time—“It’s a d—d sight better than a bell is a poker—the wire never breaks.”“You speak like a oracle, Bill,” remarked the other man, throwing himself into a seat, and giving Jacob Gray a pull towards him to undo the rope that was still round his middle.“What will you both drink?” cried Bill; “I have something of everything here, I do believe.”“Brandy for me,” cried the other man.“I should prefer wine,” said Gray, “if you have some on hand.”“I believe you—I have,” rejoined the host. “As fine a drop of wine as ever you tasted in your life, on my honour.”The door now opened, and an old wrinkled hag appeared, who, in not very courteous terms, demanded,—“What now?”“What have you got to give a strange gentleman to eat?” said Bill.“Nothing,” replied the woman.“Then go and get something. Here’s a guinea. Be off with you, and do you bring a bottle of our best claret for the gentleman. He prefers wine, because it shouldn’t get in his head. Do you hear?”The old woman fixed her keen, twinkling eye upon Gray, and then, with a chuckle which quickly turned to a cough, she left the room on her errand.“We’ll settle all business after supper,” remarked Gray’s entertainer. “Then I should advise you to lay by very snug for some days. You can’t stay here, though.”“No—no,” said Gray, who had quite as much objection to remaining there as the thieves had to permitting him to do so. “I will find some place of refuge without doubt.”“Do you know the man whose head you so handsomely settled in the court?”“No,” said Gray. “It was in self-defence. He would have taken me.”“Self-defence be d—d,” remarked Gray’s first acquaintance. “He’s a good riddance: his name was Vaughan, and a pest he was to all the family in London.”“Tell us what lay you had been on,” said Bill, “that made the runners so hot after you?”“Oh, only a—a robbery—a little robbery,” said Gray, with a sickly attempt at a smile.“Oh, that was all?”“Yes; a robbery of two hundred pounds, of which you are to have one, you know, and to leave me the other.”“That’s quite agreed.”The door was now again opened, and the old woman appeared with a tray containing sundry viands from neighbouring shops dealing in ready-cooked victuals. Wine and brandy likewise formed a part of her burthen, and in a very few moments the table was spread, and Gray, who really, now that he felt himself comparatively safe, began to be tormented by the pangs of hunger, fell to with a vigorous appetite, upon a cold tongue of ample dimensions.“How do you like it?” said Bill, with a wink to his comrade.“’Tis excellent,” replied Gray, glancing towards the bottles.“You will take wine now?”“If you please.”A bottle was uncorked, and Gray relished the wine very much, along with the other items of his repast.The confederates drank small quantities of brandy from another bottle, and encouraged Gray by never allowing his glass to be empty to make great progress with the wine.Glass after glass he drank with a kind of recklessness foreign to his nature, but the liquor was drugged, and the very first draught had made a confusion in the intellect of Jacob Gray. Up to his brain the fumes mounted, awakening a desire still for more, and lighting up his eyes with a strange wild fire.His two companions now nodded and winked at each other openly, for Jacob Gray was too far gone in intoxication to heed them.“He’ll do,” remarked Bill in a whisper.“Of course,” said the other, “you may depend he has something worth while about him.”“No doubt—no doubt.”“Gentlemen—gentlemen,” said Gray, pouring himself out another glass, “here’s to—to—our better—ac—acquaintance.”“Hurrah!” cried Bill, “that’s yer sort.”“And—confusion to Andrew Britton,” added Gray, dealing the table a heavy blow with his fist. “Confusion, death, and damnation to Andrew Britton.”“Bravo! Bravo!”“You’ll take a hundred. Mind only a hundred. Don’t rob me—no—no, don’t rob me. It’s been too hard to get, with the—the curse of blood clinging to it. The curse of blood.”“Oh, that’s it, old fellow,” cried Bill.“She—she to betray me,” muttered Gray “she of all others; I might have killed her—I will kill her. Some slow and horrible death shall be hers. I’ll hack your flesh from your bones, Ada—I will—I will—one word and you die. I must shoot him—he seeks my life.”“Here’s a beauty,” remarked Bill, to his comrade, who had very calmly lighted a fire, and sat listening to Gray’s revelations with all the composure in the world, as if he had merely been present at some ordinary dramatic entertainment.“Three thousand pounds would be enough,” said Gray, tossing off another bumper of the drugged wine, and smashing the glass with the vehemence with which he replaced it on the table. “Three thousand. Yes, yes; enough to lead a life of—of riot somewhere else. Not here—not here. Then I should read of his execution, or both their executions, and—when I was dull, I would bring out the newspaper that had the account, and I’d read it over and over again. I’ll wash my hands in her blood. I’ll smash her face till—till there’s not a lineament remains to horrify me by reminding me of her.”“’Pon my soul,” remarked Bill, “we have hit on an out-and-outer.”“Rather,” said the other, without taking the pipe from his mouth.“Don’t look at me!” suddenly cried Gray, springing to his feet. “Don’t glare at me with your stony eyes! Clear away—clear away. Do you want to stop my breath—I—I—must go—go—from here—there—there; help—save me. What do you do here—one—two—three. Why do you point at me? You would have your deaths. You—you—why do you not remain and rot in the Old Smithy? Save me from him. His wounds are bleeding still. Will the damp earth never soak up all the blood? You—you I shot. Don’t grin at me. Away—away—I am going mad—mad—Ada—Ada—Ada—pray—pray for me!”He reeled around twice, and fell upon the floor with a deep groan.
The Robbers.—The Drugged Wine.—Visions of the Mind Diseased.
The pathover the house tops now continued for upwards of a quarter of an hour, without presenting any very extraordinary difficulties to Jacob Gray, and he was about to congratulate himself that really the worst was past, when the rope suddenly slackened, and in a few moments his guide was by his side.
“You can jump a bit, I suppose?” he said.
“Jump? Jump?”
“Yes, jump. What the devil do you repeat my words for?”
“I—am no greater jumper,” said Gray. “Where am I to jump?”
“Across this court.”
“Across a court? I cannot—I cannot.”
“You must.”
“I am lost—I am lost,” said Gray, wringing his hands, for the feat of jumping across a court at the risk of a fall into the gulph below, appeared to him to be totally impossible.
“Well,” cried the man, “if ever I came near such an out-and-out sneak in the whole course of my life. Why you are afraid of what you know nothing about. You’ve only got to jump off a parapet of one house in at Bill’s attic window opposite.”
“Only,” said Gray, trembling exceedingly. “Do you call that easy?”
“Yes; and if you don’t jump it, I must just ease you of all you have got in the money way on the roofs here, and leave you to your luck.”
Gray looked despairingly around him. There was no hope for him. He stood in a drain between the two roofs, and he was as ignorant of the locality of his position as it was possible to be. With a deep groan he sunk grovelling at the feet of the man in whose power he was, and in imploring accents he said,—
“Take me back, and let me run my chance of escape from the house you live in. Oh, take me back, for I am unequal to the fearful task you propose to me. I am, indeed—I should falter and fall—I know I should. Then an awful death would be my lot—a death of pain and horror. Oh, take me back—take me back!”
“I’ll see you d—d first,” cried the man. “Come on, or I’ll cut your throat where you are. Come on, I say, you whining hound, come on, and look at the jump you are so scared at afore you know anything about it. Come on, I say. Oh, you won’t?”
“Spare me—spare me!”
The man took a large clasp knife from his pocket and opened it with his teeth.
“I’ll go—I’ll go,” cried Gray. “Put up the knife—oh, God! Put up the knife—any death but that!”
“Oh! Any death but that. Then it’s my opinion you’ve used such a little article yourself. Speak!”
“I—I—have,” gasped Gray. “Take it out of my sight, I cannot bear to look upon it.”
“Oh, you’re a tender-hearted piece of goods, certainly. Well, well, we all have our little failings. You’ve had a precious fright about this jump, and now I tell you it’s no jump at all.”
“Indeed?”
“No. These houses are so built that each story as they go up projects outwards, so that I’m cursed if you couldn’t shake a fist with a pal from some of the opposite attic windows. Come on, now, spooney, and you’ll curse yourself for a fool for being afraid of nothing.”
“Is it indeed as you say,” muttered Gray, who still could not get over his great terror, although he well knew that hundreds of houses in narrow thoroughfares in London were so situated, that the attics had scarcely a couple of yards of open space between them.
“Come on,” was the only reply, accompanied by a jerk of the rope, and presently one of the roofs ceased upon one side, and turning an angle, Gray, by the very dim light that was cast upwards from the street, saw that he was opposite a row of dirty, squalid-looking attic windows, from some of which lights were streaming, while others were obscured by old clothes hung up in the inside. A very few steps further now brought them to a part where, as the housebreaker had told Gray, the upper story of the house on the top of which they were, projected considerably across the narrow court; here Gray’s guide paused, and pointing to an attic immediately opposite, he said,—
“There—that’s not much of a jump.”
“No, no,” said Gray. “I could do that.”
The distance was scarcely more than a long step from parapet to parapet.
The robber now slackened out some of the rope in order that by suddenly jumping across the chasm he might not drag Gray from the slight standing he had. Then, with the remainder of the rope on his arm, he sprung across and alighted in safety in the gutter of the opposite house.
“Jump now,” he said to Gray.
The distance was too insignificant to give occasion for fear, but still Gray barely cleared it, and fell in the drain where the housebreaker was standing.
“Well,” said the latter, “of all the awkward hands at business that ever I saw you are the most awkward. It’s well for you there’s somebody to look after you.”
He then undid a fastening on the outside of the attic window, and at once jumped into the room, whither he was followed by Gray.
“You remain here,” he then said. “Don’t stir for your life, while I go down stairs to speak to Bill.”
“You will not keep me here long?” said Gray.
“Not five minutes. Make no noise; but enjoy yourself as well as you can.”
The man now left Gray to his meditations after carefully locking him in the room, and these meditations were very far from an agreeable or pleasant charae.
Gray’s first idea was that he would hide the money he had about him with the exception of the amount he had averred to, namely, two hundred pound, but then it naturally occurred to him how extremely improbable it was that he should ever have an opportunity of repossessing himself of it.
“Still,” he answered, with his usual selfish cunning; “still there may be a remote, although a very remote chance; and, at all events, if I never see it again myself, I may prevent these men from having it.”
Deep groans then burst from him, and he smote his breast as the thought came across him that all the gold he had wrung from the guilty fear of Learmont, and hoarded so carefully; might now be about to pass from him in a mass never again to bless his sight.
“They will rob me—they will rob me,” he thought, and compared with that, it appeared to him preferable to know that it was hidden from them and undisposed of, although inaccessible to himself.
How and where to conceal it then became the object, and he felt about in the dark to discover some loose board, or other means, of placing his ill-gotten money out of sight—where, for all he knew, it might remain until the coins of which it was composed, became blackened into curiosities.
Such, however, was not to be the fate of Learmont’s gold, for while Gray was still feeling about in the attic for a place of security in which to deposit it, the door was suddenly opened, and his former companion appeared, along with a shorter man, in whose countenance, nature or education had taken especial pains to stamp villain!
“Here you are,” said the man who had guided Gray across the roofs. “This is the gentleman, Bill. He was in an awkward fix, but now we mean to do the thing handsomely by him, eh, Bill, don’t we?”
“I should think so,” replied Bill. “Your servant, sir.”
“Thank you,” said Gray. “Is the coast clear now? Can I go?”
“Lor’ bless you, no!” replied the man who was named Bill. “You must not venture for an hour yet. There’s a watchman put at the end of this court to apprehend any strange gentlemen going out of it; but in the course of an hour we can dispose of him.”
“Indeed?” said Gray.
“Oh, yes. When Jim Binks comes home, he’ll go and be booked, as safe as a gun.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“Why, this is it,” continued Bill. “Jim Binks can make himself look so uncommon suspicious a character, that if he likes he is sure to be taken up, if there’s been any regular kick up about anything such as your murder.”
Gray started.
“Well, well,” continued the ruffian, “damme, it was well done, you needn’t now look as if you couldn’t help it.”
“I begin to understand you,” said Gray. “The person you name will allow himself to be taken for me?”
“Exactly. They know him well at the watch-house, and will let him go directly again, because it’s well known you are a stranger, as half a dozen officers can swear to.”
“Then in the interval I can leave the house,” said Gray.
“You can. But Jim must be paid.”
“Oh, certainly. I have two hundred pounds, gentlemen; I hope you will accept of one of them for your very great kindness, and leave me the other.”
“What do you say to that, Bill?” cried the man who had come with Gray.
“I think it’s fair,” said the other.
“Well, then, that’s agreed.”
“Thank you, gentlemen,” said Gray, breathing a little more freely at the idea of getting off with nearly all his money.
“Now then,” said Bill, “come down stairs, as all business matters are settled, and have a bit of supper.”
“I shall be grateful for it,” said Gray, “for I have tasted nothing to-day.”
He did not perceive the wink that passed between his new friends, but at once followed them from the attic to the lower part of the crazy tenement.
In an old wainscoted room on the first floor, there was a bright and cheerful-looking fire, and such scanty articles of furniture as were absolutely requisite for the personal accommodation of three or four persons.
A table, on which were several plates, mugs, bottles, and other evidences of some recent meal, stood close by the fire.
Bill, the proprietor of all this display of dirt and dinginess, took up the poker from the fire-side, and beat it heavily against the floor, observing at the same time—
“It’s a d—d sight better than a bell is a poker—the wire never breaks.”
“You speak like a oracle, Bill,” remarked the other man, throwing himself into a seat, and giving Jacob Gray a pull towards him to undo the rope that was still round his middle.
“What will you both drink?” cried Bill; “I have something of everything here, I do believe.”
“Brandy for me,” cried the other man.
“I should prefer wine,” said Gray, “if you have some on hand.”
“I believe you—I have,” rejoined the host. “As fine a drop of wine as ever you tasted in your life, on my honour.”
The door now opened, and an old wrinkled hag appeared, who, in not very courteous terms, demanded,—
“What now?”
“What have you got to give a strange gentleman to eat?” said Bill.
“Nothing,” replied the woman.
“Then go and get something. Here’s a guinea. Be off with you, and do you bring a bottle of our best claret for the gentleman. He prefers wine, because it shouldn’t get in his head. Do you hear?”
The old woman fixed her keen, twinkling eye upon Gray, and then, with a chuckle which quickly turned to a cough, she left the room on her errand.
“We’ll settle all business after supper,” remarked Gray’s entertainer. “Then I should advise you to lay by very snug for some days. You can’t stay here, though.”
“No—no,” said Gray, who had quite as much objection to remaining there as the thieves had to permitting him to do so. “I will find some place of refuge without doubt.”
“Do you know the man whose head you so handsomely settled in the court?”
“No,” said Gray. “It was in self-defence. He would have taken me.”
“Self-defence be d—d,” remarked Gray’s first acquaintance. “He’s a good riddance: his name was Vaughan, and a pest he was to all the family in London.”
“Tell us what lay you had been on,” said Bill, “that made the runners so hot after you?”
“Oh, only a—a robbery—a little robbery,” said Gray, with a sickly attempt at a smile.
“Oh, that was all?”
“Yes; a robbery of two hundred pounds, of which you are to have one, you know, and to leave me the other.”
“That’s quite agreed.”
The door was now again opened, and the old woman appeared with a tray containing sundry viands from neighbouring shops dealing in ready-cooked victuals. Wine and brandy likewise formed a part of her burthen, and in a very few moments the table was spread, and Gray, who really, now that he felt himself comparatively safe, began to be tormented by the pangs of hunger, fell to with a vigorous appetite, upon a cold tongue of ample dimensions.
“How do you like it?” said Bill, with a wink to his comrade.
“’Tis excellent,” replied Gray, glancing towards the bottles.
“You will take wine now?”
“If you please.”
A bottle was uncorked, and Gray relished the wine very much, along with the other items of his repast.
The confederates drank small quantities of brandy from another bottle, and encouraged Gray by never allowing his glass to be empty to make great progress with the wine.
Glass after glass he drank with a kind of recklessness foreign to his nature, but the liquor was drugged, and the very first draught had made a confusion in the intellect of Jacob Gray. Up to his brain the fumes mounted, awakening a desire still for more, and lighting up his eyes with a strange wild fire.
His two companions now nodded and winked at each other openly, for Jacob Gray was too far gone in intoxication to heed them.
“He’ll do,” remarked Bill in a whisper.
“Of course,” said the other, “you may depend he has something worth while about him.”
“No doubt—no doubt.”
“Gentlemen—gentlemen,” said Gray, pouring himself out another glass, “here’s to—to—our better—ac—acquaintance.”
“Hurrah!” cried Bill, “that’s yer sort.”
“And—confusion to Andrew Britton,” added Gray, dealing the table a heavy blow with his fist. “Confusion, death, and damnation to Andrew Britton.”
“Bravo! Bravo!”
“You’ll take a hundred. Mind only a hundred. Don’t rob me—no—no, don’t rob me. It’s been too hard to get, with the—the curse of blood clinging to it. The curse of blood.”
“Oh, that’s it, old fellow,” cried Bill.
“She—she to betray me,” muttered Gray “she of all others; I might have killed her—I will kill her. Some slow and horrible death shall be hers. I’ll hack your flesh from your bones, Ada—I will—I will—one word and you die. I must shoot him—he seeks my life.”
“Here’s a beauty,” remarked Bill, to his comrade, who had very calmly lighted a fire, and sat listening to Gray’s revelations with all the composure in the world, as if he had merely been present at some ordinary dramatic entertainment.
“Three thousand pounds would be enough,” said Gray, tossing off another bumper of the drugged wine, and smashing the glass with the vehemence with which he replaced it on the table. “Three thousand. Yes, yes; enough to lead a life of—of riot somewhere else. Not here—not here. Then I should read of his execution, or both their executions, and—when I was dull, I would bring out the newspaper that had the account, and I’d read it over and over again. I’ll wash my hands in her blood. I’ll smash her face till—till there’s not a lineament remains to horrify me by reminding me of her.”
“’Pon my soul,” remarked Bill, “we have hit on an out-and-outer.”
“Rather,” said the other, without taking the pipe from his mouth.
“Don’t look at me!” suddenly cried Gray, springing to his feet. “Don’t glare at me with your stony eyes! Clear away—clear away. Do you want to stop my breath—I—I—must go—go—from here—there—there; help—save me. What do you do here—one—two—three. Why do you point at me? You would have your deaths. You—you—why do you not remain and rot in the Old Smithy? Save me from him. His wounds are bleeding still. Will the damp earth never soak up all the blood? You—you I shot. Don’t grin at me. Away—away—I am going mad—mad—Ada—Ada—Ada—pray—pray for me!”
He reeled around twice, and fell upon the floor with a deep groan.