Chapter XLV…

Chapter XLV

The Lonely Watcher.—Gray’s Cunning.—The Cupboard on the Stairs.

Notwithstanding the search which Sir Francis Hartleton had made—a search that satisfied him that Ada had been removed from Forest’s house by the cunning of Gray—he could not divest himself of the idea that one or both might return to the old mansion, if for no other purpose than to remove some of the articles, which in the course of his researches he had found in various closets and cupboards, into which they had been hastily thrust by Jacob Gray.

In case such a thing should be, after some consideration, he resolved to have one of his men there for several days, and he accordingly turned to him who had been guarding the door, and said,—

“Elias, you must remain here for a few days.”

“Here, Sir Francis? In this old house, your worship?”

“Yes, here in this old house, Elias. You are strong, fearless, and well armed. Arrest any one who comes here.”

“Yes,” said Elias, looking about him, not over well pleased with his commission, as it did not promise much comfort or sprightly company—two things that Elias was rather partial to.

“I expect a thin, sallow man,” continued sir Francis, “to come here, of a pale and anxious cast of countenance. Arrest him by all means.”

“Yes, your worship.”

“And should a young girl come with him, or by herself, mind, Elias, she is a lady, and take care you treat her respectfully.”

“A lady!” ejaculated Elias, with astonishment. “Your worship, is she a real lady, or like Moll Flaherty?”

“Pshaw!” cried Sir Francis. “Treat her, I say, with respect, and bring her to me.”

“Oh! Bring her to your worship—oh!”

“Now you have your instructions. It’s warm, so you can do without a fire and it’s light, and smoke would scare away the people I wish to come. When you sleep, Elias, shut your door lightly, so that you may hear if any one comes. Upon consideration, however, you had better sit up all night, and sleep a little in the day time, for those that I seek are not likely to venture across the fields, lest they should be seen.”

“Your worship’s unkimmon considerate, and very kind,” muttered Elias.

“You have your lantern, Elias?”

“Yes, your worship, and lots of little wax ends put in it.”

“Very well. Now, good day. Keep a good watch, Elias—and, do you hear? There’s fifty pounds reward for either the man or the girl.”

“Fifty!”

“Yes, from me; so you know you are sure of it if you earn it.”

“Oh!” cried Elias, looking round, him, with a very different expression, upon the old house. “It’s a very comfortable place, indeed, your worship.”

“By-the-by,” said Sir Francis, “I forgot one thing—the girl may come in boy’s clothing.”

“Oh, the dear!” said Elias.

“So, if what you think a boy comes, you may assume that that’s the girl.”

“The pretty cretur!” exclaimed Elias. “Fifty pounds! Bless her.”

The magistrate then reflected a moment, and not recollecting anything else that it was necessary to impress upon the sensitive mind of Elias, he was turning away from the door, when that gentleman himself suddenly thought of something of the very greatest importance in his eyes.

“Your worship,” he said, “my victuals—my victuals, your worship.”

“What?” said Sir Francis.

“Am I to be starved, your worship? How am I to get my victuals?”

Sir Francis smiled, as he replied,—

“I should not have forgotten you. You must do the best you can till sunset, when I will send Stephy to you with plenty to last you.”

“Well,” exclaimed Elias, “it is a mercy that I tucked in a tolerable breakfast.”

Sir Francis now left the house with his other companions, and Elias, who was remarkable for his size and great personal strength, closed the door, and began to bethink how he should amuse the leisure hours until sunset, when the welcome provisions should arrive; after which time he did not contemplate that the time would hang at all heavily upon his hands.

In the meanwhile Jacob Gray remained in the vault, threatening Ada, until he thought all danger must be past, from the extreme quiet that reigned in the house. Not the most distant notion of Sir Francis Hartleton’s leaving any one behind him to keep watch in the lonely mansion, occurred to Jacob Gray, and after half an hour, as he guessed, had very nearly passed away, he began to breathe a little more freely, and to congratulate himself that for that time at least the danger had blown over his head.

During that half hour he made a determination to leave the house, and for the short time now that he would stay in England—for he was thoroughly scared, and resolved to be off very soon—he would take some lodging for himself and Ada, at the same time binding her by a solemn promise, as before, not to leave him, which promise he would now render less irksome to her, by representing that in a short time she should be quite free to act as she pleased, as well as knowing everything that might concern her or her future fortunes.

With this idea, and believing the danger past, he spoke in a more unembarrassed tone to Ada.

“Ada,” he said, “be not deceived—the voice you heard calling upon you was not that of Sir Francis Hartleton. That name was assumed merely to deceive you to your destruction. You, as well as I, have escaped a great danger—so great a danger, that I shall hasten my departure from England, and you may rest assured now that within one month of time you will be rich and free.”

“Indeed!” said Ada, incredulously.

“You may believe me,” said Gray; “on my faith, what I say is true.”

“’Tis hard to believe him who would murder one moment, and promise wealth and freedom the next.”

“I was forced to threaten your life, Ada, for my own, as I tell you, hung upon a thread; you will not repent this day’s proceedings when you are happy with him you love, and surrounded by luxury.”

Ada started; and had there been light enough in that dismal place. Gray would have seen the mantling flash of colour that visited the cheek of the persecuted girl, as the words he spoke conjured up a dream of happiness to her imagination, that she felt would indeed pay her for all she had suffered—ay, were it ten times more. She did not speak, for she would not let Jacob Gray guess, from the agitation of her voice, the effect that his words had produced, and after a pause he said to her,—

“Remain here while I go into the house and see that all is safe. They must be gone by this time, Jacob Gray has foiled them once again, but he will not incur the danger a third time, I assure you. Ada, as I live and breathe your thraldom shall not—cannot last another month.”

He ascended the ladder as he spoke, and after listening attentively and hearing nothing, he slid open the panel and looked into the room. All was still, and the glorious bright sunshine was streaming in upon the dingy walls and blackened floor.

Again Gray listened—all was still, and he got through the opening with a lurking smile of gratified cunning upon his face. He, however, could not forget his habitual caution, and it was with a slinking, cat-like movement that he walked along the floor of the room.

He intended to walk through the entire house, to see if his unwelcome visitors had left behind them any traces of their presence. Opening the door of the room, very carefully, he began to descend the stairs; he muttered to himself as he went,—

“’Twas an hour of great danger, I have been saved by what good and pious people would call a miracle, had it happened to them, but I suppose it’s merely an accident in Jacob Gray’s case; well, well, be it so—accident or miracle, ’tis all the same to me; and I am not sorry too, to leave this old house: it has grown hateful and loathsome to me. I would not pass such another night in it as I have passed for—for—much money. No, no—it would indeed require a heap of gold to tempt me.”

Now he reached the door of a large cupboard on the staircase, which was wide open, as Sir Francis and his men had left it in the course of their search.

“So,” sneered Gray, “they have looked for me in the cupboards, have they? Well, the keener the search has been, the better; it is less likely to be renewed, far less likely. I wish I could think of any plan of vengeance upon this magistrate, for the misery he has caused me; oh, if I could inflict upon him but one tithe of the agony he has made me suffer within the last hour, I should be much rejoiced. Curses on him—curses on him and his efficiency as a magistrate: a meddling cursed fiend he is to me—I must think, Master Hartleton; some little plan of revenge upon you may suggest itself to me by-and-by?“

Jacob Gray rubbed his hands together, and gave a sickly smile, as he said this. He was about the middle of the staircase, and it was fortunate for him he had his hands on the banisters, or in the intense horror and surprise that suddenly overcame him, he might have fallen down the remaining portion of the crazy stairs.

He heard a door open, leading into the passage, from one of the lower rooms, and a heavy careless step rapidly approached the staircase, while a common street melody, whistled with a shrillness and distinctness that was more horrible to Jacob Gray than would have been the trumpet of the angel at the day of judgment, fell upon his ears.

Jacob Gray gave himself up for lost. The blood rushed to his heart with frightful violence, and he thought he should have fainted. How he accomplished the feat he afterwards knew not, but he stepped back. Two paces brought him to the cupboard. It seemed like the door of heaven opened to him. He doubled himself up under a large shelf that went across the middle of it; and clutching the door by a small rim of the panelling, he drew it close.

Mr. Elias, with his hands in his pockets, and whistling the before mentioned popular melody, passed on up the staircase, leaving Jacob Gray almost distilled to a jelly with fear.

Then, when he had passed, Gray thought at first that his best plan would be to rush down the stairs, open the outer door, and make a rush across the fields, leaving Ada to her destiny—but this was hazardous—he would be seen—hunted like a wild beast; and taken! No. That was too bold a step for Jacob Gray. He listened, with heart and soul, to the footsteps that sounded so awful in his ears, and the question arose in his mind, of—should the man, whoever he was, enter the room where he Jacob Gray, had just left, so heedlessly as he now thought, with the panel open, or would he pass on? That was a fearful question. He thought he heard him pause once, and his heart sunk within him. No, he passed on. He was ascending the second flight of stairs leading to the second story.

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XLVI. The Death of the Elder Seyton.—Albert’s Grief.—The Prophecy

It is necessary now that we should, although unwillingly, leave the fortunes of the beautiful and persecuted Ada to proceed by themselves for a short space, while we acquaint the reader with what the other important personages in our story have been and are about.

First, we will turn to Albert Seyton, who, with his father, returned from the office of Sir Francis Hartleton, rather dispirited than otherwise at the result of the interview with him.

It was in vain that Albert reasoned with himself on the folly of his having had any immediate expectations of news of Ada through the interposition of the magistrate. He did feel depressed and disappointed, and the words indicative of the difficulty that enveloped the business which Sir Francis Hartleton had used made a far greater impression upon the mind of Albert than anything else that had transpired at the interview.

Had Sir Francis Hartleton not been a magistrate, but a mere private gentleman, knowing what he did, and suspecting what he did, in all probability the interview with the Seytons would have been more satisfactory to them, and more productive of beneficial results to Ada; but as it was, Sir Francis felt that, in his official capacity, he could not be too cautious as to what he said, or what opinion he suggested, in any criminal undertaking. Thus he did not (and so far he was quite correct) feel himself justified in mentioning the name of Learmont, unless the Seytons had heard it previously, in connexion with any of the mysterious circumstances surrounding Ada.

As yet all was mere suspicion; and there was no direct evidence on which to found an open accusation against the acts of Squire Learmont; for although he, Sir Francis, by putting together all the circumstances in his own mind, felt morally convinced that there had been some great crime committed, in which Learmont, Britton the smith, the man Gray, and possibly others were implicated, still the evidence of that crime were to be sought; and it would have been highly inconsistent with him, Sir Francis, as a magistrate, to have brought a loose and unsubstantiated charge against any one—much less a man with whom it could be easily proved he had previously quarrelled, and who might, by the very indiscretion of making an improper charge against, be so far put upon his caution, as to succeed in effectually destroying all evidence that could ever militate against him.

Taking, therefore, this view of the case, and being satisfied that the Seytons had communicated to him all they knew; and having their promise to bring him any fresh information they might become possessed of, he resolved to prosecute the matter quietly and cautiously, until, by getting some of the parties in his hands, he would be able to put together something distinct in the shape of a charge against Learmont, or ascertain his innocence.

The magistrate had seen much of human nature, and he very soon came to the conclusion, in his own mind, that brave, ardent, and enthusiastic as Albert Seyton was, he would be very far from an efficient assistant in a matter that required the utmost coolness, caution, and finesse. Thus it was that he acted entirely independent of Albert, and said as little to him as he could upon the subject, at the same time that he, Sir Francis Hartleton, would not have lost a moment in communicating with Albert, had any discovery really taken place at the old house at Battersea.

While all this was going on, Albert Seyton pursued his inquiries, although with a languid spirit, for there was no place he had not already several times visited. Twice or thrice he had actually looked at the house in which Ada was a prisoner, and once he thought of crossing the fields from curiosity to visit it, but was told that it was in ruins, and in fact dangerous to approach, as it was expected to fall to the ground very shortly; and considering it as a most unlikely place to search in, standing as it did so very much exposed to observation in its situation, he abandoned the notion of crossing the marshy fields to the old ruin.

Pale and languid, he would return to his father in the evening, and it was some time before he noticed that there were perceptible signs of rapid decay creeping over the only earthly tie he had, save Ada.

In truth. Mr. Seyton was near that bourne from whence no traveller returns, and in the midst of his other griefs, the absorbing one sprang up, of the loss of his father.

Every other consideration was now abandoned by Albert in his anxious solicitude for his father’s health. It seemed, however, that a rapid decay of nature was taking place, and in less than three days Mr. Seyton lay at the point of death. Medical advice was of no avail; the physician who was called in declared that neither he nor any of his brethren could do anything in the case. There, was no disease to grapple with—it seemed as if nature had said, “the time of dissolution has come, and it may not be averted.”

It was early dawn, and the stillness that reigned throughout London had something awful and yet sublime in it, when Albert, who had been watching by the bedside of his father, was roused from a slight slumber into which, from pure exhaustion, he had sunk, by the low, faint voice of his dying parent feebly pronouncing his name.

“Albert, Albert!” he said.

Albert started, and replied to his father.

“Yes, father, I am here.”

“You are here, my boy, and you will remain here many years—here in this world, I mean, which I hope may teem with happiness to you; but I am on my last journey, Albert; I shall not see another day.”

“Father, say not so,” replied Albert, endeavouring to assume a tone of cheerfulness that was foreign to his feelings. “Say not so; we may yet be together many years.”

“Albert, do not try to delude me and yourself with false hopes—listen to what I shall say to you now.”

“I will, father.”

“They are my last words, Albert, and it is said that when the spirit is about to quit its earthly tenement, and is hovering, as it were, upon the confines of eternity, it is permitted to see things that in its grosser state were far above its ken, and even to obtain some dim glimpse of the future, so that it may to the ear of those it loves hazard guesses of that which is to come.”

Albert listened with eager attention to his father’s words; and it seemed to him as if there were something of heavenly inspiration in his tones.

After a pause, Mr. Seyton continued,—

“Albert, for two days now I have known no peace on your account,—”

“On my account, father?”

“Yes, Albert. By my death, the pension which my just claims have wrung from the government, for which I suffered so much, ceases, and you know I have not enjoyed it long enough to leave any sum that will do more than supply your immediate exigencies.”

“Think not of me now, father,” said Albert; “dismiss all uneasiness from your mind on my account. I am young, and can labour for my bread as well as—as—”

“As what, my boy?”

“As my griefs will let me, father.”

“Listen to me, Albert. I say I have suffered much on your account, because the thought haunted me that I was leaving you to struggle unaided in a cold, selfish, and too—too frequently, wicked world; but now that feeling, by some mysterious means, has left me.”

“Indeed, father?”

“Yes, a kind of confidence—surely from Heaven—has crept over my heart concerning you, and, without knowing how or why, I seem to have a deep and thorough conviction that you will be happy and prosperous.”

“Father,” said Albert, “for your sake do I rejoice in your words, not for my own. If you must be taken by God from me, let me see you thus even to the last, free from care and that cankering anxiety which has now for some time afflicted you.”

“Yes, I am comparatively happy,” said Mr. Seyton. “You will wed her whom you love, and there shall not be a cloud in the sky of your prosperity and happiness. All shall be achieved by Heaven in its own good time.”

“Father, your words sink deep into my heart,” cried Albert; “they come to me as if from the lips of the Eternal One himself.”

“I—I would fain have lingered with you, my boy, yet awhile, even until I could have seen and rejoiced in all this that I now foretel to you. But it may not be—it may not be.”

“Oh, yes! There is still hope.”

“No, no! My mortal race is nearly run.”

Albert wept.

“Nay, Albert, do not weep,” said his father; “we and all we love—all who have loved us—will meet again.”

“’Tis a dear hope,” said Albert, endeavouring to control his tears.

“And now, my dear boy, when you do see this young and innocent girl—this Ada, whom you love—tell her I send her my blessing, and beg her to accept it as she would a father’s. You will tell her, Albert?”

“Tell her, father? Oh yes!—Your words will be precious to her, father.”

“I know her gentle nature well,” continued Mr. Seyton. “Cherish her, Albert, for she is one of those rare creatures sent among us by God, to purify and chasten the bad passions of men. Cherish her as a dear gift from Heaven to you.”

“As Heaven is my hope, I will,” said Albert, “I will live but for her.”

“’Tis well, ’tis well. I would have joyed to see her; but no matter. The spirit may be allowed to look with purer eyes upon those it loved on earth, than it could through its earthly organs.”

“Your love, father, will cling for ever round us, and we will rejoice in the fond belief that we are seen by you from above.”

Albert’s voice became choked with tears, and he sobbed bitterly.

“Nay, now, Albert,” said his father, “this is not as it should be. We were talking cheerfully. Do not weep. Death is not a misfortune; ’tis only a great change. We leave a restless, painful scene for the calm repose of everlasting peace and joy. Our greatest thrill of happiness in this life is like a stagnant pool to the ocean, in comparison with the eternal joy that is to come. Do not, therefore, weep for me, Albert, but do your duty while you remain here behind me, so that we may meet again where we shall meet never to part, without the shadow of a pang.”

“Father, your words are holy, and full of hope; they will ever be engraven on my heart.”

Mr. Seyton was now silent for many minutes; and Albert, by the rapidly increasing light of the coming day, watched with painful interest the great change that was passing over his countenance.

“Father,” he murmured.

“Yes, Albert, I am here still,” was the reply.

“You are in pain?”

“No, no. Bless you, my boy!”

Albert sobbed convulsively, and took his father’s hand in his—

“And bless you too, Ada,” added Mr. Seyton, after a pause. Then he seemed to imagine she was present, for he said,—

“You love my boy, Ada? Blessings on you!—You are very beautiful. Ada, but your heart is the most lovely. So you love my boy? Take an old man’s dying blessing, my girl.”

Albert was deeply affected by these words, and in vain he endeavoured to stifle his sobs.

“Albert!” said his father, suddenly.

“Yes, father, I am here,” he replied.

“Do you recollect your mother, my dear boy?”

“But dimly, father.”

“She—she is beckoning me now. Farewell! Bless you, Albert—Ada!”

There was one long-drawn sigh, and the kind-hearted, noble Mr. Seyton was with his God.

It was some moments before Albert could bring himself to believe that his father was no more; and then, with a frantic burst of grief, he called around him the persons of the house, who with gentle violence took him from the chamber of death, and strove to soothe his deep grief with such topics of consolation as suggested themselves to them. But poor Albert heard nothing of their sympathy. His grief was overwhelming; and it was many hours before his deep agony subsided into tears, and the last words of his father came like balm to his wounded spirit.

Then his grief assumed a more calm and melancholy aspect. He shed no more tears; but there was a weight at his heart which even the bright and strangely earnest prophecies of his father, concerning his happiness with Ada, could not remove. Time alone, in such cases, heals the deep and agonising grief which ensues in a fond and truthful heart, after such a disseverment of a tie which, while it exists, we cannot imagine can ever be broken.

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Chapter XLVII

The Smith at Learmont House.—The Breakfast.—The Threat, and its Results.—The Caution.

While these events were taking place, Learmont was ill at ease in his stately halls. Well he knew that the visitation of the smith at so inopportune an hour at his fête would be related throughout that circle of nobility and power into which it was the grand end and aim of his life to force himself; and, it added one more damning argument to those already rapidly accumulating in his mind towards the conviction, that after all he had made a grand mistake in life, and mistaken the road to happiness. At the same time, however, he felt that having chosen the path of guilt he had, there was for him no retreat, and with a dogged perseverance, compounded of mortified ambition, he continued his career of guilt.

Take the life of Britton he dared not, although he lay such an inanimate, helpless mass in his power, and it was not the least of Learmont’s annoyances that he was compelled to see to the personal safety of the drunken brute who had produced confusion and derangement among his most ambitious schemes.

It was many hours before Britton slept off the intoxication under the influence of which he had acted in the manner described in the ball-room, and when he did recover, and open his heavy eyes, it was with no small degree of surprise that he found himself in the same dark room into which the squire had thrown him to sleep off his debauch.

His first thought was that he was in prison, and he rose to his feet with bitter imprecations and awful curses upon the head of Learmont and Gray, whom he supposed must have betrayed him in some way. A second thought, however, dispelled this delusion.

“No—no; d—n them—no!” he cried. “They dare not! Well they know they dare not!—I have them safe!—My evidence would destroy them, while it would not place me in a worse position. Where the devil am I?”

The room was very dark, the only light coming from a small pane of glass at the top of the door. Britton, however, was not exactly the kind of person to waste much time in idle conjecture or imaginative theories as to where he was; but, ascertaining that the door was locked, he placed his shoulder against it and with one heave of his bulky form, forced it from its hinges.

A loud cry arrested the smith’s attention as he accomplished this feat, and, to his great amusement, he saw lying amid the confusion of a tray, glasses, and decanters, a man who happened to have been passing at the moment, and, alarmed at the sudden and violent appearance of the smith, had fallen down with what he was so carefully carrying.

This was a piece of sport quite in Britton’s way—one of those practical jests that he perfectly understood and appreciated, in order, however, to add zest to it, he gave the astonished man a hearty kick, which induced him to spring to his feet, and make off with frantic speed, shouting “Murder! Murder!” at the top of his lungs.

Britton immediately turned his attention to one decanter which, in a most miraculous and extraordinary manner, preserved its position of perpendicularity amidst the universal wreck of every other article. He seized it instantly as a lawful prize, and plunging the neck of it into his capacious mouth, he withdrew it not again until it presented an appearance of perfect vacuity, and the bottle of wine which it had contained was transferred into his interior man.

“That’s good,” gasped Britton, when he had finished his draught, “I was thirsty. Upon my life that’s good. Curse the awkward fellow! He has broken the other, I wonder how the d—l I came—by G—d! This is the squire’s, now I look about me. I must have been drunk. What the deuce has happened? My head is all of a twirl. Let me think,—humph! The Chequers—d—n it! I can’t recollect anything but the Chequers.”

Britton’s cogitations were here interrupted by the appearance of Learmont with a dark scowl on his brow that would have alarmed any one but the iron-nerved and audacious Britton.

“Well, squire,” he said, “I suppose I’d a drop too much, and you took care of me, eh? Is that it?”

“Follow—me!” said Learmont, bringing out the two words through his clenched teeth, and making a great effort to preserve himself from bursting out into a torrent of invective.

“Follow you?” exclaimed Britton. “Well I have no objection; I’ll follow you. Our business is always quite private and confidential.”

He followed the rapid strides of Learmont along a long gallery, during the progress of which they encountered a servant, when Britton immediately paused, and roared out in a voice that made the man stand like one possessed,—

“Hark, ye knave!—You in the tawny coat, turned up with white—bring breakfast for two directly.”

“Andrew Britton!” cried Learmont, turning full upon the smith, flashing with resentment.

“Squire Learmont!” replied Britton, facing him with an air of insolence and bloated assurance.

There was a pause for a moment, and then Learmont added,—

“You—you are still drunk!”

“No, I am hungry; a drunken man never orders victuals, squire.”

“I have breakfasted,” said Learmont.

“Very like, but you don’t fancy I meant any of it for you. Curse me! I always make a point of ordering breakfast for two, now that I am a gentleman and can afford it;—I’m sure to have nearly enough then. Breakfast for two, I say! You can get it ready while your master and I settle some little affairs connected with the Old Smithy. Do you hear?—What are you staring at?”

The servant looked at Learmont evidently for orders, and the squire, almost inarticulate with rage, said,—

“Go—go! You may get him breakfast.”

“Ah, to be sure,” said Britton; “of course you may. I’m a particular friend of your master’s; and mind you are more respectful another time, you beast, and use polite language, and be d—d to you, you thief!”

The amazed domestic hastened away, for he shrewdly guessed that, if he delayed much longer, he might be favoured by some practical display of the excessive freedom which the messenger from the Old Smithy evidently could take with the proud, haughty, Learmont, and everything that was his, or in any way connected with him—a freedom which puzzled and amazed the whole household, and formed the theme of such endless gossipping in the servants’ hall, that without it, it would seem impossible they could found any materials for consideration, conjecture, and endless surmise.

Learmont now stalked on, followed by Britton, until he reached the small private room in which the conferences with both Gray and the smith were usually held. The squire then closed the door, and turning to Britton with a face convulsed with passion, he said,—

“Scoundrel! Are you not afraid to tamper with me in this manner? Drive me too far by your disgusting conduct, and insolent, vulgar familiarities, and I would hang you, though I had to fly from England forever before I denounced you;—nay, hear me out, and let my words sink deep into your brain, if it be capable of receiving and recording them. If you dare to thrall me by untimely visits, I will, though it cost me thousands, lay such a plot for your destruction, that your life shall not only be forfeited, but I will take care to associate your name with such infamy that no confession nor statement of yours would be received with a moment’s credence. You earn from me the wages of crime—deep crime, and you know it; but were those wages millions, and were those crimes of ten times blacker hue than they are, you have no right, nor shall you be, a torment to me. I am your master, and I will make you know it, or rue the fearful consequence.”

Learmont paused, and regarded the smith with an air of haughty defiance.

“Oh!” said Britton. “So you’ve had your say, Squire Learmont—you threaten to hang me, do you? Ho! Ho! Ho!—The same length of cord that hangs me will make a noose for your own neck. You will lay a plot to destroy me, will—beware, Squire Learmont! I have laid a mine for you—a mine that will blow you to h—ll, when I choose to fire the train. I don’t want to quarrel with you; I’ve done a black job or two for you, and you don’t much like paying for them; but then you know you must, and there’s an end to that. Now for the familiarity business: I give in a little there, squire, d—me! Justice is justice—give every dog his day! I have been cursedly drunk, I suppose, and made an ass of myself. I came here, though, now I recollect, with a good motive,—it was to warn you. But mind you, squire, don’t call me any ugly names again—I won’t stand them. Be civil, and growl as much as you like—curse you! Be genteel, and don’t provoke me.”

“Solemnly promise me that you will only come here at stated times, from visit to visit, to be arranged,” said Learmont, “and I am willing to forget the past.”

“Well, that’s fair,” cried Britton. “When I’ve had a drop, I’m a little wild or so,—d—n it! I always was.”

“You consent?”

“I do. Now give me my fee.”

“Your fee?”

“Yes; ten pounds.”

Learmont took out the sum required from his purse, and handed it to Britton, saying as he did so,—

“And when shall I be honoured again with your next visit?”

“What’s to-day, squire?”

“Thursday.”

“Then I’ll see you on Saturday morning. If I’ve been sober on Friday night, we’ll say eleven o’clock; if drunk, make it two or three.”

A low tap at the door now announced some one, and Learmont went to see who it was.

“The—the—breakfast—for two, your honour—is—is—laid in the south parlour,” stammered a servant, with a frightened aspect.

“Oh, it is, is it?” said Britton. “Then you may eat it yourself, for I ain’t going to stay to breakfast with his worship.”

“Yes, yes,” said the servant, disappearing.

“There now,” cried Britton, “ain’t I respectful? You see I ain’t going to touch your breakfast, I dare say I shall get a d—d sight better one at the Chequers. Ha! Ha! Ha! I’m a king, then. Who’d have thought of that—King Britton, the jolly smith of Learmont.”

“You said you came to warn me of somebody or something,” suggested Learmont.

“So I did,” replied the smith. “That cursed Hartleton has got some crotchet or another in his head, you may depend. He came in disguise to the Chequers to watch me. Beware of him, squire. If I catch him prying into my affairs, and listening to what I say over my glass, I’ll meet him alone some dark evening, and there will be a vacancy in the magistracy. Perhaps, squire, you could step into his shoes. That would be glorious. I’d have a row every night, and you could smother it up in the morning, besides paying all the expenses. Good morning to you squire. Take care, of yourself.”

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XLVIII. The Escape.—A Song of the Times

It was several minutes after Gray felt perfectly assured that the man, whoever he was, that had passed whistling by the cupboard door, had gone up to the highest story of the house before he could summon courage to leave his temporary hiding-place. The urgent necessity, however, of doing so while there was an opportunity came so forcibly upon his terror-stricken mind, that although he trembled so excessively as to be forced to cling to the banisters for support, he crawled from the place of shelter which had presented itself so providentially to him in such a moment of extremity, and treading as lightly as he could, while his whole frame was nearly paralysed by fear, he succeeded in reaching the room from which opened the small aperture to the vault where Ada awaited his coming.

Jacob Gray’s mind at this moment embraced but one idea, indulged in but one hope, and that was to reach the vault in safety, and close the opening in the wall which had already escaped the scrutiny of Sir Frederick Hartleton.

The extreme caution that he thought himself compelled to use in his movements made him slow in attaining his object, and each moment appeared an age of anxiety and awful suffering.

Now he mounted the chair, and as he did so he heard, or fancied he heard, the descending footsteps of the stranger as he came from the upper story. Jacob Gray then trembled so excessively that he could scarcely contrive to put himself through the small panelled opening and when he did, his anxiety was so great and his nervousness so intense, that it was several moments before he could place his foot securely upon one of the rounds of the ladder.

The shrill whistle of the man now sounded awfully distinct in his ears, and he fancied that he must have closed the panel scarcely an instant before the stranger entered the apartment.

Then Jacob Gray laid his ear flatly against the wainscot to listen if more than one person was in the room, and gather from any conversation they might indulge in what were their objects and expectations in remaining so long in the ancient and dilapidated house.

For some minutes the whistling continued, for that was an innocent amusement that Mr. Elias was fortunately partial to, and one to which he invariably resorted when anything of a disagreeable character absorbed his mind; and as now he could not withdraw his thoughts from the fact that he must fast until sunset, he whistled with an energy and a desperation proportioned to the exigency of the case.

At length, however, from want of breath, or that he had gone through every tune he was acquainted with three times, he paused in his whistling, and uttered the simple and energetic apostrophe of,—

“Well, I’m d—d!”

This did not convey a great deal of information to Jacob Gray, and he waited very anxiously to hear what further remarks concerning his thoughts and objects in this world might fall from the speaker who had so cavalierly and off handedly settled his destination in the next. Nor was he disappointed, for Mr. Elias, having no one to talk to, addressed himself, in the following strains:—

“Well, here’s a precious old crib to be shut up in. Upon my soul, it’s too bad of the governor. And no dinner—not a drop of nothing, no how what so ever. How would he like it, I wonder? Why, not at all, to be sure. The fifty pounds is something—but it’s all moonshine if the fellow don’t come, or that ere gal as he talks on, as may make her blessed appearance in a masculine sort o’ way. Well, I only hopes she may, that’s all. Won’t I give that Stephy a precious nob on his cocoa-nut, if he makes it very late afore he comes? Curse this place, it’s as dull as a sermon, and about as pleasant and lively-looking as mud in a wine-glass. I don’t like these kind of goes at all. Give me fun, and a hunt after such a rollicking, slashing blade as Jack Sheppard. Ah, he’s the fellow for my money. I love that blade. He’s got a voice, too, like a flock o’ nightingales, that he has. Shall I ever hear him sing that song again as I learnt of him by listening to him in quod, and all the while as I was taken up with the tune, he was a filing away at his darbies, bless him! Oh, he’s a rum un!”

Elias then delighted himself and astonished Jacob Gray, by singing the following song; which was in great vogue at the time:—

What Knight’s Like the Knight of the Road?

“What knight’s like the knight of the road?

Who lives so well as he?

The proudest duke don’t lead

A life so brave and free.

Heighho! How the maidens sigh,

As he dashes proudly by!

And there’s not a gentle heart of all—

Let weal or woe betide—

That would not leap with dear delight

To be his happy bride.

“The day goes down on Hounslow-heath,

The night wind sighs amain;

Hurrah! Hurrah, for the road!

For now begins his reign.

Heighho! How the ladies cry,

As they see his flashing eye.

And there’s not a pair of cherry lips,

Of high or low degree,

Would scorn a kiss from the knight of the road,

Who’s welcome as he’s free.”

As Mr. Elias, between the stanzas of his song, whistled an accompaniment, in which there were a great number of shakes, trills, and what musicians call variations which means something which is not at all connected with the tune, the whole affair took some considerable time in execution; and Jacob Gray stood upon the ladder in a perfect agony of annoyance until it was over.

“Bravo!” cried Elias, when he had completed the last few notes of his whistling accompaniment. “Bravo!—Encore! Bravo! Well, I do hate these long summer days, to be sure. Why, it will be half-past eight, if it’s a bit, before Stephy comes. There’s a infliction, I wish this cursed fellow, or the gal, or both of them, would just trot over the fields, and save me any further waiting. Let me see—a thin, pale covey, the governor said, with a nervous sort of look. Very good; I shall know him. Just let him show his physiognomy here, and I’ll pop the darbies on him before he can say Jack, to leave alone the Robinson. Well, I’ll take another walk through the old den. They say there’s been a murder here. I wonder if the fellow got much swag? I never heard o’ any gentleman being hung for a murder here, I ’spose as that affair never put forty pound into a runner’s pocket. Some fellows is such beasts when they does slap-up murders; they commits suicide, and so cheat somebody of the blood-money. Curse ’em!”

Having uttered this sentiment, Mr. Elias struck up an intense whistle, and walked from the room.

Jacob Gray could hear him descend the stairs, and the whistle gradually died away in the distance, until it sounded only faintly upon his ears, convincing him that the stranger had gone into some of the rooms on the ground floor.

Jacob Gray now slowly descended the ladder, and pronounced the name of Ada in a low, anxious tone.

“I am here,” she replied.

“Ada, our situation is now perilous and awkward in the extreme. The persons who were here have left one of their number behind them.”

“Indeed!”

“Yes, they suspect I may return to this house.”

“Are we then to starve here?” said Ada.

“Starved?” echoed Gray, “I—I did not think of that. God of Heaven! What shall we do?”

“Jacob Gray,” said Ada, “you are caught in your own snare. This place which you imagined to be one of safety has now become your prison. Remain here, if you please; I have no such urgent reasons as you may have. If he whom you tell me is keeping guard in the house, be an enemy to me, as well as to you, I will rather trust to his mercy than abide here the horrors of famine. Such a death would be dreadful! Jacob Gray, I will not remain here.”

“You will not?”

“I will not.”

“I am armed, Ada. You forget that I can force your obedience by the fear of death.”

“You can murder me,” replied Ada, “but I cannot perceive that it is your interest to do so.”

“Why not?”

“Let me go freely, and I promise not to disclose the secret of your place of concealment. He who is waiting, if he be an enemy to me as well as to you, may be satisfied with my capture, or perchance my death, and leave you undisturbed to pursue your own course. If he prove a friend to me, which from my heart, Jacob Gray, I verily believe, for the voice I heard address me by name carried in its tones truth and sincerity, then you will have less to fear, for I here promise not to betray you.”

Gray was silent for several moments after Ada had spoken. Then bending down his mouth, close to her ear, he said in a low, agitated voice,—

“Ada—there is another resource.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes—but one man keeps guard above.”

“I understand you. You will risk a contest with him?”

“No—no—no!”

“What mean you then, Jacob Gray?”

“To kill him.”

“But should he prove the stronger or the bolder, which he may well be, Jacob Gray, you might be worsted in the encounter.”

“It shall not be an encounter,” said Gray.

“You speak in riddles.”

“Listen to me. He is walking uneasily from room to room of the house. He does not suspect any one to be concealed here—that much I can gather from his talk. At sunset I will creep forth, and hiding somewhere in perfect security—watch my opportunity, and shoot him dead.”

“What!” cried Ada indignantly—“murder him?”

“I—I—only act in self-defence—I cannot help it—he would murder me. Hush—hush! Do not speak so loud—you are incautious, Ada—hush—hush!”

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Chapter XLIX

The Projected Murder.—The Alarm.—The Death-shot.—Ada’s Anguish and Indignation.

Ada was so much shocked at the proposal of Jacob Gray to commit a deliberate and cold-blooded murder, that now for several minutes she remained perfectly silent—a silence which Gray construed into passive acquiescence in his proposition.

“You see, Ada,” he continued, “we have no other hope—as you say we cannot starve here—the blood of this man be upon his own head—I do not want his life, Ada; but I must preserve myself and you. You must see all this in its proper light, Ada—you do not speak.”

“Hear me then speak now,” said Ada. “In all your knowledge of me, Jacob Gray, what have you found upon which to ground a moment’s thought that I could be as wicked as yourself? Captivity may present horrors to you, from which you would free yourself, even at the fearful price of murder. It may be that this awful deed you contemplate would, if executed, add but another item to a fearful record of crime; but, God of Heaven! What should make me so wicked? Wherefore should I connive at a deed proscribed alike by God and man? Jacob Gray, I am weak and you are strong; I am defenceless and you armed; but as there is a Heaven above us, I will dare all—risk all to prevent this contemplated murder.”

“You are wild—mad,” said Gray, in a low tone, which, from its bitterness, was evidently one of intense rage likewise. “The fear of death has hitherto acted upon your mind—let it so act still.”

“It was a sufficient motive,” replied Ada, “when I personally was concerned, and had to choose between captivity with hope, and death which would extinguish all but Heaven’s mercy hereafter. But now, Jacob Gray, I cannot, will not purchase life for myself at the price of death to a fellow-creature.”

“You will not?”

“No; I will not: not if he, whose life you seek, were the veriest wretch on earth—were he even such as you are, Jacob Gray, I would leave him to his God.”

“You rave, girl—you rave,”

“No, I do not rave—’tis you that with a hollow, hideous sophistry delude yourself.”

“Your consent or non-consent is of little moment,” said Gray; “I hold both your life and his in my hands.”

“Then you shall take mine first, for I am sickened at such villany, and would rather be its victim than its spectator. From this moment, Jacob Gray, no bond, no promise binds me to you. Take but one decisive step to commit the murder you contemplate, and this place shall echo with my cries.”

Gray was evidently unprepared for the dilemma into which he had now brought himself, and he knew not what to say for some moments, during which he glared upon Ada with a fiendish expression of his eyes; which she could just discern in the dim light of the cellar, that was more worthy of some malignant demon than anything human.

“You ask me to sacrifice myself?” he at length said.

“No, I ask no such thing,” replied Ada; “allow me to ascend from this place and see the man you say waits above. Friend or foe, I will risk the encounter, and I will not betray you.”

“No, no,” said Gray; “not yet, not yet, Ada; I cannot part with you yet. Moreover, there would still be danger—great danger. I cannot do as you wish.”

“Then you shall incur a greater risk, or commit two murders.”

“Hush, hush,” said Gray; “you speak too loud. Let me think again; I will spare him if I can.”

Jacob Gray remained in deep thought for about ten minutes; then, as he came to some conclusion satisfactory to him, a dark and singular contortion of the features crossed his face, and his hand was thrust into the breast of his clothing, where he had a loaded pistol, upon which he well knew he could depend in any sudden emergency.

“Ada,” he said, “I am resolved.”

“Resolved on what?”

“To take this man’s life, who is here for the express purpose of taking mine if he can find the opportunity.”

“Then I am resolved,” said Ada, “to raise a voice of warning to that man, be he whom he may. If this is to be my last hour, Heaven receive me!”

“You shall die,” said Gray.

Ada sunk on her knees, and covering her face within her hands, she said,—

“Jacob Gray, if Heaven permits you to murder me, I will not shrink. May God forgive you the awful crime!”

Gray laughed a bitter, short laugh, as he said,—

“No, Ada, you may live. I do not intend to kill you. Possibly, too, I may spare him who keeps watch above for me. Be patient while I go and reconnoitre.”

“No, no,” cried Ada, “I cannot be patient here; you are going to murder.”

“Listen to me,” said Gray. “There is one more chance. After nightfall we will endeavour to leave the house. If we succeed in doing so unobstructed, all may be well; but if opposition be offered, I must defend myself. You surely cannot deny me that privilege, Ada?”

“Jacob Gray, you have not the courage to pursue such a plan,” said Ada.

“Girl, are you bent on your own destruction?” cried Gray.

“No; but; I know your nature well. The plan you propose is opposite to your usual manner of acting. A darker scheme possesses you, of which the one you have now proposed is but the cloak.”

“I waste time upon you,” said Gray, advancing towards the ladder.

He slowly and cautiously ascended, and then paused at the top step.

Ada bent all her attention to listen if any sound came from the room above, for she was quite resolved, let the consequences to her be what they might, to raise a cry of alarm, should Gray show any decided symptoms of carrying out his project of murdering the man in the house.

The few moments that succeeded were intensely agonising to Ada, and her heart beat painfully and rapidly as she kept her eye intently fixed upon the dusky form of Jacob Gray, as it was dimly discernible at the top of the ladder. This state of suspense did not last long, for in a very few minutes the shrill whistling of Elias awakened the echoes of the old mansion, and it was evident that he was in the room from which the panel conducting to the cellar opened.

Ada strained her eyes upwards, but still all was darkness. She knew that if Gray were to remove the panel, ever so slightly she must be aware of it, by a ray of light streaming through the aperture; for that ray of light Ada waited, as her signal to raise an alarm, which she was determined to do.

Little, however, did Ada suspect that Gray had formed a plan which her very effort to save the man on watch would assist to carry into effect. Such, however, was the fact. Gray fully expected, and was quite prepared for a cry from Ada, whenever he should draw aside the panel.

The loud whistling of Elias still continued, when suddenly Gray moved the panel just sufficiently to allow Ada to see from below that he had done so, and then, as he had done once before, he slid down the ladder, and, as Ada thought, disappeared in the darkness which shrouded the further extremity of the cellar. Had she felt inclined Ada could not have stopped herself from uttering a cry, and the instant she saw daylight through the panel, her voice rose clear and loud—

“Help—help!” she cried “Help—murder!”

Mr. Elias’s whistling immediately ceased, although he was in the middle of a very intricate passage, and he sprung to the opening in the wall.

With one effort he tore down the piece of wainscoting and cried in a loud voice,—

“Hilloa!”

Ada made a rush to the ladder, but an arm suddenly arrested her progress with such violence that she fell to the ground with great force.

Ada lay for a moment or two stunned by her fall, and she heard only indistinctly the voice of Elias cry,—

“Hilloa! Below there. Oh, here’s a ladder, is there? Well, that’s what I call providential.“

Elias was upon the ladder, and cautiously descending backwards, when Ada shrieked,—

“Beware!—Treachery!”

Elias paused a moment. Then there was a bright flash, a loud report, and a heavy fall, all of which were succeeded by a silence as awful and profound as that of the grave. Ada rose partially from the floor, and a dreadful consciousness of what had occurred came across her mind.

“Jacob Gray,” she said, “you are a murderer—a murderer.”

“I—I was compelled to do the deed,” said Gray, in a low hoarse voice. “Come away—come away, Ada. Let us fly from hence—come away.”

“Not with you, man of blood,” cried Ada. “God sees this deed. Murderer, I cannot go with you.”

“’Twas my life or his,” said Gray, creeping out from behind the ladder, where he had been crouching, and through the spokes of which he had shot Elias as he descended with a certainty of effect.

“No—no. Such was not the fact,” cried Ada.

“I care not,” said Gray, throwing off his low cautious tone, and assuming a high shrill accent of anger; “I care not. Place what construction you will upon me, or my actions, you shall come with me now, or remain here to starve. Refuse to accompany me, and I will remove the ladder and leave you here with the dead.”

Ada shuddered.

“Whither—oh whither would you lead me?” she said.

“To some other place of refuge for a short time, until my purposes are completed. Be quick girl, do you stay or go?”

“It may be death to go,” said Ada, “but it is suicide to stay.”

“You consent?”

“I am in the hand of Providence. To it I commit myself. I will follow you.”

“Quick, quick!” cried Gray, and he ascended the ladder with nervous trepidation, followed slowly by the afflicted and terrified Ada. The evening was fast approaching as they gained the room above, and Jacob Gray, seizing Ada by the wrist, led her to the outer door of the old house in which they had lived so long.

He turned upon the threshold, and holding up his hand, cried,—

“My curse be upon this habitation. Had I the means at hand—yet stay one moment, Ada.”

He knelt on the step, and struck a light with materials he always carried about him.

Dragging Ada again into the house, he opened the door of a room on the ground floor, on which was a quantity of littered straw and baskets. Throwing the light among the inflammable material, he ground through his set teeth,—

“Burn, burn! And may not one brick stand upon another of this hateful place.”

He then dragged Ada from the house, and took his course along the fields at a rapid pace.

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Chapter L

The Ruin at Night.—The Fire.—Gray’s Behaviour.—A Challenge.—Old Westminster Again.

Ada made no remark upon these proceedings of Jacob Gray. She had made up her mind to a particular course of action. She had wound up her feelings and her courage to a certain pitch and she resolved not to say another word to Jacob Gray, until she had an opportunity of acting, as she had now considered it her sacred duty to act.

Gray himself seemed suspicious and annoyed at her pertinacious silence, and he addressed her in a fawning, trembling voice, as if he would fain restore her to her usual confidence in addressing him. The calm of Ada’s manner alarmed him. He would ten times rather she had spoken to him in terms of reproach and abhorrence; but now that she said nothing, he trembled for what might be the nature of her thoughts regarding him.

“Ada,” he said, as he crept along by her side, or rather one pace before her towards the inner side. “Ada, all that I have often pictured to you of riches and honour shall soon be yours. You will enjoy all that your young and ardent imagination can hope for; but there are some few things yet to be done ere I can place you in such a position as would make you the envy of all.”

These few things, in Jacob Gray’s mind, consisted in efficient preparations for his own departure from England; the secreting of his confession, and the extortion of a yet further sum of money from the fears of Learmont.

“You do not hear me, Ada,” as she made no reply.

The young girl shuddered, and shrank from him as far as he would permit.

“You shrink from me now,” said Gray, “and yet I am the only person who can and will place you in a position to enjoy every pleasure—to gratify every taste. Ada, you will be much beholden now to Jacob Gray.”

Still Ada would not speak, and they were rapidly nearing some stairs, at which plied wherries between Battersea and Westminster. Gray now looked cautiously around him, and being quite satisfied that no one was within heating, he stooped his mouth close to Ada’s ear, and said, in a voice of suppressed yet violent passion,—

“Girl, I am a desperate man. Do not tempt me beyond what I can resist to do a deed which I fain would not do. Hear me, Ada—I swear to have your life if you play me false. Be obedient to what I shall command, and all will be well; but have a care—have a care, for I am desperate, and you know what I can do.”

Jacob Gray then walked on in silence until he reached the stalls, at which there was no one but a boy, who immediately cried to him, “Boat, your honour—going across, sir?”

“Yes,” said Gray.

The boy ran into the water to steady the beat while Gray handed in Ada, who submitted passively. Then he stepped on board himself, and the boy, clambering in after him, pushed the boat out into the stream.

“Where to, your honour?” said the boy, as he settled the sculls in the rollocks, and gave, a sweep that turned the boat’s head from the shore.

“To the stairs at Westminster-bridge,” said Gray.

The boy nodded, and the boat, under his good management, was soon gliding up the stream in the wished-for direction.

The sun was now rapidly sinking, and tall dark shadows lay upon the surface of the Thames, making the waters look as if they were composed of different kinds of fluids of varying colours and densities. Then the last edge of the sun’s disc, which had been reposing on the horizon for a moment, suddenly disappeared, and a cold wind on the instant swept across the face of the river, curling it up into small wrinkles, and giving a gentle, undulating motion to the boat.

Not a word was spoken, and the small wherry might have been occupied by the dead, for all the signs of life or animation given by Gray or Ada.

That Gray’s thoughts partook of the apprehensive might have been guessed by the nervous manner in which he clutched the side of the boat, and the distracted movement of the fingers of his other hand with which he held the collar of his cloak across the lower part of his face.

Ada was pale as a marble statue; but there was an intellectuality and determination about her small, compressed lips and commanding brow that would have won admiration from all, and enraptured a poet or a painter. She sat calm and still. There was no nervousness, no trembling, no alarm; and it was the absence of all those natural and feminine feelings which cast a cold chill to the heart of Jacob Gray, and filled him with a terror of he knew not what.

He could not for more than one instant of time keep his eyes off Ada’s face. There was a something depicted there that while he dreaded, he seemed, by some supernatural power, compelled to look upon. Like one fascinated by the basilisk eye of a serpent, he could not withdraw his gaze; although pale, firm, and slightly tinged with a death-like hue by the strange colours that lingered in the sky from the sunset, that young and lovely face brought to his recollection one which the mere thought of was an agony, and the name of whom was engraven upon his heart in undying letters of eternal flame.

The fresh breeze caught as it passed the long glossy ringlets of Ada’s hair, and blew them in wanton playfulness across her face, but still she moved not. The night darkened, and the shadows of the buildings and shipping crossed her eyes, but she stirred not. Her whole soul, with all its varied perceptions and powers seemed to be engrossed by some one great idea that would admit of no sort of companionship, and for the time reigned alone within the chambers of her brain.

Suddenly now the boy let his oars rest in the water, and the boat no longer urged forward, moved but sluggishly. His eyes seemed to be fixed on something. Now he lifted one hand and shaded them, while he looked earnestly in the direction from whence he had been coming.

Gray for a moment did not seem conscious that the boat was making no progress, but in fact slowly turning broadside to the stream, and Ada, if she did notice it, preserved her silence and calmness, for she neither moved nor spoke.

“Master,” cried the boy, suddenly, and Gray started as if he had been suddenly aroused by a trumpet at his ear.

“What—a—what?” he cried. “Who spoke?”

“I spoke, sir,” said the boy. “There’s a famous fire out Battersea way.”

“A fire?” said Gray.

“Yes,” said the boy, and he pointed with his finger in the direction from whence they came. “It’s a large fire; now it does burn, to be sure. Look, sir, there!”

Gray turned half round upon his seat in the boat, and he saw that the heavens were illuminated with a dull, red glare in the direction to which the boy had pointed, and in that one particular spot there was a concentrated body of light from whence shot up in the sky myriads of bright sparks, and now and then a long tongue of flame which lit up the house, the shipping, and the river, with a bright and transitory glow.

“It is—the house,” muttered Gray to himself; “my work prospers. Sir Frederick Hartleton, I have but one more wish, and that is, that your flesh was broiling in yon house along with your myrmidon whom you left to his fate.”

“It’s a large fire,” remarked the boy. “A famous fire.”

“Yes,” said Gray, “a famous fire; can you tell where it is?”

“I think,” said the boy, “it lies somewhere over the marshes.”

“Indeed.”

“Yes; and I should say it was Forest’s old haunted house, only nobody lives there but the ghosts.”

“Forest’s house,” repeated Gray, in an assumed careless tone. “Indeed I should not wonder if you were right.”

“I hope it is,” said the boy. “It was an old miserable-looking place. You’ve heard about it, sir?”

“A little—a little,” replied Gray.

“There was a murder there once,” said the boy.

“Yes,—yes, I—know,” said Gray.

“Forest, you see, sir, lived in the house. He built it, you see, sir, and he wasn’t content with what he had, so he murdered a poor fellow, who they say had a thousand pounds belonging to somebody who employed him to collect rents, you see, sir.”

“Yes,” said Gray, licking his lips.

“Well, sir, Forest shot him.”

“Shot him? Oh, yes. He—he shot him.”

“He was hung, though,” added the boy, “and well he deserved it, too. My grandfather saw him hung on the common, not a hundred feet from his own door.—After that no one would live in the house, and, in course, old Forest’s ghost, and, the man’s ghost that he killed, took to being there. Well, it does flare now famously.”

The fire seemed now at its height, for the flames rose to a tremendous height into the sky, and the roaring and crackling of the timbers could be distinctly heard, even at that distance from the spot of the conflagration.

Now and then a loud sound, resembling the discharge of artillery at a distance, would come booming through the air, indicative of the fall of some heavy part of the ancient building, and then the flame would be smothered for a moment, and dense volumes of smoke terrifically red from the glare beneath, would roll over the sky, to be succeeded again by myriads of sparks, which would, in their turns, give place to the long tongues of flame which shot up from the fallen mass, as it became more thoroughly ignited.

Jacob Gray gazed intently on the scene for a few minutes, then turning to the boy, he cried,—

“We are in haste.”

The lad resumed his oars, and struck them lazily into the glowing stream, that looked like liquid fire from the bright reflection of the sky, and once more the boat was making way towards Westminster.

Several times Gray glanced in the face of Ada, to note what effect the burning of the old house had upon her imagination, but not a muscle moved—all was as still and calm as before, and save that the reflection from the reddened sky now cast a glow of more than earthly beauty over her otherwise pale face, to look at her, she might have been supposed some thing of Heaven, summoned by the small casualties and petty commotions of this world, which she had but visited for a brief space, for some specific purpose.

The boat glided on, and so intent was the boy upon the fire, that he had several narrow escapes of running foul of barges and other wherries, some of the latter of which were pulling down the stream on purpose to look at the fire, which was causing a great deal of comment and commotion among the gossips of ancient Westminster.

Many were the oaths levelled on the head of the boy, by parties who were obliged to ship their oars suddenly to avoid a collision with his boat, and it was not until this happened thrice, that he began to be a little more careful, and look warily about him.

The stairs to which Gray directed the boy were through the bridge, and the boat now reached the ancient structure, which looked beautiful and brilliant from the reflection of the fire upon its many rough stones and jagged points of architecture.

A wherry, in which sat one person besides the rower, now came rapidly from under the same arch of the bridge, through which the boat containing Ada and Gray was about to proceed.

“Hilloa!” cried the man, who was sitting in the boat. “Hilloa there!”

“Well, what now?” said the boy.

“None of your impertinence, youngster,” cried the man, showing a constable’s staff, which Ada knew no more the meaning of than if he had unfurled the banner of Mahomet.

“Well, sir,” said the boy, “I only want to land my passengers.”

“You may land your passengers, and be d—d,” replied the man in authority.

“Thank you kindly sir,” replied the boy, promptly.

The rower in the other boat laughed at this, and the constable cried,—

“Come, come, none of this. How far have you pulled up the river, boy?”

“From Battersea.”

“Oh, hem! From Battersea?”

“I told you so.”

“Come, come, young fellow—no insolence. Where’s the fire?”

“I can’t say exactly.”

“Where do you think it is? You say you have pulled up from Battersea, and the fire is at Battersea, we know.”

“I think it’s at old Forest’s haunted house,” said the boy.

“D—d if I didn’t think so,” cried the officer, who was no other than our old friend Stephy; “I must go and see, though, notwithstanding. Pull away, my man.”

The wherries shot past each other, and in a few moments more, Ada and Gray stood on the top of the flight of stone steps conducting from the river to Bridge-street.

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Chapter LI

The Alcove on the Bridge.—Gray’s Speech to Ada.—The Flight.—The Hunt.—The Last Refuge.

London was not so thronged with passengers at the period of our tale as it is now, and Gray stood with Ada several moments at the corner of Westminster-bridge, without more than three persons passing, and those at intervals apart from each other.

Gray appeared to be in deep thought during this time, and then taking Ada by the arm, he said in a trembling voice,—

“This way, this way,” and led her to the bridge.

Ada made no resistance, but suffered herself to be conducted into one of the little alcoves which now exist. Then, after a pause, Jacob Gray spoke to her in a low, earnest tone, to the following purport:—

“Ada, the time is now fast approaching when you will be free—free in action as in thought, and with the means of giving to every thought, however wayward or expensive, the immediate aspect of reality. You will be guided implicitly by me, Ada, for the space of about one month, and no longer—then all that I promise will be fulfilled, and you will be happy. You may then forget Jacob Gray, for you will see him no more. In another country I will spend the remainder of my life. What I am about to do now is, to seek in the very heart of this populous city, a temporary abode for you and myself. I am tired of solitudes and lonely places. Ada, you must for that brief month assume in all appearance the character of my daughter.”

Ada shuddered, and shrank back as far as she possibly could into the alcove, for Gray, in the earnestness of his discourse, had brought his face in very close proximity to hers.

“For your own sake, as well as for mine,” he continued, “you must pass as a child of mine. When I am gone, you may repudiate the relationship as quickly as you may think proper.”

Jacob Gray then paused as if awaiting the answer of Ada, but to his great surprise and aggravation, she preserved the same unbroken silence which she had dictated to herself since the murder at the lone house.

“You will not answer me,” said Gray, with bitterness. “Well, be it so. Let no words pass between us. I can construe your silence—you feel that you must obey me, and yet you cannot bring your nature to give me one word of acquiescence. ’Tis as well, Ada—’tis as well. Our conversations have never been so satisfactory that I should wish to urge their continuance. You may preserve your silence, but you must obey me. Before this time I have been placed in desperate straits, and have reflected upon desperate remedies. Now, Ada, remember that if you betray me, or even leave me, until the time I shall please to appoint, you shall die. Remember, young, beautiful as you are, you shall die.”

Again Gray paused with the hope that Ada would speak, for although he affected to despise it, the silence of the young girl was an annoyance to him of the first magnitude.

His hope, however, was futile. She spoke not.

“Come, follow me,” cried Gray, suddenly. “Here, place your arm in mine.”

He attempted to draw her arm within his as he spoke, but Ada drew back so firmly and resolutely, that Gray saw she would not walk with him in such apparent amity.

“As you please,” he said, “so that you follow me. Come on—come on.”

Ada stepped from the alcove onto the bridge, and then Gray paused a moment to see if he was observed, and being satisfied that he was not, he drew aside the collar of his cloak and showed Ada the bright barrel of a pistol, to which he pointed, saying,—

“Remember—death, sudden, painful, and violent on the one hand, and on the other, after a short month, unbounded wealth, enjoyment, and delight. Come on—come on.”

Side by side, the ill-assorted pair walked in the direction of Parliament-street, it being Gray’s intention to pass through Westminster, and proceed towards the densely populated district north of the Strand, there to seek for a temporary lodging in which he and Ada as his daughter, could remain until he had perfected his arrangements for his own escape, and the utter destruction of Learmont and Britton.

Gray had calculated his chances and position well. He stood as free as ever from any attempt against his life by Learmont or the savage smith. Ada, even if she should suddenly leave him, scarcely knew enough to be thoroughly dangerous. Sir Francis Hartleton had but an indistinct knowledge of his person, and even should he meet him in the public streets, he could hardly hit upon him as being the man who had merely flashed across his eyes for a moment. Besides, it was possible to make sufficient alterations in his personal appearance to deceive those who were not very well acquainted with his general aspect and appearance. Then he need not go from home above four times, perhaps, in that whole month, even provided he remained so long in London, and on those occasions it would only be to creep cautiously from his own place of abode to Learmont’s house and back again, so that the risk would be but small of meeting the magistrate or Albert Seyton, who were the only two persons at all interested in his capture.

His threats to Ada that he would take her life upon any attempt of hers to escape, were perfectly insincere. To Ada and her existence he clung as to his only hope of mercy, if by some untoward circumstance he should be taken, as well as for his only means of being thoroughly and entirely revenged upon Learmont.

Upon the whole, then, Jacob Gray, as he walked down Parliament-street, in the dim, uncertain light from the oil lamps of the period, and saw that Ada followed him slowly, rather congratulated himself upon his extreme cunning and the good position for working out all his darling projects, both of avarice and revenge, in which he was placed.

“There is an old proverb,” he muttered, “which says, ‘the nearer to church, the further from Heaven,’ and I have read somewhere a fable of a hunted hare finding a secure, because an unsuspected, place of refuge in a dog-kennel. Upon that principal will I secrete myself for one short month in some place densely inhabited; where two persons make but an insignificant item in the great mass that surrounds them, will I seek security, and then my revenge—my deep revenge!”

But few passengers were in Parliament-street; the quantity of persons, however, sensibly increased as they approached Whitehall, and from Charing-cross the lights were just glancing when Ada suddenly paused, and Gray, on the impulse of the moment, got two or three paces in advance of her. There were two persons conversing, about where Scotland-yard stands, and laughing carelessly, while several more people were rapidly approaching from Charing-cross.

Gray was sensible in a moment that Ada had stopped, and he hurried immediately to see what were her intentions.

As he did so, Ada broke the long silence she had maintained by suddenly exclaiming, in a voice that arrested every passenger, and made the blood retreat with a frightful gush to the heart of Jacob Gray.

“Help! Help! Seize him. He is a murderer—a murderer!—Help! Help! Seize the murderer!”

For one moment all sense of perception seemed to have left Gray, so thoroughly unexpected was such an act on the part of Ada, and it was well for him that those who were around for about the same space of time remained in a similar undecided and bewildered state, as people do always on any very sudden occasion for instant action.

Ada stood pointing with one trembling finger at Gray, while her pale face and long black hair, combined with her rare beauty, made her look like one inspired.

“The murderer!” she again cried, and her voice seemed to break the spell which kept both Gray and the chance passengers paralysed.

With a cry of terror, Jacob Gray turned and fled towards Charing-cross.

Ada’s feelings had been wrought up to too high a pitch of excitement. She had felt it to be her duty to denounce the murderer, and while that duty remained to be done, the consciousness that upon her it devolved, had nerved her to the task, and supported her hitherto—now, however, the words were spoken. At what she supposed the risk of her life, she had announced the crime of Jacob Gray. The revulsion of feeling was too much, and a bystander, who saw her stagger, was just in time to catch her as she fainted, and would otherwise have fallen to the ground.

The two persons who had been talking and laughing together at the moment of Ada’s first exclamation, did not seem disposed to let the accused man get off so easily as he appeared upon the point of doing. They raised the cry so awful in the ear of a fugitive through the streets of London, “Stop him! Stop him!” And they both started after Jacob Gray at full speed.

Had Gray, when he turned the corner of Northumberland-house, then walked quietly, like an ordinary passenger, the chances were that he would have escaped; but, in his terror, he flew rather than ran up the Strand, at once pointing himself out to all as the one pursued, and tempting every person who had time or inclination to join the exciting chase.

The words, “Stop him!” sounded in his ears, and he bounded forward as he heard them, with another cry and a speed that, while it made it very hazardous for every one to oppose him, yet increased the ardour of the pursuit.

In the course of a few seconds, fifty persons had joined the chase, and yells and shouts came upon Gray’s affrighted ears.

With compressed lips and a face as livid as that of a corpse, he rushed on without the smallest idea of where he was going.

“For my life—for my life,” he gasped, and each cry behind him affected him like a shock of electricity, and caused him to give another bound forward in all the wildness of despair.

Of the crowd now that followed Gray, not one knew who he was, of what he was accused, or why he was thus hunted, like a wild annual, through the streets. One joined in the cry because he saw others engaged in it. The two young men who had first raised the chase were a long way off, for no one could keep up with the frantic speed of the nearly maddened Gray. Those who followed him the closest were those who had joined the hunt en route; although, to the fugitive’s excited imagination, he seemed to be on the point of being overtaken by harder runners than himself.

Shouts, cries, hootings, groans, and every wild and demoniac noise of which the human animal is capable, were uttered by the mob, which kept momentarily increasing as each alley, court, or street, sent forth its tribute of numbers to the stream that roared, whooped, hurried, and raced along the Strand.

Some began now to throw missiles of all kinds after Gray. Stones and mud showered upon him, and he felt faint and neatly exhausted, as he saw at some distance before him a man apparently intent upon stopping him.

Little, however, did he who thought to capture Gray reflect upon the shock he would receive from the speed of the hunted man. As Gray approached him he swerved, more involuntarily than designedly, and coming against the man rather obliquely, he shot him into the roadway with an impetus that sent him rolling over and over in the mud, as if he had been discharged from a cannon. To Gray the shock was severe, but it did not take him off his feet, and the circumstance caused some little diversion in his favour than otherwise; for the mob first trampled upon the prostrate man, and then some fell over him.

After this, none were so bold as to stand in the way of a man who was rushing along with so terrible a speed; and Jacob Gray, reeling, panting, his lips running with blood, as he had bitten them in his agony, arrived at Somerset-house.

Just beyond the stone front was a small court, and towards this temporary place of refuge from the high street Gray tottered, spinning round and round, like a drunken man.

A light, agile man, who had joined the chase by the Adelphi, and who had kept very close upon Gray, now, with a shout of triumph, made a rush forward, and grappled with him at the mouth of the little court.

The touch seemed like magic to revive all the fainting energies of Jacob Gray, and he turned and grappled his enemy by the throat with fearful vehemence.

The court descended from the street by a flight of stone steps, and in the next instant with a shriek from the man, and a wild cry from Gray, the pursuer and pursued rolled down the stone descent, struggling with each other for life or death.

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Chapter LII

The Dark Court.—A Deed of Blood.—The Pursuit Continued.—The Mother and the Child.

Bruised and bleeding. Gray and the adventurous stranger who had essayed to capture him, arrived at the bottom of the flight of stone steps, and for one or two seconds it was doubtful if either of them were in a condition to make any further effort either offensive or defensive.

The fear of capture and death, however, was sufficiently strong in the mind of Jacob Gray to overcome for the moment the sense of pain arising from personal injury; and with an energy, lent to him by despair alone, he rose on his knees and felt about for his antagonist. His hand touched the man’s face, and now he began to move. With something between a shriek and a shout, Gary laid hold of his head by the hair on each side. He lifted it as far as he could from the stones and then brought it down again with a sinking awful crash. One deep hollow groan only came from the man, and again Gray lifted the head, bringing it down as before with frightful violence. The skull cracked and smashed against the hard stones. The man was dead, but once more was the bleeding and crashed head brought into violent contact with the stones, and that time the sound it produced was soft, and Jacob Gray felt that he held but loose pieces of bone, and his hands were slimy and slippery with the blood that spouted on to them.

Faltering, dizzy, and faint, he then rose to his feet, and from the open throughfare there came to his ears shouts, cries, and groans. Then he cast his eyes to the dim opening of the court, and he heard several voices cry,—

“He is hiding down here. Let’s hunt him out. Lights—lights!”

In a state of agony beyond description Gray now turned to seek shelter further down the dark court, and in doing so he trod upon the dead body of the man he had just hurried from existence.

Recoiling then, as if a serpent had been in his path, he crept along by the wall until he thought he must have passed the awful and revolting object which now in death he dreaded quite as much as he did in life.

He then plunged wildly forward, heedless where his steps might lead, so that it was away from his pursuers. A few paces now in advance of him he descried a dim faint ray of light, and hastening onwards he found himself at the entrance of a court running parallel with the Strand, and consisting of mean, dirty, squalid-looking houses inhabited by the very dregs of the poorer classes.

Some of the half-broken dirty parlour windows in this haunt of poverty were converted into shops by being set open, and a board placed across in the inside displaying disgusting messes in the shape of eatables, mingled with wood, old bones, rags, &c.

Gray hesitated a moment and cast his eyes behind him. A loud yell met his affrighted ears, and lights began to flash in the direction he had left behind him. With a groan of despair, he rushed into the dark open passage of one of the houses.

Breathing hard from his exertions and the fright he was in, Gray groped his way along by the damp clammy walls of the passage until he came to some stairs—he hesitated not a moment, but slowly and cautiously ascended them.

As he crept stair after stair up the dark flight of steps the sound of pursuit seemed to come nearer and nearer, and he could hear the hum of many voices, although he could not distinguish exactly what was said. Only one word came perpetually as clearly and distinctly to his ears as if it had been spoken at his side, and that word was murder!

“They—they have found the body,” he gasped. “Yes, they have found the body now. My life hangs on a thread!”

The cold perspiration of fear rolled down his face, and notwithstanding his great exertions which would ordinarily have produced an intolerable sense of heat, he was as cold and chilled as if he had suddenly awakened from sleep in the open air. His teeth chattered in his head, and his knees smote each other. He was fain to clutch with both hands the crazy banisters of the staircase for support, or he must inevitably have fallen.

“This is dreadful,” he whispered to himself, “to die here. They have hunted me to death—I—I feel as if a hand of ice was on my heart. This must be death.”

Slowly the cold sensation wore off, and like the flame of a taper, which suddenly renews its origin most unexpectedly, when apparently upon the point of dissolution, Gray gradually revived again, and his vital energies came back to him.

With a deep sigh he spoke,—

“’Tis past—’tis past. They have not killed me as yet. It was, after all, but a passing pang. They have not killed me yet.”

Again the cry of murder echoed in the court, and, with a start, Jacob Gray set his teeth hard, and continued to ascend the dark staircase. Suddenly, now, he paused, for a sound from above met his ears—it was some one singing. How strangely the tones jarred upon the excited senses of Jacob Gray: the sound was low and plaintive, and to him it seemed a mockery of his awful situation.

He now by two more steps gained the landing, and he was sure that the singing proceeded from some room on that floor. The voice was a female’s, and by the softness and exquisite cadences of it evidently proceeded from some person not far advanced in life.

Gray held by the banisters at the top of the stairs, and for some minutes he seemed spell-bound, and to forget the precarious situation in which he stood as those low, soft strains came upon his ear.

The female was evidently singing to a child, for occasionally she would pause to express some words of endearment to the little one, and then resume her song.

The few short lines of which the song was composed came fully to Gray, and there was a something about their very simplicity and innocence that rooted him to the spot, although they brought agony to his heart:

The Mother’s Choice.

“My babe, if I had offers three,

From gentle heavenly powers,

To bless thee, who, with aching heart,

I’ve watched so many hours,

I’d choose that gift should make thee great

In true nobility—

That greatness of the soul which leaves

The heart and conscience free.

Gold should not tempt me, gentle babe,

It might not bring thee rest;

Nor power would I give to thee,

’Tis but an aching breast.

But I would ask of Heaven, my babe,

A boon of joy to thee,

To make thee happy in this life,

From sin and sorrow free.

Nor gold nor silver should’st thou have,

Nor power to command,

But thou should’st have a guileless heart,

An open, unstained hand.

So should thou happy be, my babe,

A thing of joy and light;

While others struggled for despair,

You’d wish but to be right.”

The song abruptly ceased, for the loud tones of men reached the ears of the singer, crying,—

“Murder!—Hunt him—secure the murderer! This way—this way!”

Those sounds roused Gray from his temporary inaction: he started forward as if he had received some sudden and irresistible shock.

More from impulse than any direct design or preconcerted plan, Jacob Gray made towards the door of the room in which was the mother and her infant child.

At the moment, then, a sudden thought struck his mind that possibly he might convert the affection of the mother for her infant into a means of saving himself: it was a hope, at all events, although a weak and forlorn one. Time, however, was precious, and Jacob Gray, with his pale, ghastly face, torn apparel, bleeding-hands, and general dishevelled look, made his appearance in the room.

By the remains of a miserable fire sat a young female scarcely above the age of girlhood, and in a cot at her feet slept a child, the face of which she was regarding with that rapt attention and concentrated love which can only be felt by a mother.

So entirely, in fact, were all the faculties of the young mother wound up in the contemplation of her sleeping child, that Gray’s entrance into the room failed to arouse her, and he had time to glance around the room and be sure that he and the mother, with the child, were the only occupants of the place before he spoke.

He then drew the pistol he still retained from his breast, and suddenly cried,—

“One word, and it shall cost you your life! Be silent and obedient, and you are safe.”

A cry escaped the lips of the young female, and she stood panic-stricken by Gray’s strange appearance, as well as his threatening aspect and words.

“Listen to me,” he said, in a low, hoarse voice; “you love your child?”

“Love my child?” re-echoed the mother, in a tone that sufficiently answered the question of Gray, who added,—

“I am a desperate man. I do not wish to do you harm; but, betray me to those who are seeking my life, and your child shall die by my hands.”

“No—no—my child—no,” cried the mother, in a voice of alarm.

“Hush!” cried Gray, advancing; and pointing the muzzle of his pistol towards the sleeping form of the child. “Such another outcry, and I will execute my threat.”

The young mother stood paralysed with terror, while Gray hastily added,—

“I am hunted, I tell you. Have you no place of concealment? Speak!”

“Concealment? Good Heaven! How can I aid you? What have I done that you should menace my child? You cannot, dare not be so wicked.”

A loud shout at this moment rang through the court, and the flashing beams of several torches blazed through the murky windows of the miserable abode of poverty.

“What sounds are those?” cried the female.

“My pursuers,” said Gray. “Now, hear me; I dare not leave this place. They are on my track—your infant is sleeping—place its cot as nigh to the wall as you can, and I will hide beneath it. If this room is entered by my enemies, you must on the plea of not disturbing your child, prevent a search from taking place.”

“I cannot.”

“You must—you shall! Betray me by look, word, or gesture, and your child shall die, if the next moment were my last. By all hell I swear it!”

The mother shuddered.

“Quick—quick!” cried Gray; “my life is now counted by moments!”

“Hunt him—hunt him! Hurrah!” cried the voices of the pursuers. “Hunt the murderer!”

“You hear!” cried Gray. “Quick—quick!”

With a face of agonised terror the mother drew the cot, without awakening the fastly-slumbering child, towards the wall.

“Now,” cried Gray, “remember—your child’s life is at stake: if I escape, it escapes. If I am taken, it dies.”

“But I may not be able to save you,” said the mother, in imploring accents.

“The child then dies,” said Gray.

“Guard the entrance to the court well,” cried a loud, authoritative voice from the outside of the house. “Search every one of these hovels, from top to bottom.”

“You hear?” said Gray, trembling with terror, and scarcely able to speak from the parched state of his lips.

“I do,” she said.

“Give me some water.”

She handed him a small, earthen pitcher, from which he took a copious and refreshing draught.

“Now,” he said, “sit you by the fire, and sing that song you were singing. It will seem then as if you had been undisturbed, and remember you are playing a game in which the stake is the life of your child.”

“Heaven aid me!” said the mother.

“Hush! To your seat!—To your seat!”

“Oh! Even be you what you may, I will do my best to save you, if you will allow me to sit here.”

She pointed to the side of the cot.

“No, no,” said Gray; “the child shall be nearer to me than to you.”

“Why—oh, why?”

“Because it will then be out of your power to prevent its doom.”

“I swear—”

“Pshaw! I trust no oaths. Away to your seat—to your seat, or—”

He pointed the pistol again to the sleeping babe, and with a shudder the young mother sat down by the fire-side.

The tramp of men was now heard below in the passage, and a voice cried, “Detain any one who attempts to leave the house. Should you meet with resistance, cut him down at once.”

“The song!” cried Gray.

He then insinuated himself between the wall and the cot, so that no part of him was visible, and in a hissing whisper, he again cried to the trembling agonised mother,—

“The song! The song!”

A confused sound on the staircase now announced the approach of the persons and once more from his place of concealment, Gray hissed between his teeth,—

“Curses on you! Will you do as I bid you, or must I do the deed?”

“Spare him! Spare him!” said the mother. “Oh, spare him!”

“The song!” cried Gray.

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Chapter LIII

A Mother’s Care.—The Pursuit.—A Successful Ruse.—The Second Visit.

With a 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.

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Chapter LIV

The Staircase.—The Old Attic.—A Friend in Need.—Fair Play.—Gray’s Despair.

For several moments 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.”

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Chapter LV

The Escape over the Houses.—Many Perils.—Gray’s Great Sufferings.—The Guide Rope.

Gray was 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.

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LVI. The Robbers.—The Drugged Wine.—Visions of the Mind Diseased

The path over 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.

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Chapter LVII

Ada’s Escape.—The Magistrate.—Ada’s Ignorance of London Localities.—Learmont’s Fright.

When Ada sunk insensible into the arms of a stranger, after denouncing Jacob Gray as a murderer, she was conveyed into a shop by Charing-cross, when her rare and singular beauty, and the peculiar circumstances under which she had fainted, were the themes of every tongue. Such restoratives as upon the moment could be procured were immediately brought into requisition, and after a quarter of an hour she gently opened her eyes with a faint sigh and looked inquiringly about her.

Then she clasped her hands, and as she gazed upon the throng of curious, yet compassionate faces that surrounded her, she exclaimed,—

“What has happened? Oh, speak to me; where am I?”

“You have fainted,” cried four or five voices in a breath.

“Fainted—fainted?”

“Yes; I brought you in after you had called after the man as a murderer,” said the person who had caught Ada before she was brought into the shop.

For the space of about another minute then the young girl looked confused; after that a gush of recollections flashed across her mind, and the feeling that she was really at last free from Jacob Gray, came across her heart with so much happiness and joy, that covering her beautiful face with her small slender hands, she burst into tears and sobbed aloud in her fulness of heart.

Those who stood by seemed to feel that there was something sacred in the tears of the young thing before them, for they stood silent, and no one attempted to insult her by the usual commonplace remarks of vulgar consolation. There were tears in almost every eye, and when Ada withdrew her hands from her face, and a smile, beautiful as a sunbeam after an April shower, illumined her expressive countenance, it seemed as if some universal joy had been awakened in every breast, and murmured blessings upon her beauty, burst from several of the persons who had crowded, from motives of curiosity, into the shop.

Then Ada looked from face to face, and oh, how different were those honest sympathising countenances to the dark ever shifting expression of the lineaments of Jacob Gray, where avarice, cruelty, and fear were ever struggling together for a mastery.

“Thank you all—thank you all,” she cried; “I am very happy now.”

This was not a very comprehensible speech to those who had not gone through the scene of misery and woe, that the young heart of Ada had known, but still there was a deep truthfulness and sincerity in the tone in which it was uttered that sensibly affected every one.

“Shall I take you home?” said the person who had supported her in the street.

“Home—home?” cried Ada.

“Yes; you are not well enough to go home by yourself; I will see you safely home.”

“I have no home,” said Ada.

“No home?”

“None—I never had a home.”

The people looked at each other in amazement, and several of them significantly touched their foreheads in confirmation of their belief that the beautiful young girl was not quite right in her head.

“Where are your friends?” said one.

“Alas, I know not,” cried Ada, mournfully. “Tell me, is he whom I denounced in the street taken prisoner?”

“No, not that I am aware of,” said a man. “There has been one here who says he ran up the Strand like a madman and escaped.”

Ada shuddered as she said,—

“Let him go now; his own conscience must be punishment enough. Let him go now.”

“What has he done?” said several voices at once.

“Murder,” said Ada. “My eyes were shocked with the sight of blood. He is a murderer.”

“A murderer?”

“Yes—I saw him do the deed.”

“What’s his name?”

“Jacob Gray.”

The people glanced at each other, and then several left the shop, considering Jacob Gray as the more interesting person of the two to make inquiries about.

“Where will you go, my dear?” said the owner of the shop.

“I have but one friend,” said Ada, “to whom there is any hope of sending. He has called himself my friend, and his voice was sincere. I will believe that he sought me with kindly feelings. His name is Hartleton—he is a magistrate.”

“Sir Francis Hartleton?”

“Yes—the same.”

“If he knows you and is your friend,” said one, “you need look no farther, for he is a good man, and universally esteemed.”

“I thank you for those words,” cried Ada. “And—and tell me—do any of you know Albert Seyton?”

All shook their heads, and one man remarked,—“That he knew an Albert Brown, which was the nearest he could come to it.”

“I will take you to Sir Francis Hartleton’s,” said the man of the shop. Before Ada could reply, the door was opened, and a stranger walked in, saying,—

“Where is the girl?”

“Here, here?” cried many voices.

The stranger stepped forward, and upon seeing Ada, he said,—

“My lass, you must come with me before a magistrate, and tell us what you know of this man who has led us such a pretty race up the Strand.”

“Is he caught?” cried several.

“No,” replied the officer, for such he was; “we nearly had him by the court next to Somerset-house, but he killed the man who laid hold of him.”

“Another murder!” exclaimed Ada.

“Yes; I never saw such a sight as he left the man.”

“Take me to Sir Francis Hartleton,” said Ada.

“That I will,” said the officer.

Ada sprung to her feet, and then, turning to those in the shop, she said,—

“Accept my heartfelt thanks? I am poor in all else.”

Then, taking the offered arm of the officer, who, though rough and uncouth, meant to be quite kind and considerate in his way, she left the shop, and the strangely-matched pair proceeded down Whitehall towards Sir Francis Hartleton’s house.

“That fellow as you was with my dear,” remarked the officer, “is a reg’lar out-and-outer; down as fifteen hammers, and a touch above nothing.”

This speech was about as intelligible to Ada as if it had been spoken in Chinese, and she replied mildly,—

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Bless your innocence!” said the officer; “I means as he’s the most downiest cove as we’ve come across lately.”

“Indeed,” said Ada, who was quite as wise as before.

“Yes; he went up the Strand like twenty blessed lamplighters rolled into one.”

“Where’s the Strand?” said Ada.

The officer stopped short at the question, and looked hard at Ada for some moments to assure himself that he was not, in his own phraseology, being “regularly done;” but there was something so very innocent and guileless in the face of Ada that he very reluctantly came to the conclusion that she really did not know where the Strand was, and from that moment he looked upon her as a natural phenomenon, and spoke to her with a curious kind of considerate voice, such as he would have addressed to a person not quite right in her mind.

“Why, the Strand,” he said, “runs from the Cross to the Bar, you see.”

“Does it?” said Ada.

“This here is Whitehall.”

“Whitehall? I have read of Whitehall. Cardinal Wolsey held great state here once.”

“Well, I never,” thought the officer, who had never heard of Cardinal Wolsey in his life. “She’s wandering in her mind, poor thing.”

“What building is that?” inquired Ada, as they came opposite to the Horse Guards.

“That ’ere is the Horse Guards, and leads into the Park.”

“St. James’s Park? I have been there,” said Ada. “That too is full of recollection.”

“I believe ye,” said the officer. “Don’t you know as Bill Floggs, who was called the ‘Nubbly Cove,’ robbed Lord Chief Justice Bones by Buckingham Gate?”

“No,” said Ada, who, if there had been a Newgate Calendar in those days, had never seen one.

“Oh! you doesn’t?—Nor Claude Duval, the ladies’ own highwayman, who robbed a gentleman of his gold watch, while he, the gentleman, was complaining of being stopped the very night before by him on Kennington Common?”

“Indeed?”

“Lor,’ bless you, yes. The ladies used to take a drive out of town on purpose to be robbed by Claude Duval.”

“A strange fancy,” said Ada.

They now proceeded for some distance in silence, until they came to a large mansion, every window of which was blazing with light, and from the interior of which came the sound of music.

Ada paused, and looked upon the illuminated windows as a sensation of pleasure came across her mind, arising from the sweet sounds of melody that came wafted to her ears from within the house of revelry.

“Ah!” remarked the officer, looking up at the house, “they do keep it up finely. Almost every night now for a week there has been nothing but feasting, dancing, and music in that house. They say its master don’t like to be left alone, and that he is never satisfied unless the house be full of company, and himself in the very midst of it.”

“Indeed!”

“Yes, he is an odd-looking fellow; but they say he is so rich he might pave his great hall with guineas.”

“And yet shrinks, as it were, from himself, that he dare not be alone!”

“Why, ’atween you and I, there’s Tyburn written upon his face.”

“What upon his face?”

“Tyburn.”

“What’s that?”

“Why—why—you don’t mean all to go to say as you never heard o’ Tyburn?”

“I have lived a lone and solitary life,” said Ada; “and, although so near the haunts of thousands of my fellow-creatures, I have seen but one, except rarely. The names of places in this great city, the habits, the thoughts, and actions of its myriads of inhabitants, are all strange to me. For all I know of the familiar things of life—those every-day events and materials of life that make up the sum of most persons’ existence—I am as ignorant as a child cast upon some desert shore.”

There was a mournful pathos in the tone of voice in which Ada uttered these words that gave them their full effect upon the rough man she was with. Nature spoke in every soft melancholy word that fell from her lips; and, although her language was to him as strange and incomprehensible quite, as his to her, he understood sufficient to reply to her.—

“Then, whosoever shut you up, and purvented you from going about and amusing yourself, my dear, was a big brute, and only let him come across me, that’s all.”

“Whose house is this?” said Ada, listening, at the same time, to a beautiful melody which was being played as a prelude to the commencement of a dance.

“Squire Learmont they call him,” replied the man; “but, if he lives a little-longer, it’s said he’ll be a lord, or something of that kind.”

Ada placed her hand upon her brow, and repeated the name of Learmont, as if its sound conjured up some long-forgotten images in her brain. Then she shook her head, as memory could shape to her nothing tangible in connexion with the name, which yet, as she again pronounced it, came upon her heart as something far from new.

“Learmont—Learmont!” she murmured, as if pleased with the repetition.

“Yes, that’s his name,” rejoined the officer. “Nobody knows exactly where he got all his money from; but got it he has, and he knows how to spend it too.”

At this moment the doors of the mansion were flung open, and a splendid carriage dashed up to the entrance.

“There’s somebody coming,” remarked the officer to Ada. “Let’s have a look at them.”

Ada and her companion now crossed the road, and stood close to the step of Learmont’s house, as a lacquey shouted to those in the hall,—

“Lord and Lady Brereton, and the Honourable Georgiana Brereton.”

A blaze of light shot from the interior of the mansion, and just as the guests were alighting, Learmont himself descended the steps of his house to receive them.

He was attired in a splendid suit of moreen velvet, and a diamond of great lustre sparkled in his sword hilt. His fingers were covered with rings, profusely studded with precious stones, and, take his appearance altogether, he looked, indeed, like the man who could pave his hall with gold.

A bland and courtly smile was upon his face, and he handed the occupants of the carriage up the steps, with the air of a sovereign prince, graciously condescending to an act of rare and unexampled courtesy.

From the moment that he had appeared, Ada had never taken her eyes from off his face; she seemed like one fascinated by the basilisk eyes of a serpent, and, with a wild rush of mingled feelings, which she could neither define nor understand, she watched each varying expression of that cold, pale, haughty countenance that wore upon its surface so hollow and so artificial a smile.

Learmont was one step below the Honourable Lady he was handing by the extreme tips of her fingers, into his house, when the officer, in what he thought a whisper, said to Ada,—

“That’s him.”

The guilty heart of Learmont throbbed even at this trifling remark, for it did reach his ears, and he turned suddenly to see who had uttered it, when his eyes met Ada’s, and for the space of about one moment they looked full at each other.

The look on Ada’s part was one of intense and indescribable interest and curiosity, but on Learmont’s, it was that concentrated soul-stricken glare, with which a person might be supposed to regard for about a breathing space, some awful blasting spectre, ere nature gathers strength to scream.

A wild unearthly cry burst from his lips, and he stretched out his hands towards her as he ascended the steps backwards, crying, or rather shrieking,—

“Off—off—off—”

Then as he reached the top he reeled into the hall of his house, and was caught by his servants as he fell insensible from the overwrought agony of his mind.

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Chapter LVIII

An Anecdote.—Sir Francis Hartleton’s House at Westminster.—The Reception.—Ada’s Conduct and Feelings.

Ada was both astonished and alarmed at the sudden emotion of the man who, her reason told her, was a stranger to her; but who her imagination seemed notwithstanding to recognise as one who she must have seen before. Her memory concerning him was like one of those sudden strange feelings which occasionally come over us all, as we meet particular people who we are quite sure we have not met before, but who nevertheless wear not the aspect of strangers to us; people whom we could almost imagine we had been intimate with for good or evil, in some other state of existence long antecedent to this.

On occasions of this singular nature too, there will always be a dim perception in the mind concerning the person so strangely recognised; which enables us to say, with certainty, whether the circumstances connected with him or her quite unremembered, though they maybe, were of a pleasing or a disagreeable character. To Ada, the full sight of Learmont’s face brought a sensation of shuddering horror, which assured her that wherever or whenever she and he had ever taken part together in the great drama of human existence, he was an enemy to be at once loathed and dreaded.

As for the officer he was so astonished and confounded at the whole affair, that after rubbing his eyes twice, he looked a long way down the street, with the full expectation of seeing something coming which might, in some measure, account for Learmont’s sudden and extraordinary flight. That the mere sight of the face of the beautiful girl, who was with him, could cause such an excess of terror, he could not imagine, and when a servant came from the hall, and said to him,—

“What was it! What scared him?” he replied—

“I’ll be hanged if I know. He was going up the steps, like Claude Duval at a minuet, when he was taken aback by something.”

“It’s very odd,” said the servant.

“You may say that,” remarked the officer.

“Come away—come away,” said Ada faintly, “to Sir Francis Hartleton; come, come.”

“Certainly,” said the officer, “but this here is, out of all hand, the rummiest go ever I seed in all my life.”

“Come, come,” repeated Ada, “I would not see that man again for worlds.”

“No wonder he’s frightened you. My own very hair nearly stood a’ end. I’m afeared he’s done something queer, and wants to be found out, that’s what I am. I supposes as he seed some sort o’ ghostesses as made him take on so.”

Ada sighed.

“Don’t you mind it,” said the officer. “You may depend as he’s a victim of conscience, he is. I once before seed a face very like that as he made when he staggered up the steps.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes. As like it as one pea is like another.”

“Where saw you it?”

“In the condemned cell.”

“The condemned cell; where, is that?”

“In Newgate. It’s where we stow a fellow afore his execution. There was a man named Rankin, who had committed a murder, and he was regularly tried and condemned. Well, he carried it off with a high hand, swearing and blustering away, as if he didn’t care a bit, and roaring out as he’d die game, which I knew very well he wouldn’t, for the noisy ones never do.”

“Well, you see he was put in the cell, and we promised to wake him in the morning, in answer to which piece of politeness he swore away at us like a house o’ fire.”

“At half-past six, I and another went to get him up, and when we went in, he never said not a word, and I cried out, ‘hilloa.’ Still he never spoke, and I held up his light, and there he was, a standing straight up against the further end of the cell with his eyes half an inch out of his head, and some such a face as that Learmont puts on.”

Ada shuddered and the officer continued.

“When we went up to him, what do you think we found?”

“I cannot tell.”

“He was stone dead and stiffened up against the wall of his cell, and our chaplain said as how he must have seen the devil all of a sudden. But here we are at Sir Francis Hartleton’s.”

Ada cast her eyes up to the house, and a pang shot across her heart as the doubt crossed her mind, that Jacob Gray might by some innate possibility have spoken the truth, when he described Sir Francis as her enemy; but still she hesitated not, but silently commending herself to the care of Heaven, she entered the house along with the officer.

She was left for some time in a handsomely-furnished parlour, for this was the magistrate’s private, not his official residence. Each moment that passed now appeared to Ada an age of suspense and anxiety. She could hear the beating of her own heart in the silence of that room, and, as she sat with her eyes fixed upon the door, she thought that she had scarcely suffered as much anxiety, even when, in the dreary cell with Jacob Gray, a spirit of resistance to him and all his acts, supported her and prevented her mind from sinking beneath the oppressive circumstances which then surrounded her.

Ada’s mind was of that rare and high order which rises superior to circumstances, and the energies of which become more acute and more capable of vigorous action, the more necessity there exists for the use of such qualities.

Now, however, when there was no iniquity to denounce, no wickedness to resist, but when her heart was only oppressed with a faint doubt of whether she was to receive from Sir Francis Hartleton kindness or not, she did feel faint, weak, and sad, and all those trembling sensibilities of her nature she had suppressed from native energy of mind, and pride of innocence, when with Gray, now that she was free from him, arose from the recesses of her pure heart and forced her to feel, that, although a noble-minded heroine when surrounded by great peril, yet in real nature she was but a timid shrinking girl, such as her fragile and beautifully delicate appearance would indicate.

Then when her anxiety had almost grown into a positive pain, the door opened and a tall, gentlemanly-looking man, with an intelligent countenance, entered the room.

Ada rose, but for a moment she could not speak. He who had come in, evidently saw her emotion, for he said in accents of the greatest kindness and tender consideration to her,—

“Sit down, and don’t be alarmed—I will listen to you with patience.”

It was not the words, but it was the tone of genuine heartfelt kindness in which they were spoken, that went direct to the heart of Ada.

Once, twice, she tried to speak, but what all the threats, and all the harshness of Jacob Gray had failed to produce, these few simple words kindly spoken, at once accomplished, and she burst into tears.

Sir Francis Hartleton had merely been told that a young girl wished to see him, and he had not the remotest idea of who she was, or upon what errand she came.

“I pray you to be calm,” he said, “I have no doubt you have something to tell me that afflicts you very much.”

“No, no,” cried Ada.

“No!”

“It is joy—the joy of meeting a kind heart, that forces these tears from me—I am, sir, but too—too happy now.”

“God forbid I should speak otherwise than kindly to you.”

“Oh, sir,” said Ada, dashing aside the long clustering ringlets of her hair, that in her deep emotion had veiled her face. “You do not know me, but I have pondered over your name till hopes and fears of who or what you were have made my heart sicken. Though young in years, it seems to me that in the small space of time which has seen my existence, I have lived an age of sorrow, of persecution, of horror. I am a harmless, friendless, and for all I know, a nameless thing. Debarred from all that to the young is beautiful, I have passed the dawning of my life the victim of another’s crimes, although how connected with him and his great sinfulness, I cannot tell. My spirit has been worn by incessant rebuke, until death would have been a relief. A murderer’s hand has been lifted against me while I slept—I have seen blood shed before my eyes, and could not stay the unrighteous hand of the murderer—I have had none to love me but one—no mother ever smiled upon me—no recollection of a father’s caress warms my heart. To you, sir, I came for succour, for protection—a fugitive—a homeless wanderer—a thing of blight and desolation; when I hoped, there has come despair—when I wept I have met with mockery—when I trusted I was betrayed—you called upon me once when I dared not return you one answering cry—you proclaimed yourself my friend—I am she whom you called in Forest’s ancient house. I am Ada, the Betrayed!”

Sir Francis Hartleton during this speech had stood before Ada with one of her hands clasped in his, and showing by his earnest attention, and the deep sympathy depicted in his countenance, that he was far from an unmoved listener to her words. When she had concluded, a fervent “thank Heaven!” burst from his lips, and he cried with animation.—

“Ada, I have for many months now sought you throughout this great city—not one day has elapsed without some effort upon my part to find you, and offer you friendship, protection, and a home; my poor girl, you have suffered much—I know it—have known it long, and it has been a shadow on my heart, to think that I could not aid you;—your trials—your persecutions are all over now, and once more I from my heart thank Heaven that I see you under my protection, safe from that awful man, who I ever dreaded would in some wild moment, sacrifice you to his fears, or to his revenge. Ada, you are safe and free! I have both power and will to shelter you, and while Sir Francis Hartleton lives, whoever would harm you must do it through his heart.”

When first Sir Francis had commenced speaking, Ada had fixed her large pensive eyes upon his face, and appeared to drink in with her soul every word he uttered; but as he went on, and his own voice became a little broken by the depth of his emotion and the sincerity of his sympathy, she, in all the guileless innocence of her heart, pressed his hand within hers, and tears gushed from her eyes; but when he told her that she was now safe for ever from Jacob Gray, and that his home should be hers, her joy and gratitude became too much for her, and she laid her head upon his breast and wept, as she would have done upon her father’s heart.

Sir Francis Hartleton was himself scarcely less affected than Ada, for brave, noble, and gifted natures such as his, are easily melted by the softer feelings of human nature.

When he spoke, which was not for some minutes, for he could scarcely command his voice sufficiently, he said,—

“Ada, you shall rest till to-morrow before you tell me all your history—I have likewise much to tell you, and to-morrow we will have a long conference.”

“Yes,” said Ada, “oh, what can I say to you to make you know how my heart thanks you?”

“Nothing—say nothing, Ada—Heaven will help me to do what I am now doing—it is but my duty, Ada, to protect you. Remember now you are at home—you are no guest here, mind, but one of ourselves. These, I hope, are the last tears I shall ever see you shed.”

“Ah, sir, they are far different from those I have shed in the silence and solitude of my various prisons. Those were wrung from me by despair. These come from a heart too full of gratitude.”

Sir Francis Hartleton now rung a small hand bell, which was immediately answered by a servant, to whom he said,—

“Tell your mistress to come to me here;” then turning to Ada, he said, with a half-smile upon his face—“Now, my dear Ada, I shall have nothing to do with you till to-morrow. I am but recently married, and my wife will love you for your own sake as well as for mine. She knows what of your history I know, and is well prepared to give you welcome.”

At this moment a lady entered the room, and Ada cast her eyes upon her face. That one glance was sufficient to assure her she had found a friend, for it was one of those faces that cannot conceal the goodness of the owner’s heart.

“Emilia, this is Ada,” said Sir Francis Hartleton. “I will not say make much of her, and I don’t think you can spoil her.”

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Chapter LIX

Jacob Gray and His Kind Friends.—The Plunder.—Thieves’ Morality.—The Drive to Hampstead.

When Jacob Gray fell upon the floor in a state of utter insensibility in consequence of the powerful narcotic drug infused into his drink by his two kind and considerate friends, those two gentlemen looked on with the utmost composure for a few moments, and then Bill remarked in a careless voice,—

“I think he’ll do now, Moggs?”

“In course,” responded the other, withdrawing the pipe from his mouth, and knocking out the ashes very deliberately upon the hob of the grate.

“He’s precious green,” remarked Bill.

“Very,” said Mr. Moggs.

“Doesn’t you know who he is?”

“I hasn’t the slightest idea. Never clapped eyes on the fellow in my life before, but to my mind he’s a new hand as has been and done something strong in the murder line for an ample consideration.”

“Very likely—what’s the caper concerning him?”

“Honour, Bill—honour.”

“In course.”

“Vun o’ the rules is, that if a regular out-and-out prig or cracksman comes to vun o’ us, and says, ‘I’m in trouble—the runners are hard on me. Guv us a share.’ Why, then we shares the swag all round equal.”

“Spoke like a oracle.”

“Very good. Another o’ the rules is, ‘If the prig aforesaid,’ as the lawyers say, ‘gammon us, or tries all for to gammon us, as to the exact waley o’ the swag, we takes it all.’”

“Never vos a truer vord spoke,” responded Bill, with a look of intense admiration at his companion.

“Well, if so be as this fellow has but what he said, two hundred, we takes one, and leaves him one.”

“That’s the way.”

“But if so be as he has more we takes it all in course; and I’ll wager my blessed nose off my face that he has a precious sight more.”

Bill nodded knowingly.

“Well then,” continued Mr. Moggs, “in either case we gets the shay-cart, and takes him somewhere far enough off.”

Bill nodded again, and then taking from his pocket a large clasped knife, he knelt down by the side of Gray, and with a neatness and dexterity that were evidently the result of practice, he ripped open every one of his pockets, and in a few brief moments Jacob Gray was despoiled of every guinea of that sum of money he had gone through so much pain, suffering, and crime, to procure.

The sum when collected from all his pockets, was in notes and gold so much larger than the thieves had any idea of finding, that when they had it fairly lying before them on the table, they looked at each other for some moments in mute surprise.

“Bill,” cried the other, “this is a regular set up, it is. I’m blowed if we maydent and must retire from business with all this.”

“Don’t be proud,” said Bill. “You always was ambitious. Take it easy, can’t you. This card will be uncommonly useful. How many a poor fellow has been scragged at the tree for want of a few pounds over the blood money, to give a officer as had a warrant agin him. Tom, what I propose is, for us to take a cool hundred or so only, out o’ all this here, and lay the remainder by for bad times.”

“Bill,” remarked the other, after a pause of intense thought, “you should have been Lord Chancellor, that’s what you should! We’ll do it, my boy. Forty pounds is the blood money for hanging a poor fellow, and it’s very well known a chap never will get taken by the officers so long as he can make it guineas to let him go, except we comes across that d—d Sir Francis Hartleton, and he wouldn’t let a chap go for nothink or the whole world, he wouldn’t. What business has a beak to be poking as he does, instead of sitting quiet in his arm-chair, and leaving the business to be settled ’atween such as us and the receivers? It’ an iniquity, and no good can come of it.”

“Very true,” said Bill. “You hide the money somewheres, while I go and get the cart, for we must start this chap somewhere afore daylight.”

“Bill,” said the other, “you wouldn’t like to cut his throat?”

“Not exactly.”

“Well, well. I only mention it. I’m afraid he’s a sneak, but let him do his worst. Get the chaise-cart, and bring it round to the corner by Jem Medbourn’s.”

Bill nodded, and went to execute his errand, and during his absence, the other carefully concealed the money beneath the floor of the room, excepting about two hundred pounds, which he reserved for himself and companion. Then lighting his pipe, he again sat down very composedly by the fire-side.

“Well, well,” he said suddenly, as if he had arrived at some mental conclusion that he could not help, and yet did not like. “Bill may have it his own way, but I would never have let that chap,” nodding at Gray, “have a chance o’ being venomous. He’s cut out for a sneaking lump o’ evidence against others he is, and I shouldn’t a bit wonder if he gets into trouble himself, but he speaks agin us about the money just out o’ a nasty bit o’ revenge.”

He then resumed his smoking as if he had been reasoning upon some very common place affair indeed, and in about ten minutes more Bill made his appearance, saying,—

“It’s all right—they have guved up the search for to-night, and we shall get on famously.”

“Where do you mean to take him?” said he, who had suggested the notion of cutting Gray’s throat.

“I should say somewhere a little way out of town, and shoot him out o’ the cart into some blessed verdant spot,” replied Bill. “He’s rather a queer one, himself, so he’ll find as he’s all right, when he wakes up and finds as he’s amusing the butterflies and daisies.”

“I’m blessed if you ain’t a out and out good un,” replied the other.

“Supposes then,” suggested Bill, “we takes him up to Hampstead. It’s an odd little out o’ the way place enough.”

“Very good,” said the other. “You are quite sure there’s nobody about?”

“Quite.”

“Come along, then.”

As he spoke the man stooped, and lifted Jacob Gray from the ground with as much ease as if he had been an infant, and followed his comrade down stairs with his burthen, which seemed in no way to distress him.

The court they passed out into was one of those kind which now are exceedingly rare in London, but which the wisdom of our ancestors took good care to make very common and infest the town with. At the period of our tale there was an immense wen, as it might be termed, of various pestiferous courts at the back of the Strand, where thieves and vagabonds of all kinds lived in a sort of community of their own, quite undisturbed by the authorities, who then could boast of very little authority indeed. Another mass of such courts was to be found where Regent-street now stands, and the vicinity; another at the bottom of St. Martin’s-lane, and another close to old Fleet-market, so that the city of London was as well provided with haunts of blackguardism and vice as the mouth of the Thames is with mud banks.

Along the narrow court in which was Bill’s mansion, the confederates pursued their way until they came to what any stranger would have supposed a mere doorway, but which was in reality an entrance to another court; into this they dived, and after proceeding for a small distance ascended a flight of wooden steps, at the bottom of which stood a dirty, mean chaise-cart.

Into this vehicle, without the least ceremony or consideration for what bruises he might receive, Jacob Gray was flung. There was nothing at the bottom of the cart but some littered straw, upon which he laid more like a dead body than anything living and breathing.

The two men then climbed into the frail and crazy vehicle, and Bill taking the reins gave a shrill whistle, which the horse seemed perfectly to understand as a signal to go on, for he started immediately at a smart trot.

There were no policemen then promenading the streets, who might have looked with an eye of suspicion upon the proceedings of Bill and his comrade, and the lazy watchmen having just signally exerted themselves by squalling out the hour, with the supplementary information that it was a cold night, betook themselves again to their watchboxes, leaving the community over whose lives and property they were supposed, by a fiction which lasted many years, to watch, to the care of Providence and the mercy of thieves and housebreakers.

The chaise-cart rattled and bounded along through divers very intricate lanes and bye-streets, until at length it emerged into the Strand, near Arundel-street. Then dashing across the wide thoroughfare, it entered a congeries of dirty streets on the other side, and finally emerged in a curious and complicated place close to the British Museum. There were bye-roads across the Pancras-fields, and Bill having dismounted and taken down a bar which impeded his progress, drove across a meadow which now forms part of the ground occupied by that compound of pride, bloated arrogance, and humbug, the London University. Another quarter of an hour passed, and they were rattling up the Hampstead-road, which then had tall tress on either side of it.

Camden Town was then a small village, with not above forty little whitewashed houses in it, with here and there sprinkled a few edifices of somewhat more pretensions, which had been built by well-to-do citizens, who repaired there on a Sunday to see the phenomena of a cabbage growing, and admire the sweet pea blossom as it thrust its pretty leaves in at the windows.

The most famous house of entertainment then in Camden Town, was called the Queen’s Head, and has long been levelled with the dust; it was then even an old-fashioned house, and spoken of as a curiosity. It could boast of but one story, and its projecting sign hung so low that any one riding by quickly, and not aware of it, ran the risk of breaking his own head against the queen’s, with no very agreeable momentum.

The entrance was adorned with oaken carved pillars, to the designs on which a great deal had been added from time to time by bread and cheese knives, rapiers’ penknives, and all sorts of cutting instruments, the door posts of an inn being considered as much public property, and open to defacement, as are wooden seats in Kensington gardens.

To enter the house, you had to descend two steps, which generally at night caused a strange visitor to fall on his nose in the passage, when the hostess would come out, hearing the clatter, and probably a few oaths, and trim a lamp; so that after the mischief was done, you had the pleasure of seeing the steps quite clearly and beautifully.

At this house Bill drew up, and without getting out, called lustily,—“Mother Meadows! Mother Meadows!”

“Well, what now?” said a shrill female voice from the interior.

“A shilling’s worth of brandy,” said Bill, and the coin he threw rattled down the steps.

The liquor was brought to the chaise-cart by a boy, with a head of hair resembling strongly one of the now popular patent chimney sweeping apparatus.

Bill took his half to a nicety, and handed the remainder to his companion, who then bumped the little pewter measure upon the boy’s head till his eyes flashed fire.

Bill whistled to the horse, and with loud laughter, the two ruffians galloped up the Hampstead-road, which was then as innocent of “Cottages of Gentility” as is the Lake of Windermere.

Up the hill they went with but slightly lessened speed, nor stopped till they were quite clear of all the little suburban houses that here and there dotted the road, and within about half a mile of the village of Hampstead itself. They then turned down Haverstock Hill, which was quite free from buildings, and by a route which avoided the village, they came upon the verge of the heath.

“I think this will do,” remarked Bill.

“I think so too,” said the other. “How precious dark it is, to be sure.”

“You may say that. I’m blowed if I can see the horse’s head. Woa! Woa!”

They both now alighted, and led the horse towards a thick hedge, skirting a plantation, near the large house lately occupied by Lady Byron. Then Bill let down the tail-board of the cart, and laying hold of Jacob Gray by the heels, he dragged him out, and letting his head come with a hard bump against the ground, which was by no means likely to improve his faculties.

They then pushed him along with their feet, till he lay completely under the hedge, and could not come to any harm from a chance vehicle or horseman.

“Well,” remarked Bill, “I think we have done that job handsomely.”

“Uncommon,” replied his companion; “I’d give something to see his stare when he wakes up to-morrow.”

“He will look about him a bit, and then, when he finds his money gone, won’t he put up prayers for us in that blessed little old church, as is now striking two.”

Hampstead church was striking two as he spoke, and the echo of the sounds came sweetly and solemnly upon the night air.

Bill whistled to the horse, and, at a rapid pace, the thieves took the road homewards again.

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Chapter LX

Ada at Sir Francis Hartleton’s.—The Philosophy of a Young Heart.—A Confession.—The Pleasure of Sympathy.

What pen shall describe the happiness that gleamed now in the heart of Ada as she sat with Sir Francis Hartleton’s young wife on the morning after her introduction to her, in a neat and prettily-arranged room, overlooking the park.

The air was fresh and balmy—the birds were flitting past the windows, and filled the atmosphere with music. Crowds of gaily-dressed persons were idly sauntering among the trees; enlivening strains of martial music came wafted to her ears as the guard was changed at the Palace. The perfume of flowers, the kind words of Lady Hartleton, and kinder looks—the harmony of the household—the gay laughter from children who were chasing each other in a neighbouring garden, and last, though greatest of all, the consciousness of freedom from Jacob Gray, so filled the heart of Ada with delight, that she suddenly threw herself into the arms of Lady Hartleton, and with a flood of tears, said,—

“Oh, I am too happy! How can I by a life’s long duration ever repay you a little of the joys you have filled my heart with?”

“My dear Ada,” replied Lady Hartleton, “you must not talk so. What you are now enjoying, and for which you are so thankful, is no more, and probably much less than what you ought always to have enjoyed. ’Tis the contrast of this and what you have suffered which makes you overlook all the disadvantages and fancy that to mix with the world, and enjoy its routine of existence, must he unalloyed happiness.”

“Can any of those be unhappy?” said Ada, pointing to the gay throngs in the park.

“Alas! my dear,” said Lady Hartleton, “how very few of them are happy.”

“Indeed, madam?”

“Aye, indeed, Ada. Our joys and our sorrows are all comparative. You, in your pure innocence, my dear Ada, have yet to learn how many an aching heart is hidden by wreathed smiles.”

“’Tis very strange,” said Ada, musingly. “’Tis very strange that we should be unhappy, and the world so beautiful. To live—to have freedom and liberty—to go wherever the wayward fancy leads me, seem to me a great enjoyment. The birds—the sunshine—the flowers—ay, each blade of grass trembling and glistening with its weight of morning dew, is to me a source of delightful contemplation—I am sure all might be happy, the green fields and the sunny sky are so very beautiful.”

“There are evils, Ada.”

“Yes—sickness, pain, the loss of those we love, are all evils,” said Ada. “But then we have a thousand consolations even from them, in the ever fresh and never dying beauties of nature around us.”

“Ada, with your feelings, death, pain, and sickness of ourselves, of those we loves may well appear the greatest evils of existence. Yet strange as it may seem to you, such is the perversity of human nature, that these are the very things that affect it least.”

“You surprise me.”

“And well I may. The cares, the anxieties, the awful horrors of existence to the many, arise from their artificial desires, and the mad riot of their own bad passions. Avarice affects some—ambition, and the love of power, others; and many who could, without a pang, see rent the natural ties of love and kindred, will lay violent hands upon their own lives, if they fail in some mad effort of their own wild passions.”

“Oh,” cried Ada, “I think that I could be so happy without power—without wealth—my own ambition is to be surrounded by kind and loving hearts, and happy faces—tongues that knew no guile, and breasts that harboured no suspicion. Surely then, enough of variety might be found, in watching the wonders of the changing seasons—enough of joy in marking the many charms which He who made us all, has cast around us for our pleasure.”

“You, my dear Ada, have the elements of happiness in your heart; but now that we are alone, have you sufficient confidence in me, to tell me at length all your history?”

“Confidence?” said Ada. “Oh, yes; and in whom could I have confidence, if not in you?”

“Then sit here by me, and tell me all. We will be mutually confidential, Ada, and have no secrets but in common. Now tell me, is your happinesss quite perfect? Have you no secret yearning of the heart yet ungratified, Ada?”

“My happiness,” said Ada, “is perfect with hope—a hope that must surely ripen into a dear reality.”

“Then you have a hope—a wish that lives upon hope—an expectation yet ungratified, Ada?”

“Madam,” said Ada, gazing without the least timidity into the eyes of Lady Hartleton, “when I was quite friendless and oppressed, there was one who loved me—when no other human heart spoke a word of consolation to me, there was one that beat for me, and bade its owner whisper to me words of dearer hope and joy, than ever before had lingered in my ears. Wonder not then, that even now, when I have so much to be thankful and grateful for, my heart yearns for him to share its new born joy.”

“And his name?” said Lady Hartleton.

“Is Albert Seyton,” said Ada, with a sigh.

“Is he handsome, Ada?”

“I love him,” replied Ada, emphatically.

“Maidens seldom avow their preferences so very boldly,” said Lady Hartleton, with a smile.

“They who have felt as I have felt,” said Ada, “the pangs of solitude and the horrors of a persecution, surely never paralleled, would learn to set a high value on the heart that loved them in their misery, and to cherish as something holy, the words of comfort, hope, and kindness, that were breathed to them in their despair. You wonder that I can avow without a blush my heart’s fond love for Albert Seyton. Oh, lady, it has been the only light that shone upon me through years of gloom. Can you wonder, then, that I thought it beautiful—I am as one who had been confined for many, many years, in a dungeon. I read the legend in a book that Albert lent to me. For many years, then, this poor fated being had not seen the light of day—had heard nothing but the harsh grating of his dungeon door—the hideous rattle of his chains, until at last one day there came struggling like a sunbeam upon his soul, a strain of music. ’Twas a common air, and played unskilfully, but to him it was indeed divine.”

“The prisoner lived to bid adieu to his dungeon, and he came abroad into the great world. He heard music in its excellence—music that seemed borrowed from Heaven, and he praised; admired; applauded it. But one day, some wandering minstrel, with a careless hand, struck up from a rude viol the strain that in his dungeon had so sweetly greeted him. Oh, how his heart bounded, like a bird, within his breast—how a joy unequalled danced through his brain. He wept, he sobbed aloud in his happiness. What music greeted his rapt senses like that! He hung upon the minstrel’s neck, and his prayer was—‘Oh, stay ever near me, and when I am sad or weary, play to me that strain that I may thank God for my happiness.’”

Ada ceased speaking, and Lady Hartleton caught her to her heart, as she said,—

“My dear Ada, I did but speak for the pleasure of hearing you reply to me. I am too richly repaid.”

“As that lonely prisoner loved the strain of melody that greeted his dreary solitude,” sobbed Ada, “so let me love him who sought me out when I had none else to love me, and told me how to hope.”

“Your pure and noble feelings, Ada,” said Lady Hartleton, much affected, “do you infinite honour. I am proud of you, my dear Ada, and hope to have the second place in your heart.”

“You have the first,” said Ada. “I cannot make distinctions between those I love. I open my heart freely to you. There is room, dear lady, for you and Albert both, and for Sir Francis too.”

There was a beautiful and earnest simplicity in Ada’s manner that perfectly charmed Lady Hartleton, and she encouraged her to open her heart thoroughly to her; and she was perfectly astonished at the rich store of poetry, beauty, and virtue which lay garnered up in the breast of the persecuted and beautiful girl—stores of feeling, thought, and imagination which required but the sunny influence of kindness to bring forth in all their native purity and beauty.

Ada now gave Lady Hartleton an animated description of her whole course of life with Jacob Gray, commencing at her earliest recollection of being with him in various mean lodgings, and coming down through all the exciting and dangerous scenes she had passed to her denunciation of him at Charing Cross.

Lady Hartleton listened to her narration with the greatest interest, and when Ada had concluded, she said,—

“And you have still no clue, Ada, to your birth?”

“None—none. The mysterious paper addressed to your husband by Jacob Gray most probably contained some information, but I fear that is lost for ever.”

“A more strange aad eventful history I never heard,” remarked Lady Hartleton. “I have very sanguine hopes that the activity and exhaustless energy of Sir Francis will soon clear up some of the mysteries that surround you.”

“Heaven grant it may be so,” said Ada.

“There is one circumstance that must not be lost sight of, as it may afford some clue or corroborative evidence of your birth—that is, the necklace you sold to the Jew.”

“It might, indeed,” said Ada, “I was foolish to part with it.”

“Should you know the shop again?”

“Certainly I should, and the man likewise. My intercourse with the world has been so very slight that I am not confused with a multitude of images and occurrences. Everything that has happened to me, and every one who has ever spoken to me, stand clear and distinct in my memory.”

“Then the necklace may be recovered.”

“Indeed!”

“Without doubt; Sir Francis will get it back for you.”

Lady Hartleton rang the bell, and when a servant appeared, she said,—

“Is Sir Francis within?”

“Yes, my lady,” was the reply. “He has just returned from the Secretary of State’s office.”

“Ask him to come here.”

The servant bowed and retired, and in a very few minutes, Sir Francis Hartleton entered the room with a smile.

Ada arose and welcomed him with evident pleasure, and he said,—

“Well, Ada, are you happy here?”

“Too happy, sir,” she said, with emotion. “It requires all my reason to convince me it is real.”

Lady Hartleton then related to her husband the story of the necklace, to which he listened with grave attention.

At its conclusion, he said,—

“I need not trouble Ada to point out the shop. The description is sufficient. The Jew who keeps it is well known to the police, I have no doubt of getting back the necklace if it be still in this country. It may be an important link in the chain of evidence concerning Ada’s birth.”

“Have you any thought of who I am?” asked Ada, with eagerness.

“I have,” said Sir Francis, “but believe and trust me when I tell you it is for your own peace of mind and happiness that I would rather tell you nothing until I can tell you something which has a firmer basis than conjecture.”

“You are right,” said Ada; “I should but be giving my imagination play, and torturing my mind with perhaps futile fears, and too sanguine hopes.”

“Hope all and fear nothing,” said Sir Francis. “The mere adventitious circumstances of your birth need not affect your happiness, Ada. If you can make this a comfortable home, we shall be much delighted.”

“I cannot speak to you as I ought,” replied Ada, “time may show my deep gratitude, but never can I hope to repay you.”

“And appreciation of kindness, Ada,” said the magistrate, “is its dearest reward. I will now leave you for a little time to call upon your very doubtful friend the Jew.”

“He who bought my necklace. In sooth I know little of money, but from what I have read, it should be worth a much larger sum. I heard Gray call it real pearl.”

“No doubt—no doubt—I will go myself. You will see me again very soon, and it will go hard, but I will make the hoary robber disgorge his ill-gotten prey.”

So saying, Sir Francis bade Ada and his wife a temporary adieu, and hurried to the shop of the Jew who had taken such an unworthy advantage of Ada’s want of knowledge of the value of a really costly pearl necklace.

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Chapter LXI

Albert Seyton’s Destitution.—A Lone and Wearied Spirit.—The Application to Learmont, and the Meeting with Sir Francis Hartleton.

We have been compelled for a long time to leave the gallant and noble-hearted Albert Seyton to follow out his fortunes unchronicled in order to depict the various changing scenes in the life of Ada, who, now that she is conducted to a haven of rest for a while, we can leave in calm contentment, although not yet, fair persecuted girl, are thy trials done! The sunshine of peace and joy that now surrounds you is but a prelude to a storm. We will not, however, anticipate but allow the events of our tale to flow on in their natural course like a mighty river, which, as it nears the ocean which is the goal of its destiny, sweeps onwards with it every little tributary stream and murmuring rivulet that has borrowed a brief existence from it.

After the death of his father, the scanty means of support which the elder Seyton had arising from the tardy justice of the government ceased at once, and no answer was returned by the corrupt minister to Albert’s application, not for a continuance of his father’s pension, but for honourable employment.

One by one he was compelled to part with the several remnants of convertable property which his father had left behind him. His whole time was occupied in searching for Ada, until hope sickened into despair and a deep gloom began to spread itself like a vapour before the sun over his heart, which in happier circumstances would have throbbed with every free, noble, and generous emotion.

Twice he had called upon Sir Francis Hartleton, but had not been so fortunate as to meet with him, and the second disappointment, although it was purely accidental, Albert took seriously to heart, and in the gloomy confusion of his imagination, arising from the grief that oppressed him, cemented it into an intentional slight, and never called again. The consequence of this was, that at the time of Ada’s introduction to the house of the kind and humane magistrate, she was entirely ignorant of Albert’s place of abode and condition in life.

Several times since his father’s death the young man had shifted his residence, for he could not bear that his rapidly decreasing means should become a subject of remark, even although a pitying one, and now he tenanted a small room in a narrow court, near the Savoy steps in the Strand.

Absolute destitution was now rapidly approaching, and he felt that the time was quickly coming when he would have had to bid adieu for ever to the most distant hope of ever again beholding Ada; and to save himself from starvation, enlisted as a private soldier in the army in which his father had held a commission.

On that very morning that Ada was sitting in the little room commanding so delightful a view of the park, and conversing with Lady Hartleton, poor Albert sat in his cheerless apartment with his head resting upon his hands in a deep reverie composed of gloomy and heart depressing thoughts and anticipations.

“Alas! Alas!” he cried. “My beautiful Ada, thou art lost to me for ever. Oh, why did I leave you for one moment to the mercy of that man? I am rightly punished. Having by the merest accident—by one of those happy chances of fortune that rarely occur twice, met you, Ada, when you were wandering in this great city, I madly allowed you to go from me. Oh, what blindness was that—why did not some good spirit shriek ‘beware’ in my ears? Ada—Ada, I have lost you forever!”

He remained for some moments silent, and suddenly rising he cried,—

“’Tis in vain to struggle with my fate. My lot in life is cast, and I must stand the hazard of the die. Ada, farewell forever, I must take a step now which will sever us for ever—a step which, while it takes from me my freedom of action, places me in a situation that will separate me from you, Ada. There is a regiment ordered, I am told, to the West Indies. It wants recruits—with it will I go, and bid adieu to England, hope, and Ada.”

With a saddened heart, and yet a fixed and determined aspect, he now proceeded to collect and pack into a small compass such few papers and small cherished articles as were in themselves valueless, but dear to him as the words of his father. There was one book, too, in the inside of the cover of which Ada, when quite young, had written the name of “Harry”—and underneath “Albert.” This one word of her whom he loved so well he placed next his heart, with a determination that death should alone part him and it. He then destroyed a number of letters which would have encumbered him, and which possessed no very peculiar features of interest.

For a moment he paused over one of those notes, as he was about to tear it across, and as he read it it suggested one last hope to his mind.

The reader will recollect that previous to his long and dangerous illness, Albert Seyton had applied to Learmont, whom he knew but as the reported richest commoner in the kingdom, for the situation of secretary to him, and had received not a distinct, but certainly an encouraging reply.

Before, however, Albert could follow up the application his illness had placed so long an interval between the first proceeding and that which would have been the second, that not doubting Learmont was long since suited, he had taken no further steps in the matter. It was Learmont’s note dated far back which now caught his eye, and made him in the present desperate state of his fortunes adopt the sudden notion of calling with it in his hand and explaining the cause of the long delay, which might interest the rich and powerful squire to give him a recommendation to some one else, if he could not himself employ him.

“A drowning man,” exclaimed Albert, “they say, will catch at a straw, and upon the same principle I will cling to this one slender hope.” He read the letter carefully, which ran thus:—

If Mr. Seyton will call upon Mr. Learmont at his house any morning before eleven he will oblige him, and they will converse on Mr. Seyton’s application.

This was very brief, but still amply sufficient to found a call upon, and Albert placing it in his pocket, and trimming up as well as he could his faded apparel, donned his hat, and with a quick active step proceeded towards Learmont’s house.

What an estimable thing to youth is hope, and from what a small tiny plant will it grow in the human breast to wondrous size and beauty.

The freshness of the morning, the sunshine and the feeling that there was yet another chance for him, slight as it was, chased many of the phantoms of gloom and despair from his mind.

He was not long in arriving at Learmont’s house and entering the hall, for it was the fashion then of many of the wealthy to keep their outer-doors open, and trust to the throng of servant’s they kept in their halls, to defend them from any improper intrusion. He inquired for Learmont. He was replied to by a question concerning his business, when luckily recollecting his letter, he produced it, saying,—

“I have a note from the squire, requesting my attendance upon him.”

“Oh,” said a servant, “if that is the case, young sir, I will take your name in. Pray follow me.”

Albert followed the man, and was conducted into a small, but magnificent apartment, with an exquisitely painted roof, and hung with crimson damask.

He had not waited long when the servant re-appeared to say,—“that his master had no sort of recollection of the affair, and wished to see his own letter which the stranger said he had.”

“Here is the letter,” said Albert; “but his worship will see by the date, that the time therein mentioned scarcely authorises my present visit. Be so good as to add that long illness and the death of one near and dear to me, accounts for the delay.”

The man took the note and was away for some time, when he entered and requested Albert Seyton to follow him, for that his master would see him.

He was then conducted through a magnificent suite of rooms, until the servant paused at a door which was a little way open. At this he knocked gently, and a deep-toned hollow voice from within said,—

“Come in.”

The servant motioned Albert Seyton to enter the apartment, and in the next moment he was in the presence of Learmont, who fixed his keen searching eyes upon the young man’s face for several moments before he spoke. Then he said in a low tone,—

“Young man, your application now can scarcely be considered as encouraged by me. The note you have bears date a long time back.”

“It does, sir,” replied Albert; “but I have been on a bed of sickness myself, and am now bereft of the parent who then—”

Albert’s feelings would not permit him to say more, and he paused.

“Are you an orphan?” said Learmont.

“I am.”

“And poor and friendless—and, and very nearly driven to despair? Have you found out what a hollow cheat the care of Providence is? Are you one of Fortune’s foot-balls, kicked here and there as the jade thinks proper? Have you met with ingratitude where you should have had succour? Contempt where you trusted upon honour—derision where you went for sympathy—are you, young man, one of those who have seen enough of misery to retaliate upon the world? Speak, young man, are you such as I have described?”

There was a kind of subdued, snarling tone of vehemence in the utterance of these words by Learmont, that surprised Albert Seyton as much as the words themselves were unexpected. After a moment’s pause he replied,—

“Sir, I scarce know how to answer you. I am, it is true, poor, friendless, and an orphan; I have met with ingratitude when I should have met friendship; cold indifference instead of ardent sympathy; but, sir, I thank Heaven that poor, nearly destitute as I am, my heart is light as thistle-down in its innocence of wrong, and from my inmost soul do I look up to and acknowledge that Providence that watches over all. You have jested with me, sir.”

“In truth have I,” said Learmont; “it is my custom with a stranger, heed it not. When I want a moral, religious, and light-hearted secretary, you may be assured that I will send for you, young man.”

A pang of disappointment shot across the heart of Albert Seyton as Learmont spoke, and he replied sadly,—

“Farewell, sir, you will send for me in vain. This day, if unaccepted by you, I enter the ranks as a soldier.”

“Indeed, are you so hardly pressed?”

“Heaven knows I am indeed. For myself, sir, I care not, but in my fate is involved that of another.”

“What other?” said Learmont.

“Alas, sir, the tale is long, and its telling useless.”

“Young man,” said Learmont earnestly, “there is a matter in which I could give you good employment, but it is one requiring secresy, prudence, and deep caution.”

“If it be honourable, sir,” said Seyton, “I will freely undertake it were it beset with dangers.”

“’Tis a reach above honourable,” said Learmont. “The object is absolutely pious.”

This was said in so strange a tone that Albert was puzzled to make up his mind if it were sincere or honourable, and he remained silent, expecting Learmont to go on with what he was saying.

“It is a trifling service,” said Learmont, “and yet by trifles I ever estimate good service. I fear me, much, young man, that in this great city there is great wickedness.”

“No doubt,” said Albert, “and I should not object to any service that had for its end a righteous object.”

“Sagely and wisely spoken, young sir,” said Learmont; “I give away large sums to those who are in want, and some days since there came to me a man who told a piteous tale, in which there were, however, some glaring discrepancies. I relieved his wants, real or pretended, and sent a servant to follow him home for two objects; first, to ascertain if he had given his true place of abode to me, and, secondly, to enable me to make inquiry into his real condition, in order that I might expose him as an impostor, or grant him further relief. You understand me?”

“I do, sir.”

“Good. The man I sent was foiled. He did not succeed in tracing him to his home. With much doublings and windings he eluded all pursuit. This man then I wish you to track to his abode;—Have you tact for such an enterprise?”

“Methinks ’tis very easy,” said Albert.

“And you will do it?”

“I will, sir; I hate impostures, I hate that which puts the garb of virtue or religion for base purposes.”

“Ah, you have a right feeling of these things, young man,” said Learmont.

“Execute this matter to my satisfaction, and I will entertain you as my secretary.”

“When, sir, may I have an opportunity to prove my zeal?”

“I think to-morrow. A week seldom passes but he comes here craving for alms. You shall see him and follow him. Track him like a blood-hound; it will be esteemed good service by me. ’Tis a mere trifle, but succeed in it, and I will make much of you.”

“I shall do my utmost, sir. There may be difficulties that I wont not of; but I will strive to overcome this, and do you satisfactory service.”

“Here’s money for you,” said Learmont, handing him a purse. “Amuse yourself to-day: I shall not require your services until to-morrow, but attend me then at an early hour—say nine.”

“I will be punctual, sir.”

“And secret?”

“If you wish it.”

“I do wish it. Hark ye, young sir, it is a rule in this house, that, if the slightest occurrence be made a subject of discourse out of it; if the lightest stray word be repeated elsewhere, he who so reports never enters its portals again.”

“I will obey you, sir; I have no taste for babbling, and, indeed, in all this city I have not one that I can call an acquaintance.”

“’Tis better so—’tis better so,” said Learmont; “you will do me good service. Farewell, young sir, until to-morrow.”

“Then I may consider myself as so far honoured by you, sir, as to call myself your secretary?” said Albert Seyton, scarcely believing his good fortune.

“You may—you may,” said Learmont. “We will talk more at large to-morrow.”

He touched a bell as he spoke, and, when a servant appeared, he said,—“This gentleman has access to me. Good morning, young sir.”

Albert bowed himself out, and scarcely recovered from his bewilderment till he found himself out of the house.

Then, as he began to consider all that had passed in his interview with Learmont, Albert began more and more to dislike his service, and to suspect that his employer was not by any means the high-minded and charitable gentleman he would fain assume to be. The manner of Learmont was so much at variance with his words that Albert irresistibly came to the conclusion that there was something more than had been explained to him connected with the service he was asked to perform of watching to his home an unfortunate beggar.

“Still,” he thought, “I may be mistaken, and blaming this man for faults of nature. He may be benevolent and just, as he reports himself to be, but still afflicted with as roguish and villanous a face as ever fell to the lot of mortal man. It will not do always to trust to appearances, and I should be foolish indeed to forsake an honourable employment for perhaps a mere chimera of the imagination. I can leave him when I please; and at least, while I remain, dear Ada, I will please myself with a belief that I am near thee.”

When Learmont was once more alone, and the echo of the retiring footsteps of Albert Seyton had died away, he muttered indistinctly to himself for some moments. Then, as he grew more confident in the success of some stratagem which he had connived, he spoke with a tone of exultation.

“Yes,” he said, “fortune has favoured me with the best chance yet of discovering the hiding place of Jacob Gray. This youth must be unknown to him, and surely will succeed in dogging him to his haunt. That once discovered, and an hour shall not elapse without witnessing his dissolution, I can set this young man too upon Britton. The grand difficulty in circumventing these fellows has always consisted in the want of unsuspected persons to mingle with them. This youngster looks bold and capable; he will surely be successful in taking him, and, should his curiosity grow clamorous, he is easily disposed of. What matters it to me a few more lives!—I am already steeped in gore—steeped—steeped; but then I have my reward—wealth—honours—and—and enjoyment, of course. Ha! What noise was that?”

Some slight creaking of an article of furniture sent the blood with a frightful rush to his heart, and he remained for several moments trembling excessively, and clutching the edge of the oaken table for support. Then, with a deep sigh, he again spoke,—

“’Twas nothing—nothing. I have grown strangely nervous of late. I was not wont to be so tremblingly alive to every slight alarm. Is it age creeping upon me, or the shadow of some impending evil upon my heart? Learmont—Learmont, be thyself. Shake off these vapours of the brain. I—I have been ten times worse since I saw that face upon my door step. God of heaven! How like it was to one who sleeps the sleep of death. I—I cannot stay here. This room seems peopled with shapes. Hence—hence—I am going—I am going—going.”

He slowly crept to the door, and kept softly muttering unintelligible words with his cold, livid lips, till he had passed out, and closed the door after him.

Laughter at this moment reached his ears from the servants’ hall, and he smote his forehead with his clenched hand, as he exclaimed,—

“Why can I not laugh? Why has no smile ever lighted my face for years? Am I a thing accursed? Others have spilt blood as well as I, and they have not been thus haunted. I will go out. There seems in the house to be ever close to me some hideous, unfashioned form, whose hot breath comes on my cheek, and whose perpetual presence is a hell. Yes—I—I will go out—out!”

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