LXII. Jacob Grey in the Hampstead Fields.—The Placard.—The Reward…

LXII. Jacob Grey in the Hampstead Fields.—The Placard.—The Reward

The birds were singing merrily, and skimming over Jacob Gary’s head long before he awoke from the effects of the drugged wine that had been administered to him by the considerate friends he had met with. The morning sun was shining upon his pale, haggard face, lighting even it up with some appearance of less ghastliness, and yet there he lay motionless, as if dead. It is a favourite theory of dreams with some philosophers, that such visions of the fancy never occur but at the moment or two before awakening, or at the moment of losing consciousness by going to sleep, or in other words that we dream only when not fully slumbering.

It would appear that this was the case with Jacob Gray; for, as the birds sung above him, and the sun gleamed upon him, while a crow would occasionally flap his face as it flew over him, his perception appeared half to return, and his face became bedewed with a heavy perspiration, as some fearful images of his past life came across his mental vision.

His thoughts were evidently wandering back to the fearful night of the fire at the Old Smithy, and his busy fancy was enacting over again that dreadful drama of blood.

He tossed his arms wildly to and fro, and groaned and uttered the half-stifled screams which came from a disturbed stupor, in the agony of his mind.

“Save—save her,” he said. “The child of the dead! I cannot do the deed. Help, oh, help me, my heart is burning—charring in my breast.”

He then, in his intense mental suffering, bit his under lip till the blood trickled on to his breast, and with the actual pain he awoke, crying—

“Spare me—spare me! Oh, do not scorch my eye-balls so—my brain is on fire! Oh, God, have mercy—mercy—mercy.”

He opened his eyes, and the full glare of the sunlight fell upon them, blinding him for the moment. Then he opened them again, and glanced around him in speechless wonder as to where he was.

His first impression was that he was dead, and in some other world. Then he clasped his hands over his face and then tried to think. But a confusion and want of images in his brain quite rendered such an effort vain, and at length he became only alive to so horrible a sensation of thirst that he shrieked aloud,—

“Water—water—water!”

He rose to his knees, and glaring around him with his parched tongue hanging from his mouth, he saw a shining sheet of limpid water at some distance before him. Then, still gasping the word “water” he attempted to rise, but so confused was his head from the effects of the opiate that had been so unstintingly administered to him, that, after tottering a step or two, he sank to the earth again. His awful thirst was however, unbearable, and with a dizzy brow and aching eyes, he crawled on his hands and knees towards the pond.

He was long in reaching it, for he deviated from the strait track largely; but when he did, oh, what an exquisite pleasure it was to lie by the brink and dash his head in, drinking up huge quantities and causing the cold stream to bubble in his mouth and ears.

Not till his breath was exhausted did Jacob Gray raise his head from the pond, and then, when he did so, recollection returned to him up to the point when he had sat down to supper with his two suspicious friends in the court. With a cry that had something unearthly in it, he hurriedly thrust his hands into all his pockets, then with a wild shriek, he grovelled on the ground, dashing his head upon it, and clutching the grass with his hands as he cried,—

“Gone—gone—all gone—that I have toiled for—beggared, ruined, gone.”

Then he lay on his back, panting, as he looked into the clear, quiet pool before him, refecting, as it did, the face of Heaven in its glassy surface, the thought came over him of plunging in, and at once ending a life of never-ending misery.

“Is it easy to drown?” he asked himself; “or are there unknown hours of maddening torture, after we think, by the cessation of all movement, life is gone?”

He crawled towards the bank of the stream, and leaning over it, he gazed long and earnestly into its clear blue depths, it seemed miles down in the immensity of space, for now the ripples he had created had all subsided, and there was scarcely the slightest trembling of the reflected visage of the sky in the glassy stream.

Then with a shudder he withdrew, slowly.

“I dare not—I dare not,” he moaned. “It is for those of more unstained souls than mine to take the awful leap from here to eternity, and hope to be forgiven—not for me—not for me—I dare not. Yet where is now my philosophy? There is no eternity—no, no—we are all here but to play our parts in a great drama. What have I to fear? Nothing—nothing. I—I—believe in nothing.”

Oh how the abject terror depicted in his countenance belied his words. He was striving to cheat himself by the lying effusions of his own tongue, while his heart was a haven of despair.

Suddenly his attention was arrested by a man singing, as he ascended to the high ground, upon which Jacob Gray was lying. The strain was a merry one, and jarred strangely upon the half-maddened ears of Gray, who had just sufficient prudence left him to feel the necessity, in his present position, of not giving any clue to suspicion, for he felt that, in his weak and abject condition, a child might have arrested him.

He accordingly rested his head upon his arm, in as unconcerned an attitude as he could assume, and awaited the coming of the man who was now within a few paces of him. He was coarsely and roughly attired, and evidently belonged to a very low grade of society. He did not notice Jacob Gray till he apparently came full upon him, then he cried,—

“Hilloa, friend, you rise betimes. I call it over work getting up so early.”

“Yes,” said Gray, “I—I am up soon. I like the cool air of the morning.”

The man looked very earnestly at him, and Gray’s heart sunk within him at the thought that he was about to be recognised and taken. He made one effort to save himself by quietly adding,—

“It’s nothing to me to be in the fields early or late. I am well armed.”

The man stepped back a pace at this intimation, and Gray saw that whether or not the man had any criminal designs against his liberty, he had succeeded in awakening his fears.

“No offence, sir,” he said—“no offence, I hope—I’m a poor fellow, come upon business from Westminister.”

“Oh! From Westminister,” said Gray. Then he paused, and fixed an eager searching glance upon the man, who added,—

“Have you heard of the murder last night, sir, of Mr. Vaughan?”

“No,” said Gray, “I have not been in London for some time, although I have very nearly wandered out of my track.”

A clock at this moment chimed some quarters, and the man said,—

“The clock of the old church at Hampstead sounds clearly across the fields.”

“At Hampstead,” muttered Gray, gazing earnestly around him, for he was as ignorant as possible of the locality in which he rightly surmised he had been left by those who had eased him of all his wealth.

“Yes, there’s the church peeping among the tree, sir,” added the man.

“I know it well,” said Gray, “my family all lie buried in its humble graveyard.”

“Oh, indeed, sir,” said the man, and then he went with a slow step towards a tree, and taking a little tin can and a brush from his pocket, he began lathering it with paste.

Gray watched his proceedings with intense curiosity, for he could not surmise what he could possibly be about to do. All wonder and conjecture were, however, speedily set at rest, for the man took a large printed bill from his hat, and the first word that struck Jacob Gray was the awful and ominous one of “Murder” in large letters on the top.

The man pasted the bill on to the trunk of the tree carefully and evenly, and then he paused for a moment, and in a low, mumbling voice, read it.

Jacob Gray was in such a position that he could not see the smaller print of the bill with sufficient distinctness to read it. The one word at the top—murder, only came out strongly and clearly to his eyes. That the placard concerned him, he never for a moment doubted, and now his agony became intense, at the thought that the man was most probably then engaged in mentally concerning his Gray’s, personal appearance, with a description of him in the bill.

His anxiety while the man was reading became so intense, that he could neither speak nor move, and it was not until the man turned to him, and said,—

“A horrid murder, sir, it seems,” that he found breath to answer him, in a confused manner.

“Yes—yes,” he said, “a very horrid murder. Have you caught the murderer?”

“No, sir—but there’s a hundred pounds reward offered for him, and bills are being stuck all over London, and within ten miles, with a description of him.”

“Indeed,” said Gray, a violent trembling coming over him. “I am glad I am so well armed, that I hold several men’s lives in my power; so, you see, should I meet him, I am safe from him.”

The man again went back a few paces upon hearing this declaration, and said with an appearance of fright,—

“Certainly, sir—oh—of course, good morning, sir.”

“Good morning,” said Gray.

In a moment the man turned, and walk downed the hill at a pace which Jacob Gray could see he was momentarily increasing, as he placed a greater distance between them.

“He suspects me! He suspects me!” gasped Gray. “He has only gone to get assistance to capture me. Whither can I now fly? I can purchase no more safety, for I am penniless. Die I dare not—must I be taken—oh, horror—horror! The scaffold dances before my eyes, and I seem even now to hear the shouts of the multitude as I am dragged out to die.”

He shook for several moments fearfully, then with blanched lips and tottering limbs, he rose and approached the tree on which was posted the placard. For a minute or more, the letter seemed to dance before his bewildered gaze, and he could read nothing but the one word “Murder,” which appeared as it were to stand out from the paper with a supernatural distinctness.

Gradually, however, this nervous delusion vanished, and the letters arranged themselves like living things in their proper places. Jacob Gray then read the bill, which offered a reward of one hundred pounds to any one who would apprehend and lodge in any gaol the perpetrator of the murder. The placard then went on to give but an imperfect description of Gray’s person, and concluded by the name of one of the magistrates of the metropolis.

There were two things that surprised Gray in this placard. One was, that his name was not mentioned, and the other was, that no reference was made to any other real or supposed crime than the murder of the man Vaughan, in the court leading from the Strand.

Through Ada, who had so fearlessly denounced him, he had made sure that his name would become public, and that his other crime of recent date, namely, the murder of the officer Elias, in the house at Battersea, would have become known, and form as direct and distinct a charge against him as that of Vaughan, which was the least criminal act of the two. Moreover, Sir Francis Hartleton’s name did not appear to the document, which was as great a surprise to Gray as anything, for he conjectured that to him, Ada would make her first appeal for protection.

Altogether the bill tormented and puzzled Jacob Gray, and he continued gazing at it, until again the letters danced before his fevered brain, and calm reflection became lost in a whirl of contending fears.

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Chapter LXIII

Gray’s Proceedings.—A Narrow Escape.—The Night Visit to Learmont.

The necessity for some immediate movement, in order to insure his personal safety, now came strongly across the oppressed and wavering mind of Gray, and hastily tearing down the bill from the tree, he clasped his throbbing temples with his hands, and strove to reduce his thoughts to order and consistency. That the bill-sticker had gone to get assistance to apprehend him, was the frightful notion that never for one instant left his mind, and without any definite notion of where he was going, he went round the declivity of the hill, until he arrived completely on the other side. The only means of concealment that there presented itself was a thick hedge, but then he thought how very insecure a place of refuge would that be, in the event of an active search being made for him.

The country before him was level for a considerable distance, with only here and there a small clump of trees. After some minutes more of painful thought an idea suggested itself to him, which was very much in accordance with his usual complicated habits of thought. That was, to leave some portions of his apparel on the bank of the pond, to induce a belief that he had drowned himself in its waters, and then to scramble into one of the trees, and hide till nightfall among the branches.

This was the only feasible plan of escape that suggested itself to him, for with his utter ignorance of the localities of the fields, an attempt to cross them to the village would most probably be seen, and but a short race in his exhausted and sickly state would ensure his capture. “At night,” he thought, “I will venture to Learmont’s—it is my only chance. I will then offer for a thousand pounds to deliver up Ada to him, and he still supposing, probably, that nothing material has happened, may consent, when I will find a means of leaving England for ever, and mature at my leisure plans of revenge against them all. But now most of all, Ada, will I mark you well. You, who have reduced me to my present state, my bitterest malediction light upon you. I would, I could have made you great and wealthy, but now I will devise some finely woven scheme to revenge myself on those I hate, without missing you.”

He then laid several articles of his clothing by the bank of the pond to which he had walked, while the reflections we have worded were passing through his brain. Then hastily repairing to one of the clumps of trees we have mentioned, he with much difficulty and pain, for he was sadly bruised, contrived to ascend it, and although the pangs of hunger began, even now to harass him, he resolved that the shadows of evening should shroud all things before he ventured from his retreat.

From his elevated position he now commanded a good view of the surrounding country, and far down the hill he had first ascended, he saw the forms of three persons rapidly approaching.

At that distance he could not see their forms distinctly, but as they neared the brow of the hill, he felt no doubt that one of them was the man who had stuck the placard to the tree. Now he saw them pause and point forwards, then with an accelerated pace they all three advanced towards the tree near which the bill sticker had left them. They now paused, and appeared to be consulting upon their next step, when one apparently saw the articles of clothing which Gray had left by the bank of the pond, and they all came to the spot using gestures to each other of astonishment.

They remained for several minutes in close consultation now, and then as if in accordance with an arrangement they had just made, one of them remained by the pond while the others commenced carefully peering into the hedges and bushes.

After satisfying themselves that he they sought was not immediately at hand, they both ran up Traitor’s-hill, and from its summit took a long searching glance at all the surrounding fields. One of these men, Gray could see now to his intense fright, had a gun in his hand, and that fright was increased to absolute abject terror when he saw him level it at one of the trees in the vicinity, and fire among the branches, awakening many echoes and starting from their covert many birds who flew twittering and screaming from among the branches.

Then to his agony he saw the gun again loaded, and the man pointed it at another tree and fired. The sharp report went through Jacob Gray’s excited brain like electricity, and it was only by twining his feet round an arm of the tree in which he was, and clutching another with his hands, that he saved himself from falling in his agitation to the ground.

The two men now conversed for some minutes in an undertone. Then one raising his voice, said in a tone that came clearly to Jacob Gray’s anxiously straining ears,—

“Oh, don’t give it up yet—it’s worth a try.”

“So it is, but it’s a bore to fire away so much powder for nothing,” said the other.

“Oh, nonsense, blaze away,” said the first, “I call it good sport.”

“Well, here goes then,” remarked the man with the gun, as he deliberately rammed down another charge.

Jacob Gray now trembled so excessively that had the men been near at hand the shaking of the branches of the tree must have at once betrayed him; but fortunately for him they were too much occupied with the trees they were firing into to heed any other at a distance, however short.

As they came sauntering on, Jacob Gray with a deep groan that he could not repress, saw that a very few minutes more would bring the tree in which he was, under the aim of the man with the gun.

Bang went the piece again, and another flight of screaming birds flew from the tree fired at, and along with a number of crows took refuge in the one occupied by Gray. The men were now within a few paces of the tree, and he could hear in his elevated position with painful distinctness every word they said.

By a great effort, he in a great measure stilled the trembling which would have betrayed him, and lay along a thick branch nearly breathless from terror.

“You may depend he’s off,” said the man with the gun. “He wouldn’t wait for you.”

“Unless he’s drowned himself,” remarked the other, who was the bill-sticker.

“No fear of that,” remarked the other with a laugh, “these kind of fellows never cheat the hangman that way. He has had time to run across the field to Highgate or Hampstead, or even to skulk into town you may depend.”

“Well, I’d take my oath it was him as was mentioned in the bill,” said the man who had brought all this danger upon Gray. “I was thankful I got off scot-free from him, I can tell you. He would soon have blown my brains out if I had said half a word.”

“Oh, bother you,” cried the other, “you were too fainthearted, you mean to lay hold of him.”

“It’s all very well for you to talk with a gun in your hand, but what odds was I with a paste-pot against a right down regular murderer, I should like to know?”

“Upon my faith,” said he with the gun, “I should have enjoyed seeing you sneak off—I really should.”

As he spoke, he commenced reloading his gun with deliberation. Oh, what a horrible process that was to Jacob Gray. Each moment gave him a pang of fear that nearly stopped the beating of his heart. How he watched the action of the ramrod as the powder was pressed down. Then the rattle of a number of small shot as they went down the barrel, came upon his ears with dreadful distinctness. Again there was a piece of paper pressed into the muzzle of the piece, and as the ramrod forced it home with a dull sound upon the charge, Jacob Gray perspired in every pore, and with difficulty kept himself from shrieking, mercy! Mercy!

“That’s an old tree,” remarked the man, as he primed the gun, and stepping back a pace or two levelled it among the branches. “I recollect it when I was a boy.”

“Fire away,” said the other, who seemed quite to enjoy the sport.

“Now—now,” thought Jacob, “now to fall a bleeding wounded man to the ground—now for pain, horror, capture, death.”

He closed his eyes, and clung to the branch on which he lay with pure desperation. All thought of a consistent character became lost in abject terror. It seemed to him an age ere the man fired into the tree. Then suddenly a loud report reached his ears. Small branches of the tree fell about him, and he uttered a deep groan, as he felt a shock upon his face, and along one arm, which assured him he had been hit by some of the shots. The pain of a gun-shot wound is not immediate; the first effect is rather as if sensation had been suddenly stunned, but when the shock subsides, and the blood again resumes its wonted channels, the agony of the wound commences. Such was the case with Jacob Gray, and although but very few of the shots had struck him in the face, the neck, and on one arm, he could have screamed with pain in the course of a few moments, and it required all the counteracting influence of the master feeling of his mind—fear—to prevent him from discovering himself. Clinging still to the branch desperately he endured the pain in silence for he durst not even moan. His first groan had been drowned in the report of the gun, but now that the echoes had died away, and all was still, the least sound of pain from his lips might be his utter destruction.

The men were silent for some moments after the discharge of the gun—then he who had fired it remarked in a disaffected tone,—

“He ain’t there. It’s no use. He must have given us the slip.”

“No, he could not stand that, I’m sure I couldn’t,” said the bill-sticker, “I never saw so many birds fly out of a tree in my life.”

“That’s because we have hunted them from all the others, and they took refuge in this one blockhead,” cried the man with the gun, whose temper did not seem at all improved by the non-success of his expedition.

“Well, you needn’t get in a passion,” suggested the other.

“Who’s in a passion? How do you know I’m in a passion? I don’t believe you saw the man at all, and there’s an end of it.”

“Upon my conscience—”

“Bother your conscience—you’ve got none.”

“Why, now you saw his things lying by the side of the pond yourself. What—suppose now he’s drowned himself really. How you’d look then. Why don’t you have the pond dragged—you know nobody will drag it for me.”

“Why don’t you get in and feel about for him?” suggested the man with the gun.

“What?”

“Get into the pond and see if he’s there, I say.”

“And put my foot on him perhaps. I’d sooner go to Jericho. I should never recover it. Suppose I was to go in, and put my foot on his very face. Oh, oh!”

“You are a coward, that’s what you are, and you may hunt the fellow yourself for all I care.”

“Don’t go away,” cried the bill-sticker. “Why—why—”

“I shan’t stay here to be fooled any longer,” said the other.

“Will you lend me the gun, then?”

“Lend you my gun?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll see you particularly well—never mind.”

So saying, he of the gun marched off in very great dudgeon, leaving the bill-sticker gazing after him.

“Well,” he muttered, “there’s an air and a grace, I never knew he was so hasty before. I—I think I’ll have a hunt for the fellow myself, and—yet he might master me, and I think I won’t. It’s all very well to take a prisoner, but when the prisoner takes you, it ain’t near so pleasant.”

Having come to this sage conclusion, the bill-sticker rapidly walked away, glancing every now and then around him in terror, lest Gray should make a sudden dart at him from behind some tree or hedge.

“Here! Here,” moaned Jacob Gray, as he smeared the blood from his face with his hand, “here I must remain in hunger and pain till night, and then my only hope now is to crawl to Learmont’s!”

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Chapter LXIV

The Chequers.—Britton’s Corner.—An Alarm.—The Mysterious Stranger.—A Quarrel.—A Fight and a Little Anatomy.

While all these important circumstances are taking place, intoxication was doing its fell work upon even the iron frame of Andrew Britton, and each day saw him more coarse, bloated, and wayward in his various fancies. He was but as an infant in the interval between his fits of drunkenness, and it was never until he had taken enough ardent spirits to kill any ordinary person that he felt his energies increase and his blood course through his veins with its accustomed activity. The fearful excitement of drink was deluding him with its present support, at the same time it was sapping the very springs of his life, and weakening the foundations of his strength.

He had already expended a small fortune at the Chequers, and yet his gold, to the surprise of the landlord and the frequenters of the house, appeared to be inexhaustible. Endless were the conjectures of who and what he was; and one person had actually called upon Sir Francis Hartleton to mention his strong suspicions that all was not right as regarded Britton; but we know that the magistrate had ample and judicious reasons for not alarming Learmont by a useless interference with Andrew Britton; and although he received the communication with politeness, he replied that he saw no reason at present to take any steps as regarded the drunken smith, who held his nightly orgies at the Chequers; so that the party left his office rather discouraged than otherwise, and Britton pursued his career unchecked.

On the very night which had witnessed the denunciation of Jacob Gray by Ada at Whitehall, and the various harrowing incidents, directly and, indirectly arising therefrom, Britton had been holding high revel in the parlour of the Chequers.

He had that morning visited Learmont, and was now freely lavishing around him the gold pieces, which appeared to have no limit, but to be produced by him as freely as if he had discovered the much coveted secret of the transmutation of metals.

There was one man who lately Britton had taken much to, and that was on account principally of his wonderful capacity for drink, in which he vied with the smith himself. This man was a butcher, residing in the immediate vicinity, and in every respect he was indeed a fit companion for Britton. Brutal, coarse, strong, and big, he combined in himself all that Britton admired; and as he had no money, and Britton had plenty, which he was, moreover, willing to spend freely, they became quite great cronies and friends.

On this occasion Britton and the butcher, whose name was Bond, occupied two seats near the fire-place, and were indulging in a bowl of hot arrack punch, which steamed before them, and from which they dipped large quantities with pewter measures.

The rest of the room presented its usual mostly appearance. There were persons of all kinds and conditions below, the respectable, and a steam of hot breaths, vapour of mixed liquors, and all sorts of villanous compounds, to which was added copious volumes of tobacco smoke, which ascended to the roof.

All was boisterous, rough mirth and roaring jollity, the only distinguishing feature of which was that Britton took care his voice should be heard above all the surrounding din, and if any one presumed to laugh as loud as he, or raise his voice to as stentorian a pitch, he either commissioned the butcher, or went himself, to nob the said person on the head with the pewter measure. Britton was in one of his treating humours, and he had just ordered jugs of strong ale all round when the landlord came in and said,—

“Gentlemen all, there’s some rare news—most rare news!”

“What is it?” cried a dozen voices in chorus.

“Hilloa!” roared Britton. “Peace, I say, peace! Am I king or not? Damme, if I was a cockchafer instead of a king, you couldn’t behave worse; curse you all!”

“Ha, ha, ha! A cockchafer,” laughed a man whose back was towards Britton, but who was just within his reach, and he accordingly received from Britton such a stunning blow with the pewter measure that he had not a laugh in him for an hour.

“Now, silence all,” cried Britton, and when comparative stillness was procured, he turned with drunken gravity to the landlord, and said.—

“Now, idiot, you come into my presence, and say,—‘There’s news!’”

“Yes, your majesty.”

“If you interrupt me, I’ll brain you. No, not brain you. You can’t be brained, having none; but I’ll do something else that I’ll think of. Now, what’s the news?”

“May it please your majesty,” said the landlord, “there’s news of a fire and a murder.”

The smith half rose from his chair and his face assumed a tinge of deep red as he shouted,—

“Who dare say so much? Think you I am crippled and cannot use my fore hammer still—the—the fire was accidental.”

A murmur of astonishment passed among those present, and the landlord added,—

“I—I—was only told of it, your majesty, and thought you’d like to hear, that’s all. No offence, your majesty, only they say that there’s been a murder, and the old place where it was done burnt down to destroy the dead body.”

“Liar!” cried Britton, making a rush at the landlord. “Who—who dare say half as much? Show me the man, and I’ll take his life! Show his face, and then I shall find his throat!”

Everybody rose, and the landlord made good his retreat to the door, where he stood looking at Britton aghast, for he had never seen him in so genuine a rage before.

“What do you mean,” growled the butcher, “by coming here and vexing him? Slaughter me if you deserve such a customer. Hands off there, leave him alone, will you?”

“It’s a lie,” cried Britton; “there is nobody there to burn, none—none. That woman, that hag, Maud, has trumped up the tale. She is mad, but full of malice—quite full of malice at me, for what I don’t know. Who talks of the body? Who beards and flouts me, I should like to know? Beware, I am Britton, the smith—Beware, I say!”

The veins upon his forehead were swollen almost to bursting, and rage imparted to his voice a vehemence which soon destroyed it, for his last words were hoarse and broken, and still muttering only—“Beware!” he suffered the butcher to lead him back to his seat and fill for him a measure of the hot punch, which Britton drank as if it had been so much water. Then he drew a long breath and exclaimed,—

“The—villain—to—to—come to me with such a tale. His life—curses on him! His life should be worth more to him than to risk it.”

“Be calm!” said the butcher, in a voice that almost shook the rafters of the house. “Be calm; give care the go by, and drown all sorts of disagreeables in drink. There is nothing like it, you may depend, whether you’re a butcher or a king. Take another glass, by boy, and swear away. That’s one o’ the comforts of life too, gentlemen. Now I’m a butcher, and as humane a individual as is in all Westminster; and if anybody says I isn’t, I’ll put my slaughtering knife in his inside.”

Britton was quiet for a few moments, partly from exhaustion and partly because he was nearly choked with another measure of punch which he threw into his throat rather heedlessly, and the landlord, when the butcher had done speaking, took the opportunity of throwing in a word of personal justification, for he was quite alarmed at the riot he had created, as he supposed, with such very slender materials.

“Your majesty,” he said, “will humbly excuse me, but there is a fire at Battersea, and they do say there’s been a murder.”

“At—at—where?” cried Britton.

“At Battersea. From the back window of the room up stairs, adjoining your gracious majesty’s, you may see the sky as red as—as—anything.”

“Oh—at Battersea—to-night?”

“Yes—even now. It was one of Sir Francis Hartleton’s men who said there had been a murder.”

“Indeed!—Oh, indeed,” said Britton, breathing more freely. “I—I—What’s it to me? What have I to do with it? Here’s a toast, gentlemen, all. A toast, I say.”

People are always ready to drink toasts at another’s expense, and it is really very extraordinary what very out-of-the-way and singular sentiments many well-meaning and harmless people will solemnly pledge themselves when they come before them in the shape of toasts; and every glass and tankard was filled to do honour to the proposition of Britton, when the landlord, whose back was against the door, was nearly pushed down by the sudden entrance of a man, who, after one glance round the room, cried,—

“Now’s your time.”

At the words, there arose two men from among the guests, and nodded to him who had just arrived. What the three were about to do seemed involved in mystery, and likely to form an endless theme for conjecture, for before they could make any movement indicative of their intentions, another man appeared at the door, and nearly breathless from the haste he had made, he cried in a loud voice,—

“No!”

The two men who had risen looked at each other in amazement, and then at the stranger, who cried, “No!” in a tone of such authority. For the space of about a minute no one spoke, and a general feeling of alarm seemed to be produced by this strange proceedings, a clue to which no one could possibly imagine.

Then he who had last made his appearance said, in a lower tone,—

“You know me?”

“Yes, sir,” replied both the men in a breath.

“Enough—follow!”

He then turned on his heels and walked away. The two men as well as he who had just come in so mysteriously made a bustle to leave the room, but by this time all the indignation of King Britton was thoroughly aroused, and he roared out,—

“This is pretty; I’ll let you know who is king here. You follow him if you dare, ye hounds. What’s the meaning of all this?”

He rose from his seat and sprung to the door as he spoke, but he had no sooner got there that he found himself face to face with the man who had cried “No” so lustily, and who hearing some objections made to his orders, had come back. There was an unflinching boldness about the man, that for a moment staggered Britton, and they stood face to face for a few moments in silence.

“Well, bully,” cried the man, “what now?”

The only reply of the smith was a straightforward blow, which was, however, so skillfully parried by the stranger, that it was not only quite innoxious to him, but gave Britton a severe wrench of the elbow.

“What now?” again cried the man.

“Let me get at him,” roared the butcher.

“No,” screamed Britton. “D—e, let him have fair play. It’s my quarrel, and I’ll smash anybody that interferes.”

All now rose, and a more strange collection of excited faces could scarcely have been seen, than was presented just then at the Chequers in expectation of a serious battle between the smith and his antagonist, who, although not near so stout a man, was fully as tall, and a great deal younger looking than he.

“What do you want here?” said Britton.

“I shall not tell you,” replied the man.

“You can fight?”

“A little.”

“Where I came from,” added Britton, “we wrestle a little.”

“So do we where I came from,” replied the other, calmly.

“Do you,” cried Britton, and then confident in his own strength and skill, even half intoxicated as he was, he sprung upon the man, and seizing him fairly by the shoulder and waist, he made a tremendous effort to throw him, but he produced no more impression upon the stranger than as if he had laid hold of the corner of a house.

After a few moments’ exertion, he ceased, panting, from his endeavours, and at that moment the stranger put out his arms, and threw Britton so heavily upon his back that the room shook again.

“Foul play! Foul play!” cried the butcher, half rising.

“You lie, sir,” cried the stranger, in a tone that made the butcher fall back into his seat again with surprise.

“Follow,” cried the stranger then, addressing the men who had waited patiently until the result of the combat. He then strode from the house, being immediately followed by those who appeared to know him, and under so implicit an obedience to his commands. Britton was picked up by the butcher, and laid with a thwack as if he had been some huge joint of meat, upon one of the oaken tables.

“I hope there’s no bones broke,” said the landlord.

“Bones broke, be bothered,” replied the butcher; “I think I ought to know something about bones and meat too.”

“So you ought. Master Bond,” cried a man; “so you ought. Only I should say you knew most about bones.”

“Should you, spooney—and why?”

“Because you never send me a joint that isn’t at least the best part bones.”

There was a general laugh against the butcher at this sally, who, glaring ferociously at the speaker, exclaimed,—

“When you come to my shop again, look after your own carcass that’s all, and now for what I calls judgmatical atomy.”

“What?” cried several voices.

“Judgmatical atomy,” roared the butcher. “It means knowing whether bones is broke or not.”

“Oh, very good, Master Bond,” said the landlord. “Pray attend to his majesty, bless him. I hope he ain’t hurt—a d—d fool.”

This last sentence was uttered very low by the landlord, and Bond, the butcher, at once commenced a ludicrous examination of the various limbs of Britton.

“He ain’t hurt in the fore-leg,” he remarked. “He ain’t damaged nowhere from neck to loins. He’d cut up as nice as possible, and nobody be no wiser. Pour a glass of brandy into his mouth, and hold his nose.”

This operation was duly performed, and as recovery or strangulation were the only alternatives nature had, in the case of Andrew Britton, she embraced the former and he opened his eyes.

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Chapter LXV

An Interview with a Secretary of State.—Sir Francis Hartleton’s Difficulties.

In order to explain the cause of the singular interruption which occurred to the festive scene at the Chequers, we must glance at the proceedings of Sir Francis Hartleton for the preceding two days.

We have before hinted at the very awkward position in which Sir Francis Hartleton was placed as a magistrate, having suspicions of the very strongest mature for suspecting some foul crime on the parts of Learmont, Andrew Britton, and the man Gray, of whose existence and identification with the third in the iniquitous proceeding he had only lately had good reason to believe, and yet such suspicions not assuming a sufficiently tangible form to enable him to found a charge upon him.

At the same time, working as he was in the dark in trying to unravel a plot the intricacies of which seemed to him to increase instead of diminish as he dived into it, he never knew but what some false step of his—some effort of over-zeal might put the guilty parties not only on their guard of him particularly, but might set them to work to take more effectual steps than they had hitherto done for the suppression of every particle of tangible evidence against them, but might likewise induce deeper and blacker crimes than any they had yet attempted or committed for the preservation of secrets essential to their existence.

Thus it was that although Sir Francis Hartleton had a strong perception of the main facts of the case he had in hand as regarded the guilt of Learmont, yet he felt that he could not be too cautious in what he said or did consequent thereon, until some circumstance should arise to give a direct clue to such a chain of evidence as should enable him at once to pounce upon them all, and insure their condemnation on irrefragible proofs.

After his first interview with Albert Seyton, he had carefully made a narrative of all the circumstances connected with the affair, and as it will be recollected that by that interview, he was enabled to place together the names of Gray, Britton, and Learmont, in such a manner as to be certain that they were then, or had been, engaged in some great act of villany together, he was in a much better situation for arriving at a correct conclusion with regard to the various circumstances that came crowding upon his recollection.

That some crime, most probably a murder, had been committed so many years ago when he, a young man, having more passion and impetuosity than discretion, resided in the village of Learmont on the night of the fire at the Old Smithy, he never entertained a doubt, and the probability that had he been a private individual and not an open enemy as it were of Learmont’s, he would have made some effort of perhaps a hazardous and illegal nature to obtain satisfaction on the affair.

Sir Francis, however, was one of those who felt deeply the responsibilities of the situation in which he was placed as one of the ministers of justice, and he would have considered himself as quite unfit for so onerous an office had he acted from impulse instead of reflection in the prosecution of evil-doers. Thus, although ferretting the while, he waited until something should occur to point him a clear and consistent path in the investigation.

His own suspicions were simply these. That Learmont had, by the assistance of the savage smith and the man who had rushed from the burning house with the child, committed some great crime for the sake either of stilling for ever some evidence of preceding criminality, or for some then present gains or pecuniary advantage, and hence Andrew Britton’s constant visits to Learmont were for probable claims upon his purse.

That Jacob Gray was the man who had so rushed from the burning smithy, and that Ada was the child he had in his arms, Sir Francis, after what was related to him by Albert Seyton, felt almost assured of, and that both Gray and Britton were now preying upon Learmont, he felt convinced.

All this, however, did not amount to much, and although greatly strengthening his own previous suspicions of foul play somewhere, afforded him no information as a magistrate. He could make no specific charge against Learmont. He had nothing to say to Britton, and Gray he had never been able to catch hold of, or he would have made an attempt to possess himself of the papers addressed to him, which he thought more than probably contained ample information.

He was likewise moved strongly by the picture Albert Seyton had drawn of the persecutions endured by Ada, and setting apart all other considerations, he was most anxious to rescue her from the ills by which she was surrounded.

Thus he wanted to discover two things principally. The one was what crime had been committed at the Old Smithy; and the other was, presuming Ada to be the child seen on that memorable occasion—who was she?

To neither of these questions could he give himself a rational answer, and he was therefore forced to endeavour to comfort himself in the affair by setting a watch over Britton, another on Learmont, and making what exertions he could himself to ferret out the abode of Jacob Gray, without exciting the suspicions of Learmont.

Several times the thought of an active search in the ruins of the Old Smithy at Learmont had suggested itself to his mind, but had been rejected upon the conviction that such a proceeding would be very public, and could not be undertaken by him as a magistrate, without some valid previous excuse.

On the day, however, that he considered himself so fortunate as to have unearthed Jacob Gray, and to have him all but in his grasp, Sir Francis Hartleton resolved to bring affairs to some sort of crisis, and adopt reluctantly the only plan that presented itself to him, of securing the safety of Ada and the punishment of two out of three criminals, and that was to arrest Britton on that day, and, confronting him with Gray, induce a clear confession from one or the other of them, under a promise of relief from capital punishment.

He, acting upon this feeling, procured ample assistance, and previous to starting for Gray’s house in the marshes of Battersea, he instructed one of his experienced officers to make sure of the rapture of Britton before night.

His disappointment at Forest’s house we are aware of, and immediately upon his return, he was careful to countermand the order for Britton’s arrest. This countermand, however, was given to an officer who was seriously hurt in a common street affray before he could communicate his message to him who had the particular charge to capture the smith. Hence it arose that Sir Francis Hartleton was not aware that measures were taking to apprehend Britton, until it was almost too late to prevent it. He, nevertheless, made the attempt, and was as we have seen, just in time personally to stop the arrest, for it was he himself who cried “No!” in the parlour of the Chequers, being this time effectually disguised from the observation of Britton.

Sir Francis then immediately returned to his own house, where he had not long been, when he heard rapidly, one after the other, of the two astounding events of the fire at the lone house by Battersea, and the denunciation of a man, by a young and beautiful girl, near Charing Cross, as a murderer.

The thought immediately flashed across his mind that this man must be Jacob Gray, and his accuser the persecuted Ada. A very short time, as we are aware, convinced him that his suspicions were well-founded, and his main cause of anxiety being removed, he now resolved to lend all his energies to discover who Ada was, and bring home the crimes of Learmont and his associates to them.

The whole affair had now assumed so new and troublesome an aspect, that Sir Francis Hartleton thought it necessary to apply to the Secretary of State for sanction to the proceedings he might wish to adopt.

His wish was that the pursuit after Jacob Gray might not be active, but that he should be rather left alone for a time, under a strict surveillance, to see what he would do, and how far he might commit his associates by visits and communication with them. He likewise wished the case of Andrew Britton to be entirely left in his hands, for the violent proceedings of the savage smith had begun to excite the attention of others of the local authorities, and he, Sir Francis Hartleton, was fearful that some imprudent step might be taken by some other magistrate concerning Britton and his mysterious wealth, which might alarm Learmont before he wished him to be at all alarmed.

With these views and feelings, Sir Francis Hartleton repaired to the Secretary of State, with whom he had an immediate interview, and to whom he carefully detailed all the circumstances which were within his knowledge, concerning Ada and her fortunes, from the night of the fire at the Old Smithy at Learmont, to the time when she had taken refuge at his house, concluding by saying,—

“Sir, I have, from a record of all the circumstances, the strongest reason to believe that this young girl is the same, who, when an infant, was carried from the burning ruins by the blood-stained shrieking man, but still I have no proof; I believe that Jacob Gray is that man, but still I have no proof; I believe that a murder was committed that night at the smithy, but still I have no proof; and moreover, by Gray’s subsequent crimes, we are now entirely cut off from offering him any merciful consideration for a full and free confession of the whole of the circumstances, and Britton, I fear, is not the man to confess at all; if he were, he is most probably awfully and deeply implicated. Therefore, what I wish of you, sir, is authority to stop proceedings against Gray, for the present, and to leave him at large until I procure some more tangible information concerning all these mysteries, always promising that I can arrest him at any time I please.”

“Upon my word,” said the secretary, scratching his chin, “it’s a very disagreeable and awkward affair. This Learmont has promised us no less than seven votes in the Commons.”

“Has he, sir?”

“Yes, and you see—really seven votes—are—are—in point of fact, seven votes.”

“He procures them of course by nominating members of his properties?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Then, sir, should all that property be wrested from him by a conviction for felony, those votes and qualifications must revert to the crown.”

“Upon my word that’s true; I dare say he’s a very great rogue; don’t make a disturbance for nothing, Sir Francis, but you can take the authority you require. Of course, the votes are more useful to us in our hands than coming through his; but the family may not be extinct.”

“Still, sir, we cannot smother this affair; justice must be done.”

“Of course, I know all that; the majesty of justice must be upheld; only, you see, seven votes are something, and I only mentioned how awkward it is—I may say confoundedly awkward—for we have scarcely a majority: but, however, you may take your authority, Sir Francis.”

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Chapter LXVI

Gray’s Visit to Learmont.—The Disappointment.—A Week of Terror.—The Street Newsvender.

Evening was casting its broad shadows across the Hampstead fields, and the air was varied with the songs of thousands of birds retiring to roost, when Jacob Gray with pain and difficulty began his descent from the tree which had afforded him so hazardous and painful a refuge for so many hours.

Stiffened and benumbed as he was in every limb, he found it no easy matter to crawl down from his high perch; and it was only after many minutes of uneasiness and terror that he at last reached the ground; then he leaned against the trunk of the tree, and with dizzy eyes and a bewildered brain looked anxiously around him. A death-like silence reigned around, broken by nothing but the twittering of the sparrows, and the occasional chirp of a grasshopper. He put his hand up to his wounded face, but the blood had ceased to flow, and he only now felt a heavy, deadening sensation about the region of his wounds. After a time then, he ventured to leave the tree, and with a slow, uncertain and tottering step he walked towards the pond.

The direful pangs of hunger, which in his recumbent position in the tree had not greatly afflicted him, now began to make themselves felt in earnest, and Jacob Gray groaned in his agony.

“Oh,” he cried, “for a crust—the hardest morsel that ever a dainty beggar cast from him as unworthy of his wallet—I shall die of hunger ere I reach Westminster!”

Still he tottered on towards the pond, and when he reached its grassy brink, he lay down as he had done before, and drank largely at the clear water.

Then he bathed his face, and washed away partially the stains of blood that had hardened into coagulated masses upon his cheeks; and he was again somewhat refreshed, although still terribly faint from want of sustenance.

To abate, if possible, the aching, racking pains in all his limbs, he strove to increase his rate of walking, but that expedient, by increasing the languid circulation of his half-thickened blood, caused his wounds from the shot to burst out bleeding afresh, and the horrible faintness that came over him for want of food made him reel along like a drunken man.

It might have been the lingering effects of the opiate that had been so freely administered to him, or it might be his huge draughts of water upon an empty stomach, but, from whatever cause it arose, a deadly sickness came over him just as he neared some cottages at the base of the hill, leading to what is now a pretty collection of suburban cottages, which was then a swampy hollow, with a few miserable huts, occupied by people who sold bundles of dry sticks for firewood ostensibly, but who were in reality had characters, not averse to anything, so that it promised the smallest gain.

Jacob Gray held with a shivering, nervous grasp by one of the palings which divided the patch of garden ground belonging to one of these hovels from the waste common, and was dreadfully sick—sick until what little strength had been left to him was frustrated, and he fell, a breathing, but scarcely animate mass, by the side of the palings.

His situation was an unfavourable one for attracting the attention of any person who might be in the hut, for the palings hid him, and he had not strength, had he the inclination, to cry for help. How long he remained there he knew not, but it was quite dark, when, the awful sickness having subsided, he made an effort to rise again. With much difficulty he gained his feet, and the moment he did, the horrible feeling of hunger—maddening hunger—came across him with twice its former intensity of pain.

“I—I can go no further,” he gasped. “I shall die on the road side if I attempt to reach London from here with—without food, I—I cannot—cannot.”

He staggered along the palings till he came to a wide gate which had no fastening, and there, with a feeling of desperation, he crawled through, determined to risk all by craving charity of the cottagers.

As he went on by the inner-side of the wide palings, which he was obliged to cling to for support, he struck against some projection which threw him down and very much bruised his knee. As he lay there he put up his hands, to feel what it was, and by the shape of the projection, as well as dipping his hand into its contents, he thought in a moment what it was, and he rose with alacrity to eat greedily from a pig-trough the loathsome remainder of the last meal that had been given to the swine.

What will hunger not induce persons to do? Jacob Gray thought he had never so much enjoyed a meal in his life, and when he had devoured the remnants of the mash in the trough, he sat down by the palings, and in about half an hour was sufficiently recovered to make his project of proceeding to the house of Learmont at Westminster not so wild and impracticable.

The night was now fairly set in, and there was not much chance of Gray’s ragged, wounded, and emaciated appearance attracting the notice of any one along the dimly lighted road from Hampstead to London.

Although his strength was now a little restored, he still felt very ill at every step of his progress, and his only hope became entirely founded upon the chance of finding Learmont within, and inducing in him a belief that his (Gray’s) strange and disordered appearance arose merely from some accident on his road, and not from any circumstances which had put it out of his power to be half so noxious and dangerous as he had been.

“Oh,” he thought, “if when I see Learmont he did not know how harmless to him I am without Ada—without a written scrap to leave behind me, to point the finger of suspicion against him—how his fingers would close upon my throat and what music to his ears would be my death rattle. But I must deceive him—I must beard him still—still defy—still taunt him.”

It was some hours before Jacob Gray, travelling at the unsteady pace he did, contrived to reach the first houses in London; and when he did so, what would he had not given for but one of the pieces of bright gold he had been so long hoarding, and of which he had been robbed so speedily, in order that he might, ere he adventured to see Learmont, take some means of improving his appearance, and nourishing his wearied frame, in order that a suspicion might not arise in the breast of the crafty squire that all was not as usual with him.

Then there was another view of his condition, that when it occurred to his mind, brought a tumult of distracting thoughts into the brain of Jacob Gray; and that view was based upon the uncertainty that beset him with regard to Ada’s actions since denouncing him at Whitehall. Had she gone to Sir Francis Hartleton’s, and so far added to his suspicions of Learmont, as to have induced some step against the squire; or, had she made her name and story so public that the whole of Westminster had rung with it, coupled with the fact, that it was he, Jacob Gray, who had been hunted up the Strand; and that Learmont, residing as he did, within almost a stone’s throw of the whole occurrence, heard sufficient to let him know how innoxious Jacob Gray now probably was in his death, and how impolitic it had now become to let him live again to surround himself with those precautions which had been so suddenly and so strangely torn from him in the course of a few short hours.

Whenever all this occurred to Jacob Gray, his steps faltered, and the perspiration of mortal fear broke out upon his brow, for he knew not but that he was hurrying to his destruction, and making powerful efforts to be earlier at the place in which he was to be sacrificed.

Still, what other hope had that miserable guilty man. Learmont alone had the power to aid him, Learmont alone held him in dread, and might still fancy he could even in death leave a sting behind him which might topple him from his haughty height of power, and dissipate to the winds of Heaven all his dreams of wild ambition.

“Yes, yes,” he muttered, “I must run this awful risk—I must go to Learmont and procure enough gold for my present necessaries, and then concoct some scheme for the dark future.”

With a face as pale as monumental marble, save where a few livid marks and streaks of blood showed where he had been wounded, Jacob Gray now turned into the dense mass of houses about St. Giles’s, for the purpose of wending his way as quietly and as far from the public thoroughfares as possible towards Charing-cross.

Skulking along by dark places, and shunning anywhere that presented a light aspect, he pursued his route towards the upper end of St. Martin’s lane. A crowd was there collected sufficiently dense to stop his progress, and he dare not, like a man of clear conscience and open heart, push his way through the motley assemblage. In vain he tried to get up one of the side streets which would not take him far out of his way. He had no recourse but to go back some hundred yards or more, or endeavour to get through the mass of persons, the cause of whose assembling he knew not nor cared, so that they would let him pass unobstructed and unquestioned.

As he neared, in his efforts to pass, the centre of the throng of persons, he found that they were collected around a man who was, in the loud conventional voice of street singers and proclaimers of news, attracting his auditors by some narrative of deep interest, apparently. In another moment, Gray nearly lost all power of motion as he heard these words:—

“Here, my masters, you have a full account with all the particulars of the most horrid murder in the Strand of Mr. Vaughan, together with a copy of verses made on the occasion, and addressed to all young persons, warning them against dice, cards, drink, and Sabbath breaking.”

The man then in a loud nasal voice, commenced his verses.

Jacob Gray only paused to hear the first line, which consisted of an appeal to young mothers nursing tender babes, and then unable any longer to remain in the throng, he pushed his way through them like a madman, and despite the kicks and cuffs he received, succeeded in passing on and arriving nearly breathless, heated, and alarmed at Charing-cross.

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Chapter LXVII

The Disappointment.—The Last Resource.—A Strange Meeting.—The Confession.

The clocks were striking ten as Jacob Gray came within sight of Learmont’s house, and then so strongly did all his former fears regarding the possible results of his interview with the squire came across him, that it was many minutes before he could summon courage to ascend the steps of the mansion. There was, however, no other course; and, although his fears were of a nature rather to be increased than diminished, by the feverish nature of his reflection, he reluctantly at length slunk up the steps and knocked at the door, for at that hour it was always closed.

The few moments of suspense till the door was opened were agonising to Jacob Gray in the extreme, and all his former faintness, and some of exhaustion came over him as the ponderous portal opened, and a servant stood in the gap and demanded his business.

“You know me?” said Gray.

The man looked at him doubtingly, for what with his wounds, and the pain, misery, and anxiety, he had gone through, he was sufficiently altered to make his recognition doubtful for a moment, even to those who had seen him often. A second look, however, let the servant know that he had seen him before as one of his master’s very mysterious visitors, and he replied—

“Yes, sir, I do know you.”

“Tell your master I am here.”

“He is not within.”

“Not within,”

“No, sir. We do not expect him home to-night; he has gone to a party at the Earl of Harrowdon’s, in the Palace-yard.”

Gray stood for a moment leaning for support against the door-post—then by a strong effort he spoke—

“Thank you—I—I will call to-morrow,” and he descended the steps stupified and bewildered by the cross accidents that seemed to conspire against him.

He heard the door closed behind him, and he walked on mechanically for about a hundred yards, when he sat down upon the step of a door, and leaning his face upon his hands, he nearly gave himself up to despair.

“What could he do?—What resource was open to him?—Where could he go for food and shelter? A starving fugitive!—With a price set upon his capture. Could there be yet a degree of horror, and misery beyond what he now endured?”

“Yes—yes,” he suddenly said, “I—I can beg. Till to-morrow I can beg a few pence to save me from absolute starvation; but, yet that is a fearful risk, for by so doing I shall challenge the attention of the passers by, instead of evading it. I cannot starve; though I must beg—if it be but a few pence to keep me alive until the morning.”

Jacob Gray’s appearance was certainly very much in favour of any tale of distress he might relate for the purpose of moving the charitable to pity and benevolence. A more miserable and woebegone wretch could scarcely have been found within the bills of mortality.

The first person upon whom Jacob Gray made an attempt in the begging way was a man who was slowly sauntering past, enveloped in a rich and handsome coat, but the moment he heard Gray say,—

“I am starving,” he drew his cloak closer around him, as if by so doing he shut out his appeal to humanity, and hurried on at a rapid pace.

Gray had not been begging long enough to have learnt humility, and the bitter curses he muttered after the man with the cloak would have made his hair stand on end, had he have heard them.

As he was then upon the point of rising from the step, and crawling to some more public thoroughfare, in which he might have a more extended sphere of operation, a strange wild noise smote his ears, and he drew back into the shadow of the doorway with a feeling of alarm.

The sound seemed to approach from the further end of the street, and now he could distinguish a voice addressing some one in imploring tones, which were replied to by a harsh voice. The words spoken Gray could not distinguish, but a strange presentiment came over him that he was somehow connected with the persons approaching, or the subject matter of their discourse.

Back—back—he shrunk into the doorway, until he was completely hidden in the shadow of the house.

The disputants rapidly approached, and then he could hear the rougher voice exclaim,—

“There is no harm meant you. You are a foolish woman. I tell you, over and over again, that you are wanted for your own good.”

“Murderer, away, away!” cried a voice that struck to the heart of Jacob Gray, for he knew it to be the woman he had seen at the public-house by Vauxhall, when he ran so narrow a chance of capture by Sir Francis Hartleton.

“Will you come quietly?” cried the man.

“No—no—not with you,” cried Maud, “not with you. Look at your hands, man, are they not dyed deeply with blood? Ha! Ha! Ha! You shrink now. No—no—Maud will not go with you; but I will tell you a secret. Listen—do you know Andrew Britton, the savage smith?”

“No, nor don’t want,” said the man. “Come now, listen to reason, Sir Francis Hartleton wants to see you particularly.”

“Aye, aye!” said Maud, “that’s a fine device. Tell me where the child is, will you?”

“Come now,—it ain’t far,” said the man. “Here have I been hunting all over London for you nearly a day and half now, and when I find you, you won’t come. I tell you Sir Francis means to do something for you.”

“Can he restore the dead?”

“Not exactly.”

“Ah! Ah! Ah! He can—he can. So now I know you are no messenger of his. You come from Andrew Britton,—why? To kill me; but it is of no use—of no use, I tell you. You, and he, and everybody know well that he is to die before I do.”

Maud now laid hold of the rails of the house and resolutely refused to move. The man spoke in a perplexed tone as he said,—

“Come—come now, don’t be foolish. I must get some help to take you, whether you like it or not, if you won’t come now quietly.”

“Beware,” said Maud.

The man gave a start, as the poor creature showed him the glittering blade of a knife she had concealed in her bosom. There was a pause of a few minutes, and then Gray heard the man say,—

“Very well. Just as you like, I always look after number one first, and I’ll be hanged if I have anything more to do with you.”

Maud laughed hysterically as she sat down upon the step, and still kept a clutch upon the iron rail.

“Foiled! Foiled!” she exclaimed. “Ha! Ha! Ha! Tell him it is in vain. He may hunt me, but it is written in the book of the Eternal, that Britton, the savage smith of Learmont, is to die before I. Go—go. Ha! Ha! Ha! You will never wash the blood stains out. Never—never—never!”

The man made no answer, but walked away at a very rapid pace, no doubt for the purpose of procuring some assistance; for he was an officer who had been ordered by Sir Francis Hartleton to seek for the poor deserted creature, and bring her to him, when he would take measures for placing her in some asylum where she would be free from any violence on the part of Andrew Britton, should he accidentally meet with her.

Maud continued to mutter in a low tone after the man had left, but Gray could not closely distinguish what she said, and he remained for some time perfectly quiet, resolving in his mind what he should do. As he communed with himself the deadly spirit of revenge against all whom he imagined to be in any way accessary to producing his present destitute state came over him, and he ground his teeth as he muttered,—

“I could kill them all. I could exult in their agonies. I will, I must have revenge. This hag was the cursed cause of all the horrors I have been compelled to wade through, and shall I now suffer her to escape, now that she is in my power?”

He cast a rapid glance up and down the street as he added,—

“And no one by. Oh? That I had some weapon that silently and surely would do its work, and leave her here a corpse. She shall be one offered on the altar of my revenge! I must, I will work the destruction of them all, and she will be the—the first.”

A deathly languor came over Jacob Gray even as he spoke, and he groaned audibly.

Maud started at the sound, and turning she fixed her eyes upon his dusky form as it lay hid in the shadow of the doorway, from which, for more than a minute his extreme weakness would not permit him to move.

“What man are you?” cried Maud. “You groan—wherefore? Have you lost all you loved?”

“I have,” said Gray, with a groan, as he thought of his money.

Maud crept up the steps till she came close to him, and then laying her shrivelled hand upon his arm, she said,—

“I know you now—I know you.”

“Know me?” faltered Gray, making an effort to pass her on the steps.

“Yes. Where, and how, and when we meet I shall soon think, but I know you.”

Gray felt a little alarmed at this speech, and he replied,—

“You are mistaken, I am poor and destitute. We have never meet before.”

“Poor and destitute? Hast ever felt the pang of hunger as I have?”

“I feel them now.”

Maud opened a wallet she had with her, and took some broken victuals from it, which she laid before Gray, saying,—

“Eat—eat—and I will think the while where I have met you.”

He needed no second invitation, but devoured the not very tempting viands before him, with an eagerness that could leave no doubt of the truth of his statement concerning his hunger.

Maud passed her hands several times across her brow as she said,—

“I know you, yet I know you not. Did you ever hear of a murder?”

“No,” said Gray.

“Done with such a thing as this?”

She half produced the knife as she spoke, and Gray immediately said with eagerness,—

“Give me that!”

Maud drew back, and fixed her wild eye upon him as she said,—

“Are you a man of blood? Let me see your hands. Are they stained with innocent gore, or free from the damning pollution that begrimes the fool, and drags it shrieking to despair. Answer me man. Saw ye ever the Old Smithy?”

“Give me the knife and I will tell you.”

“Yes, the knife! He is eager for the knife, who knows its use. Answer me: saw ye the fire—yes, the fire—when was it? Yesternight?”

“What fire?”

“In a house where dwelt an angel, I knew ’twas that—Yes! Ha! Ha! Ha! And there was a body too that would not burn. There it lay black and cold, untouched amidst the charred fragments of the house. I—I have been there to look for the angel, but she has flown up to her native skies, with not a downy feather of her radiant wings touched by the gross element.”

“You, you have been to the house?” stammered Gray.

“I have! You knew it? It lies near sweet green fields, and the merry birds mock you as you go it. Listen, and I will tell you what I did. The early dawn was brightening, and old and young with jests and laughter, and mingling voices, went to see the ruins of the ancient house.”

“And you went?”

“I did. Then some bright spades and hatchets, and they dug for the body of a murdered man. Pile after pile of the blackened rubbish was removed, and then one said,—‘he must be burnt to a cinder,’ but I knew he would be found, no murdered body was ever yet all burnt. The murderer himself has often tried thus to dissipate in the ashes of his victim, all traces of his awful crime, but Heaven will not have it so.”

Gray clutched to the railings for support as he said,—

“Nonsense—I—I know better.”

“Ha! Ha! Ha!” laughed Maud. “I cannot see well the working of your face, but your voice belies your words. The man was found.”

“Well, well. It is nothing to me.”

“They said he had been shot,” continued Maud, “and that he must have died in lingering agony. I saw them bring him forth—not a thread of his garments—not a hair of his head—was touched by those flames that had destroyed all else.”

“Well—well,” said Gray, “I don’t want to hear more. Will you give me the knife?”

Maud had kept her hand upon the handle of the weapon, and Gray had found no opportunity of taking her by surprise, or he would have made an endeavour to destroy the poor creature, upon whose head the chastening hand of Providence had fallen so heavily. A direct attack upon her he dared not make, for first of all he could not trust his present weak state to the chances of a struggle even with her, and secondly, such was not Jacob Gray’s way of doing things.

“Will you give me the knife?” he repeated.

“No!” said Maud. “I’m keeping it for Andrew Britton.”

“Indeed?”

“I am—I am.”

“If I thought you would use it on Andrew Britton,” muttered Gray, “I would not take it from you for a hundred pounds.”

“Listen—listen, I have not told you all,” said Maud.

“All what?”

“About the fire. You shall hear—all who went there from many motives, left the smoking mass before the sun was at its topmost height in Heaven—but I stayed.”

“Why did you stay?”

“I thought the angel might come to me, but she did not. I prayed for her to come near again, and show me her pale and beautiful face, but she did not. I wept, but she came not, and then I thought I might find something that should ever remind me of her. And I did—I did.”

“You did?“

“Aye.”

“What—what—found you? Tell me, woman.”

“Twas very strange that I should find them there,” said Maud thoughtfully.

“Find what?”

“Where the murdered man had lain there was no trace of fire. The flames had burned round, but touched him not, there I found them.”

“Woman, tell me what you found, or—”

“Or what?” cried. Maud, her eyes flashing upon the cowardly Gray, who immediately shrunk back, saying,—

“Nothing—I—want nothing. Only I am anxious to know what you found.”

“You are? Well, well, I found some of these. Here is one.”

As she spoke, she took from her breast a small torn scrap of paper and gazed at it attentively.

In an instant Gray surmised the truth. In his attempt to get rid of his written confession while standing on the ladder, previous to the murder of Elias, he had dropped many pieces, and then in the exciting scenes that followed utterly forgotten them. Once indeed, while in the tree on Hampstead Heath, he remembered the circumstance, but then he immediately assumed that they had been burnt along with the house.

He now trembled in every limb, as the thought came over him, that possibly the poor mad creature might have collected sufficient of the torn pieces to give Sir Francis Hartleton a tangible idea of the whole; and although he felt that, next thing to his life, was the repossession of those torn scraps, he was so overcome by the circumstance of their thus coming to light, that for a few moments he thought he should have fainted.

Maud, meanwhile spread out the small crumpled pieces of paper in her hand, and commenced reading in a low muttering voice, “Andrew Britton”—“the temptation”—“a double murder”—“shrieking”—“the child”—“guilt—”

“Ha! Ha! Brave words, brave words!” she cried. “Murder and guilt, and Andrew Britton’s name of course; where there is murder and guilt, there must be Andrew Britton.”

Gray slowly prepared himself for action. He cast a wary eye around him, but no one was visible. Then he drew himself up to make a rush upon Maud, when he heard a voice some distance from the street say loudly,—

“Faster, I say, faster. Who’d be a king if he couldn’t be carried as quick as he likes? On, I say, or I’ll be the death of some of you.”

“Andrew Britton!” shrieked Maud, and she bounded from the step and ran down the street with amazing fleetness.

Jacob Gray sunk back against the door with a deep groan.

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Chapter LXVIII

Britton and Learmont.—Mind and Matter Produce Similar Results.—Learmont’s Weakness and Fears.—The Chair.

Despite the apathy endured by his habitual state of intoxication, Andrew Britton began to feel some vague sort of apprehension that there was danger at hand, and that he was watched by parties who came and sat down with apparent jollity in the old parlour of the Chequers.

When once this idea got possession of his mind, it began to torment him, and, however, after thinking to the best of his ability over the matter, he determined upon consulting with Learmont upon the subject, and leaving it to his cooler judgment to take what steps he thought fit in the affair.

According to this resolve he sought the house of Learmont, where he arrived but a very few minutes after Albert Seyton had left, and demanded, with his usual effrontery, an interview with the squire.

Learmont had latterly looked upon Andrew with mixed feelings of dread and exultation—dread that he might drink himself to death some day and leave behind him ample written evidence to convict him, Learmont, of heavy crimes—and exultation that all the money the savage smith wrung from his fears was converted into the means of his destruction by his habit of habitual intoxication.

When they now met, Learmont forgot for a moment his personal danger in eager notice of the trembling hand and generally decayed state of the smith’s once hardy frame. But he forgot at the same time that anxiety and the constant gnawing of conscience were making even more rapid ravages upon his own constitution than the utmost stretch of intemperance could have done.

Britton was pale, and in some degree emaciated; but Learmont was positively ghastly, and had wasted nearly to a skeleton.

“Well,” said Learmont, in a hollow and constrained voice, “you come, as usual, for more money, I suppose.”

“Yes,” said Britton,—“I don’t mean to go away empty-handed squire, you may take your oath; but I have something more to say on this visit.”

“Say it; and begone! I—I—am busy.”

“Are you? Perhaps you will be busier still some day. Do you happen to be thirsty?”

“No!” said Learmont impatiently.

“That’s a pity, because I am; and if it wasn’t for the look of the thing, drinking by one’s self, I’d have a glass of something.”

“Andrew—Britton,” said Learmont, jerking out his words slowly from beneath his clenched teeth; “I have warned you more than once before not to trifle with me. Your errand here is specific; you come for the means of carrying on a life of mad riot and intoxication—a life which some of these days may lead you to an excess which will plunge you, and all connected with you, in one common ruin.”

“Well, is that all?”

“And enough,” cried Learmont, angrily. “Have I ever resisted your demands?”

“No.”

“Have I ever limited your calls upon my purse?”

“No; but how d—d moderate I’ve been—think of that.”

“But—but Britton—there was a time when you were not deaf to all reason; hear me now.”

“You cannot complain of me, so long as I freely administer to your real and fancied wants. Wherefore, then, should I run a fearful and terrible risk daily from your excesses? You admit—you must admit—that I, to the very spirit and letter, fulfil my contract with you; and yet I run a fearful risk—a risk which can do you no manner of good. What, if you were to die, Andrew Britton? You are a man of wild excesses; I say, if you were to die? Is the end of all my compliances with your demands to be my destruction, when you can desire no more? Speak! How do you warrant me against so hard a condition?”

“I don’t warrant you at all,” said Britton. “Recollect you forced me to it. What was I? The smith of Learmont. I toiled day and night; and they called me ‘a savage’ and why? because I was in your toils—I did a piece of work for you that—”

“Hush! Hush!” gasped Learmont.

“Oh, you are delicate, and don’t like it mentioned. I am not so nice—I murdered for you squire, and you know it. What was my reward? Toil—toil—and you know that too. You taunted me with my guilt and crime. Once, squire, when I threw in your teeth, that the same halter that was made for me, would fit your worshipful neck, you told me that I flattered myself, for that the word of a right worshipful squire, would outweigh the oath of a smith, and cursed me for a fool, but I believed you, and put up with it, till that sneaking hound, Gray, came to me.”

“Curses on him!” muttered Learmont.

“Ha! Ha!” laughed Britton. “I like him no more than yourself—I have much to lay at his door.”

“But to my question, Britton,” said Learmont, impatiently.

“Well, to your question—what care I what becomes of you? I have myself and myself only to look to, and you may go to the devil or anywhere else, for all that it matters to me.”

“Andrew Britton, once before I told you to beware. You may carry this matter so far that I may turn upon you, and find greater safety in a foreign land than here, and if I once determine upon such a step—”

“You will leave me to the hangman?”

“I will because you goad me to it.”

“And what is there to hinder me from doing the same thing?”

“You cannot! You have not the means nor the inclination. To accomplish such an object, you must come to me for a sum of money, which would be equivalent to proclaiming your intention at once, and thus my least danger would be your destruction—you understand me?”

“I do; and although there are two words to that bargain—pray in the name of all that’s honourable, what do you want me to do, squire?”

“As a matter of common justice between us, I ask you to destroy any written evidence you may have prepared according to the accursed and unjust suggestions of Gray against me; or that in the event of your death, I may, having faithfully fulfilled my bond with you, be then released. Stay, I know what you would say. That, you would tell me, holds out a temptation to me to take your life. I say it does not, Andrew Britton, in your case. Your avarice is not so insatiable as Jacob Gray’s; and, moreover, we never meet but as man to man, and you can take what precautions you please to ensure your own safety.”

“No, squire,” said Britton, “it’s worth all the money, I’m d—d if it ain’t to see you in such a fright. You think I’m drinking myself to death, I know you do, and so I am, but it’s an infernally slow process, and if you come to that, you look half dead yourself.”

“I—I?”

“Yes! Mind you give me none of your nonsense, you know, in case you should pop off all of a sudden.”

“I—I am very well,” said Learmont, “strong and well; I never was better.”

He dropped into a chair, as he spoke, and a deadly paleness came over his face, robbing it even of its usual sallowness, and giving instead a chalky appearance to the skin, that was fearful to behold.

“There, you see,” said Britton, “you ain’t well now—you don’t drink enough. Here you have been making a riot about me, and the chance of my popping off, and you have hardly an ounce of flesh on your cursed long carcase.”

“I am better now!” cried Learmont, “I am quite well—very well indeed. You—you have known me long, Andrew Britton—tell me I never looked better in my life, and I will give you a hundred pounds—yes, a hundred pounds, good Britton.”

“Can’t be such a cursed hypocrite,” said Britten, who mightily enjoyed Learmont’s fright, “I never saw you look so bad in all my life!”

“I am sure you are joking.”

“Serious as a horseshoe.”

“Well, well, that don’t matter, I never take people by their looks. Sometimes the freshest and the finest go first. You know that well, Andrew Britton.”

“That’s very true,” said Britton, “as one we know—a tall proper man enough—you recollect—his name was—”

“Peace! Peace! Do you want to drive me mad, Andrew Britton? Where is your hope, but in me? What—what other resource have you? Fiend! Do you dare thus to call up the hideous past to blast me? Peace—peace, I say, Andrew Britton. Leave me—our conference is over.”

“Not quite.”

“It is—it is. Go—there’s money.”

He threw his purse to Britton as he spoke, and then cried,—

“Go, go. Go at once.”

“You forget,” said Britton, as he coolly pocketed the money, “that I came here to tell you something particular.”

“What is it?”

“There is danger!”

“Danger?” cried or rather shrieked Learmont, springing from his seat. “Danger? No, no; you don’t mean—”

“I mean what I say. There’s danger; and giving you credit for a cooler head than mine, though I’m not quite sure of it, I came to tell you.”

Learmont leaned heavily upon the arm of the smith, as he said,—

“Good Britton, we will stand or fall together; we will not forsake each other, I will help you, Britton. We have known each other long, and been mutually faithful, I’m sure we have. You have still the sense to—to take a life—for our own safety, Britton—always for our safety.”

“If I have, it’s more than you have,” said Britton. “Why, you are turning silly. What’s the matter with the man? Have you seen a ghost?”

“Ah!” cried Learmont, “don’t speak of that; for, by the—the powers of hell, I think I really have.”

“Oh! You think you have?”

“I do.”

“Where?”

“On my very door steps, Andrew Britton, I saw a face. Young and beautiful—so like—so very like—hers who—”

“You don’t mean the Lady Monimia?”

“Hush, hush. ’Twas she—I knew her—come to look at me, as she looked—now two and twenty years ago, in the spring of her rare beauty, when we—we—quenched her life, Andrew Britton.”

“That’s all your beastly imagination,” said Britton, “I wonder at you. On your step, do you say?”

“Yes.”

“Stuff—you don’t drink enough to clear your head of the vapours. Some of these days you’ll fancy you see your—”

“Hush, hush. My conscience tells me the name you were about to pronounce Hush, hush, I say. Oh! Andrew Britton, you are a man rough in speech and manners. Your heart seems callous, but have there been no times—no awful moments when your mental eye has been, as it were, turned inwards on your soul, and you have shrunk aghast from—from yourself, and wished to be the poorest, veriest abject mortal that ever crawled, so you were innocent of man’s blood? Britton—savage, wild as you are, you must have felt some portion of the pangs that bring but one awful consolation with them, and that is, that hell can inflict no more upon us.”

“I’ll be hanged if I know what you are driving at,” cried Britton. “I should recommend brandy-and-water.”

“No, no; I cannot drink. That vulgar consolation is denied to me. My blood dries up, and my brain inflames, but I get no peace from such a source. Besides it shortens life.”

“Have your own way. All I’ve got to say is, that I feel as sure as that I am standing here, that some one has been watching me at the Chequers.”

“No—no.”

“Yes—yes, I say.”

“Some drunken brawl of your own!”

“No. Do you know, I suspect that fellow Hartleton is poking and prying about as usual, curse him.”

“Aye, Hartleton!” cried Learmont. “There is my great danger. He suspects and watches—Britton, he might die suddenly.”

“He might.”

“Well, well.”

“And he will too, if I catch him.”

“Good, Britton. A thousand pounds for news that he is up more.”

“What’s the use of your thousand pounds to me? I can but lead the life of a gentleman, and that I am. Why, somebody would cut my throat, if I had a thousand shillings all at once. Good day to you, squire, good day—take care of yourself. Leave me alone if I once catch Master Hartleton at bay.”

“Yes, yes; you are courteous, Britton.”

“Oh! By-the-by, what do you call one of those things I see in your hall, like a watch-box with two long poles to it?”

“A sedan chair.”

“Oh! Then I’m d—d if I don’t have one.”

“You?”

“Yes, me. Why shouldn’t I?—It will be rare fun—upon my life it will. Good morning to you.”

So saying, Britton swaggered out of the house, and by way of showing both his knowledge and his independence to Learmont’s servants in the hall, when he got there, he said pointing the sedan-chair,—

“What’s that?”

“A chair,” said one.

“You think I didn’t know that, did you, spooney?” he replied, as he gave the unfortunate footman a crack on the head that made him dance again.

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Chapter LXIX

A Walk and a Meeting.—The Vision at the Open Casement.—Learmont’s Perturbation.

An idea had struck Learmont, during the course of his conversation with Britton which, now that the smith was gone, came still more strongly and forcibly across his mind, and shaped itself into clearer words.

“Why should not I,” he said, “if I find that in England there is for me nothing but danger, disgrace, and constant apprehension, why should not I take my accumulated wealth somewhere else, to some land where I could purchase with it dignity and power, and—what is more freedom from the terrors that now beset my path? ’Tis worth reflecting on such a course; I could do it most easily now. ’Tis a comforting reflection—a most comforting reflection, and—and when I am tortured by doubts and fears, I will think of such a course. But this news of Britton’s troubles me. He thinks himself watched by Hartleton; why doubtless so am I. Sir Francis is no friend to me, and would gladly find me tripping some of these days—I must crush him—I will have his life, if it cost me half my wealth. We kill a noxious reptile, because we think it may sting us; so will I have vengeance upon you, Sir Francis Hartleton, because I know you would sting me if you could. I must find some means subtle, deep, and dangerous to him, but withal to me innoxious. I must kill, and yet not seem to kill, even to the instrument with which I do the work. Britton it is of no use attempting to employ on such an occasion, unless I could be certain of his success, and then, his execution for the deed. In such a case, I should be rid of two enemies; and even Britton would not be so wantonly mischievous as to deceive me, at no benefit to himself;—yet is it dangerous. I must think again. Master Hartleton—you are playing with edged tools.”

Learmont was now silent for a time, and then rose, saying,—

“Now for the life of action which shall drown thought—my wealth—my house—my brilliant entertainments have all succeeded so far as to make me a honoured guest with more than I can visit—but I will visit many,—it—it is time I began to enjoy something now.”

The horrible contortion which he produced upon his ghastly face, by way of a smile, at these words, startled him, as he saw it reflected in a mirror hanging opposite to him; and he shook in every limb, as he hastily left the room.

His servants shrunk from before him as, in about ten minutes time, he passed down the great marble staircase of his mansion, splendidly dressed, and enveloped in a cloak, to make some calls.

Declining, with a haughty wave of his hand, the chair that stood in the hall, he strode out; and, with his lips compressed as usual with him, so closely that not a particle of blood was left in them, he turned into the park, intending to call upon the frivolous but noble Brereton family, who had lodgings near to old Buckingham House.

Of all the persons intent on pleasure, on business, or on intrigue, that thronged to the park, Learmont fancied that no one could carry so heavy a heart as himself, and yet how successful had he been! Had he not accomplished all that he had grasped at? But, like the dog in the fable, what a valuable and tangible possession had he dropped, in grasping the shadow which now darkened his soul.

He saw not the sunshine,—for his own heart was black and gloomy; he heard not the merry song of the birds,—for busy thought was conjuring up direful images in his brain. He strode along, like a tall spirit—a being belonging to some more gloomy and uncongenial world than ours, who heard but discord in our sweetest sounds, and could not appreciate any of our pleasures.

And yet strange to say, all that Learmont had toiled for—all he had sinned for—all he had dipped his hands in blood for, had been that he might enjoy, in greater abundance, these very delights and pleasures that seemed to mock his grasp, and to retreat like the ignis fatuus of the morass—far off in proportion, as he most wishes to approach.

He walked up the principal mall, and none addressed him, although many looked after the tall, gaunt, melancholy-looking man, as he strode in silence onwards. What would Learmont not have given for a companion; one who would feel and think with him, and divide the weight of oppressive conscience.

A lively burst of martial music now came suddenly upon his ears, and he glanced in the direction from whence it came, when he saw a person standing by a seat, from which he seemed to have just risen, close to him. A second glance told Learmont it was the young man, Albert Seyton, who had applied to him for the office of secretary, and he bowed coldly and stiffly to him, which Albert courteously rejoined, saying,—

“The morning is inviting, sir.”

“Yes—a—cold, as you say,” replied Learmont, in an abstracted tone.

“Cold, sir?”

“Fine—fine, I mean. Did I say cold?”

“You did, sir; but probably your thoughts were somewhere else. I fear I intrude upon you.”

“No, no; you do not. My thoughts, young sir, never wander, but I am grateful to him who can bring them back again.”

“He is like me,” thought Albert, with a sigh; “a man with a very few pleasant moments to look mentally back to.”

“Have you thought further of what I proposed to you at our last meeting?” said Learmont.

After a long pause, for Albert did not well know what to say in answer to the remark last made by the melancholy squire, “I have, sir,” he now said, “and adhere firmly to all I before pledged myself to; namely, that in all honour I will do you zealous service and tire not.”

“’Tis well, ’tis well. Walk with me, and we will converse more at large as we go; I am merely out for exercise.”

Albert bowed, and walked by the side of his strange employer in silence for some minutes. Learmont then said,—

“You will call upon me to-morrow, according to our previous arrangement.”

“I shall be proud to do so,” said Albert.

“Well, well. Perhaps the man may be there; but beware of his consummate art, young sir. If you would successfully track him to his haunt, you must be wary and cunning, patient and sagacious; believe me no common man will ever succeed in circumventing him.”

“Indeed, sir.”

“Ay, indeed, you know him not. He has the deep cunning of the serpent. Even I—but no matter. You will freely undertake the employment?”

“As an earnest of future service, yes, sir, I will do your bidding, and if great attention and extreme care can accomplish your desire, it shall be done.”

“Persevere, yourself, young sir, in such a disposition, and you will become a thriving man.”

“I hope to please you, sir.”

“You will; of course, you will, you will do me zealous service. But mark me you must follow this man, who will call at my house, as you would follow some light that would lead you from the caverns of poverty to fortune. Track him home, and see him fairly housed. Then mark the place by every token that may enable you again to lay your very hand upon the door, and cry, ‘Here dwells that man!’”

“I will, sir, and I hope you may find him more deserving than you think.”

“I hope I may,” said Learmont.

They now walked along the Birdcage-walk, for they had doubled the canal, and were approaching towards Westminister again. For the space of more than five minutes neither spoke, for both were busy with reflections, although of a widely different character.

Albert Seyton was more and more suspicions of the intentions of Learmont, and he began to think him a man, most probably, mixed up in some dark political intrigues, to carry out which, he required some simple and unsuspecting agent. There was something very galling to the proud spirit of Albert, in the supposition that Learmont had pitched upon him, as thinking him weak enough to believe anything, and never to suspect that the employment he was set upon was far different from what it purported to be, and he longed to say, “But I am not so simple and foolish as you may imagine me, and have my doubts, and grave suspicions concerning your conduct and the truth of words;” but then he could not bring himself to say so much, because all as yet was merely made up of doubt and suspicion, and he considered how ridiculously foolish he would look by allowing his imagination to run riot in creating apprehensions, perhaps after all, to be completely dissipated by the result, and arising only, possibly, from his young and uninstructed fancy and ignorance of the ways of the world.

Albert Seyton, therefore, prudently determined to be watchful and wary; but to take nothing on surmise, and to believe, or affect to believe, as far as the non-expression of doubt went, all that Learmont might choose to say until some positive and glaring fact contradicted him.

While these thoughts were passing through Albert’s mind, Learmont, on the other hand, was congratulating himself upon his meeting with the young man, and extracting from the whole circumstance food for more agreeable hope and reflection than had illumined his gloomy mind for a long previous period.

“Here,” he thought, “there is at last a chance of discovering Jacob Gray’s place of abode—a chance too, which if it fails, commits me to no one, and does me no manner of injury. But it cannot scarcely fail. This young man and he being perfect strangers might, in such a city as London, follow each other about for a week without exciting suspicion. Moreover, he looks upon discovering this man’s abode as the key-stone of his future favour with me, and consequent advancement. I could not have devised a better plan, and, surely, fortune must have been desirous of favouring me when she sent this raw young man to solicit employment from me. By the powers of hell, I would not have missed such a chance of circumventing that demon Gray for a thousand pounds.”

Learmont, in the momentary exultation of these thoughts suddenly raised his eyes from the ground, on which they had been bent, and uttering a cry of terror, he sprang forward several yards, and then exclaimed,—

“There—there—again—again! Is it ever to haunt me thus?”

He pointed with his trembling finger to the windows of a house which overlooked the park for some distance. One of the casements was open, but there was no one at it, and Albert looked first at Learmont, and then at the window in amazement, not unmixed with a sudden thought that, after all, his new employer might be a madman.

Learmont continued pointing for a moment towards the window. Then he slowly dropped his hand, and in a low agitated voice said, half aloud,—

“Could it be fancy?”

“What saw you, sir?” said Alberta.

“Come—come—hither.”

Albert approached close to him, when he leaned heavily on the arm of the young man, and said,—

“You were walking with me, and if it were real, you must have seen it.”

“Seen what, sir?”

“A face pass for an instant across yon window.”

“That now open?”

“Yes—the sun shines upon it as you see, and across the open space there slowly passed a face. You saw it?”

“I did not, sir.”

“You are sure?”

“Quite.”

“Then fancy must be torturing me. ’Tis very strange that she—she whom I scarce think of should be the vision to haunt me. You are sure you saw no one pass that window?”

“At the moment my eye might not have been cast in that direction,” said Albert “but certainly I saw no one.”

“True you might not have been looking; but neither was I, and yet my eyes were lifted as if by some invisible hand, and then I saw a face—that—that—I fear now I shall often conjure up.”

Learmont leaned against the railings that divided the entrance from the open thoroughfare of the park and for a time his strength appeared quite prostrated.

Albert Seyton continued gazing at the house which had attracted so much attention from Learmont, and after a pause of some minutes’ duration, he said,—

“I think that house is known to me, although I never looked at it from here before.”

Learmont made him no answer, for although he heard him speak, he scarcely comprehended what he said, so busy was he with his own fears.

“If I mistake not,” said Albert, “it is the back of Sir Francis Hartleton’s house we see from here.”

The name of Hartleton struck upon Learmont’s ears like a trumpet, and starting from his reverie of disagreeable images, he cried hurriedly, and violently,—

“Who spoke of Hartleton? Who mentioned his name?”

“I, sir,” said Albert, amazed at Learmont’s wild vehemence of tone.

“You—you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Oh, you have heard of him. He is a man, I presume, known to many. Are you sure that is the back of his house?”

“Yes, now I look again I am quite sure; I know it by some peculiar chimnies. I have gazed on it for hours with a hope now extinguished for ever.”

“You—you?”

“Yes, sir. My story is a strange one; I have lost both the natural and acquired ties that bind me to life, I am an orphan, and I can never more behold her who would have filled the void in my heart.”

“But you speak of this Hartleton as if you knew him. Is such the fact?”

“I am scarcely warranted in saying so much,” replied Albert, “although I have seen and conversed with him.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes; and he gave me hopes, which were for a time my thoughts by day and my dreams by night—my hopes which I clung to as some drowning mariner clings to a stray spar; but alas! I have lost now the power to dream myself happy.”

“He disappointed you?”

“He did. Perhaps he could not do otherwise. I have no right to censure him, but he could not know how my heart was sinking, and he cannot know how it has been wrecked, or perhaps he would have done more or tried to do more. But I am querulous upon this subject, and may blame him causelessly. It is a fault of human nature to mistake the want of power for the want of will, and to him who loves all things appear so very possible.”

“You have cause to quarrel with Sir Francis Hartleton, the particulars of which you shall relate to me some other time. I, too, love him not, and I may perchance aid you in your wishes more than he, although I may promise less.”

“I thank you, sir.”

“Let me see you early to-morrow.”

“I shall attend you, sir.”

“Farewell.”

Learmont walked slowly away, and Albert Seyton, with a deep sigh turned and walked pensively towards Buckingham-gate.

Had he happened to have been looking at the moment Learmont did towards Sir Francis Harleton’s house, he would have seen Ada pass by the open casement.

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Chapter LXX

The Jew and the Necklace.—Gray’s Troubles and Surmises.—An Adventure.

Sir Francis Hartleton found but very little difficulty in getting possession of Ada’s necklace from the Jew, who had made so capital a bargain with her. The wily Israelite made a practice of never purchasing an article unless he got it at a price which always implied that it was dishonestly come by, as was the case with Ada, of some party totally ignorant or the value of the commodity.

Another rule of his business was to keep his greatest bargains some years, if he thought it necessary so to do, before he brought them into the market, so that if the jewel or the gold were stolen, all the excitement concerning it had subsided, and the very person from whom the property had been filched had long since given it up as quite hopeless.

In this manner, he had acted with regard to Ada’s necklace, which was really worth a much larger sum than either Jacob Gray or the Jew imagined, for the former knew only from indirect sources the value of the article, and the latter rarely came across anything so pure and costly.

Moreover, Jacob Gray had a strong motive for preserving the necklace, because, as we know, he always looked forward to a day when it might be necessary or agreeable to him to declare Ada’s name, birth, and lineage; and thus how important might any corroborative evidence become upon the subject.

As for the Jew, he had been in a ceaseless wonder ever since he had purchased the valuable trinket of the young girl, and in vain he puzzled himself to account for her possession of it, and form some idea of who she could possibly be that was wandering about alone with such valuable property; and it is more than possible that his great bargain was as great a source of disquiet to him as it was of congratulation, for he reasoned with himself,—

“If sho be hash she had such a necklace, and didn’t know fot it wash worth, sho help me, she might have had something else petter still.”

This was a sore reflection to the Jew, and on the whole afforded a fine commentary upon such motives as his who rate their losses by their gains, in the same manner as the man who found half-a-guinea, and upon being told that two had been lost on the same spot sunk the fact of his good fortune in finding the one, and bemoaned to everybody his loss of the other.

It was a sore blow to the Jew, when Sir Francis Hartleton walked into his shop, and at once announcing himself as the much dreaded, because active and irreproachable, magistrate, demanded the necklace, giving a description of it, and of Ada, which rendered any kind of shuffling out of the matter of no possible use.

The necklace was therefore produced, and Sir Francis left the Jew fully impressed with a belief that he would immediately be prosecuted, although such a step was still far from the magistrate’s intentions, who, as we are aware, was taking every means he could to keep matters quiet, and awakening no public curiosity concerning Ada.

It was after another conversation with his beautiful young guest that he issued an order to find poor mad Maud, intending to make some permanent provision for her benefit, not at all expecting that she really possessed sufficient pieces of Jacob Gray’s confession to enable him to form a much nearer estimate of the merits and demerits of the whole affair, than he had hitherto been able to do.

From Ada’s description of Gray, he was now enabled to set a watch upon Learmont, who, from all the circumstances, he felt certain Gray visited to get money.

Sir Francis’ object now was to give Jacob Gray time to provide himself not only with means, but to fully again write out those papers he believed would unravel every mystery connected with the affair.

That Andrew Britton was assailable in the same way he never suspected, and he merely waited now until Gray should commit both Learmont and the savage smith in writing to take some active step in the business.

Jacob Gray little imagined that he was quite free in London to go whither his fancy might lead him, and that the man he most dreaded, namely, Sir Francis Hartleton, had taken a great deal of trouble to prevent his arrest.

Had he guessed he was being so angled with, his terror would have killed him; but as he sat on the step of the door near to Learmont’s, he concocted in his mind a line of proceeding, which, but for various circumstances he could not know of, might have been successfully carried out.

He would see Learmont in the morning, and affecting to be wearied of his present line of life, to offer for two thousand pounds to surrender to him the living object of his fears, as well as his, Jacob Gray’s, own confession, and leave England for ever. Learmont might see him on board a vessel even if he pleased. He might see him leave the shore, when he would give him any address purporting to be where he would find Ada; and then, at the first port he stopped at, he would send a letter to Sir Francis Hartleton, containing sufficient to destroy Britton and Learmont; but not sufficient to be of any service to the persecuted Ada.

By this means he thought to gratify his revenge against them all; and, at least, secure to himself safety, and the means of living in comparative luxury in some cheap continental state.

If Learmont should refuse such a compromise, he could adopt some other course of action to be resolved upon after his next interview with him; but, upon the necessity of leaving England, and that quickly too, he was quite clear and decided.

One would have thought that Jacob Gray had met with sufficient disappointment in his various arrangements to dishearten him from attempting further to create circumstances, and philosophise upon their results; but it is a fixed principle in those natures which are fond to excess of plotting, that no experience will deter them from concocting the hairbreadth schemes and chances which would, combined, make up a satisfactory result, but which all possess the one alarming feature, that the whole fabric must topple down upon the displacement of a single brick.

He rose from the step of the door, and walked onwards, he knew not whither, for some time; but, at length, he found himself in Parliament-street, from the immediate vicinity of which he shrunk quickly, for he dreaded the glare of the lights, and feared that some one might recognise him as the fugitive of the Strand.

There were in his mind some strange and singular contradictions with regard to his present situation, which, as calm reflection came to his aid, he found it very difficult indeed to reconcile.

That Ada had sought refuge with Sir Francis Hartleton, he could scarcely permit himself to doubt for a moment; but then the consequences which she had always dreaded from such a step on her part had certainly not increased so rapidly if they were to occur at all, as he would have sworn they would. He anticipated so active, so persevering, so energetic a hunt from him throughout, not only the metropolis, but the whole kingdom, when once Ada should be in a condition to possess Sir Francis Hartleton of the events of the five years of her life with him, Gray, that safety and freedom for four and twenty hours was a thing not to be thought of; and yet here he was, without much disguise, without the means of taking that care to avoid suspicion which he would fain have done, free and unquestioned hitherto in the public streets.

His name seemed in no one’s mouth. There was no hue and cry—no bills of any particular moment concerning him, save the meagre one he had seen at Hampstead, and which had evidently not emanated from Sir Francis Hartleton. In fact, the affair did not at all present the alarming aspect to him he had ever expected it would.

Jacob Gray was, therefore, under those circumstances thrown back upon several suppositions—none of which, however, to his mind bore the stamp of much probability.

One was that Ada had not taken refuge with Sir Francis Hartleton, but by some means had fallen into other hands, who did not feel so interested in her story or had not the power or the inclination to act upon any of the surmises it must naturally call forth.

Another supposition, was, that from some lingering feeling of pity towards him, or from some dark and haunting suspicion in her mind that he might be related to her, she had, although with Sir Francis, abstained from committing him Gray sufficiently to induce a hot pursuit for him, on other grounds than the murder of Elias, and of Vaughan. Nay, he even thought it possible that Ada might have interceded for him to be left alone, or bargained in some way for his safety. But as often as these reflections began to shed some comforting influence on Gray, there came the reflection of how firmly and broadly she had denounced him as a murderer in the public streets, and he became lost again in a whirl of conflicting thoughts and emotions.

He was slowly traversing a low, obscure street, leading from George-street, as these painful thoughts were passing through his mind, when he fancied he heard a footstep behind him, which seemed accommodating itself to his in a manner that excited at once his suspicion that he was watched. All Gray’s dreams of security immediately vanished, and a cold perspiration broke out upon him, as he fancied he was upon the point now of being arrested when his fate would be certain; for what account could he give of himself that would not at once strengthen and confirm suspicion. He still heard the footstep, but he feared to look behind him, and after a few moments of confused thought he resolved to try a simple experiment to ascertain if he were really followed, and he paused suddenly to see if the stranger behind him would pass on.

The whole mass of Jacob Gray’s blood appeared to him to curdle in his reins, as he felt sure, whoever it was behind him, had stopped likewise.

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Chapter LXXI

The Pursuit.—A Successful Ruse.—The Long Night.—Gray’s Terror.

The little strength that Jacob Gray had left now all at once seemed completely to have left him, and he trembled so that he could scarcely stand. Walk on he could not, and yet what was he to do? Did the person know who he was, or did he only suspect? Was there a remote chance of escape, or was he fairly in the toils?

As these distressing thoughts passed rapidly through his mind, he heard the stranger step up to him, and in a moment, a voice said, “A fine evening, sir.”

Gray stretched out his hand, and held by an iron rail, while he turned slowly and with pallid features, and his tongue cleaving to the roof of his mouth with fright, faced the speaker.

He was a man about the middle height, with sharp small grey eyes, which twinkled upon the terror-stricken Jacob as much as to say, “I am a cunning, cautious fellow, and you won’t escape me.”

It was full a minute before Gray could command himself sufficiently to speak, and the stranger during that time had repeated his remark of,—

“A fine evening.”

“Yes—yes, very,” stammered Gray.

“You don’t seem very well, sir,” said the stranger, twinkling his eyes designedly upon Gray.

“Yes, quite well, thank—I—I haven’t the honour of knowing you. Good evening—good evening.”

“I may be mistaken,” said the man; “but I think I have seen you somewhere.”

Gray would have given anything at that moment to say “Where?” but he lacked the courage, and merely muttered something about it being unlikely they had ever met, as he was a stranger in London.

The man kept peering at him in a very disagreeable manner, and after a few moments, he said in a careless tone,—

“Heard of the murder?”

“What murder?” gasped Gray.

“In the Strand—Vaughan’s murder I mean—strange affair, very!”

“No—I know nothing of it,” said Gray.

“Odd, that—the whole town knows of it. It’s crying about the streets, and what’s the strangest thing of all, nobody seems to know who did it.”

“Indeed?”

“No, the fellow was a complete stranger, and the only man who gives anything like a description of him, is a fellow whom he knocked down near Arundel-street.”

“Yes—indeed,” was all Gray could find breath to say, for he expected each moment that the man would pounce upon him, crying, “You are the murderer—I have been only amusing myself a little with your fears.”

“It’s odd altogether,” continued the man, “and there’s fifty pounds reward now offered by Vaughan’s relations for the man, which, together with what government will give at his conviction, will make a good round sum.”

“Exactly—yes,” said Gray, quite mechanically, for his senses were in a complete whirl.

“You see that’s worth looking after,” said the man.

“Yes.—Good evening—good evening,” said Gray, and he tried to pass on.

“Are you going my way?” said the man.

“Which is your way?”

“Oh—why, really I ain’t at all particular, and I’ll walk with you, if I am not intruding upon you?“

“I am going home,” said Gray.

“Good evening—I live just here.”

“You haven’t lost your way?”

“No—no—this place is quite familiar to me—I have known it long.”

“Oh, I thought you said you were a stranger here.”

Gray changed from pale to red, and from red to pale again, as he replied,—

“You misunderstood me, sir.”

“Oh, did I? Very likely.”

“Good evening.”

“You had rather walk alone, would you?”

Gray summoned courage to say with tolerable firmness,—

“I would.”

“Certainly—certainly. Mind if you see anybody that looks suspicious, lay hold of him; it may be the murderer, you know, and it would be a prime evening’s work for anybody to nab him. He is about your height—thin and pale, stoops a little, shabbily dressed. Look out—look out.”

“I—I will. Are you an officer?”

“No, I’m a shoemaker, but I’ve a great fancy for catching thieves and those kind of people.”

“Curse your fancy,” thought Gray.

“I couldn’t sleep to-night without taking what I call a prowl just to see if the fates would place in my way the murderer.”

“Oh, indeed!“

“Yes, and I don’t despair yet. Good evening—good evening.”

“Good evening,” replied Gray; and he walked on with a faint hope that after all the troublesome shoemaker, whom he devoutly wished dead and buried, did not suspect him sufficiently to annoy him any more with his following.

To ascertain this point, after he had left him, was a great object to Gray, as it would afford him an idea how to act, and accordingly after he had proceeded some distance, he just glanced over his shoulder to see if the man had gone, and he supposed such was the case, for he could neither see nor hear him.

Jacob Gray, however was reckoning without his host, for not only did the troublesome shoemaker, who was the pest of Westminster, from his love of meddling with the duties of the police, strongly suspect that he had hit upon the right man, but he determined not to lose sight of him, and had merely ensconced himself in a door way until Gray should have got some distance off, when his intention was to follow him very cautiously till he saw him housed somewhere, when he would bring the officers upon him, for he did not like exactly to run the risk of attempting the capture of so desperate a character as a murderer, who had already taken one man’s life merely because he made an attempt to capture him.

“Who knows,” thought the shoemaker, “he is a desperate chap, and may be a great deal stronger than he looks; he might smash me just as he smashed Vaughan, and that would be no joke, I’ll dog him till I see him fairly housed, and then be down upon him.”

Cunning, however, as was the troublesome shoemaker he was scarcely a match for Jacob Gray, when the latter had a little time to collect his faculties and was not flurried. There were indeed but five persons who could have succeeded in dogging Jacob Gray without his knowing it; and although the shoemaker had in his mind concocted the artful scheme of letting Gray turn a corner, and then running after him, and keeping him in sight, until he had turned another, he did not know his man, for that was the very course which Jacob Gray took good care to provide against by himself popping into a doorway round the first corner he came to, and waiting patiently to see what came of it.

The result confirmed his suspicions, for he had not been above two minutes in that doorway, than the shoemaker arrived at the corner at the top of his speed, and peered around it with what he considered amazing cleverness and cunning.

The street was a long one, and he felt not a little surprised at missing Gray in so very sudden a manner.

“Lost him, by ——,” he cried. “He must have gone into some house here—that’s flat. I’ll get a constable to come with me and will call at every one. I’d wager my head he’s the man.”

The amateur officer now darted off at a quick rate to procure a real one, and when he had gone, Jacob Gray emerged from his hiding-place.

He paused a moment in the street, and then with bitter malignity, he muttered,—

“Beware! I am not a man to be tempted too far.”

He then hastily walked in an opposite direction to that taken by the shoemaker, although he had no definite idea of where he was going, or what he meant to do until the morning should afford him a chance of seeing Learmont. As the excitement of the last half-hour began along with its danger to wear off, Jacob Gray felt dreadfully fatigued, notwithstanding he had been much supported by the broken victuals he had received from poor Maud, and he thought of proceeding to the sheds of Covent-garden, and lying down to rest himself till morning’s dawn.

The rotten wooden stalls and sheds of Covent-garden-market, at the period of our tale, were the nightly resort of many who had no other place in which to lay an aching head and wearied body. There, among potato-sacks, baskets, vegetable refuse, and all the mass of filth for which that now handsome market was then so famous, the weary, the destitute, and the heart-sore would find a temporary solace from their cares, in the oblivion of sleep.

But not alone were the humble sheds of the market occupied by the sons and daughters of misfortune and want—a number of the worthless and abandoned characters who nightly prowl about the theatres had no other places of refuge; and many a thief and, in some instances, criminals of a higher grade in the scale of iniquity, were pushed out by the officers from among the market lodgers, when he happened to be particularly wanted; and when a housebreaker, or thief of any description, was compelled by necessity to lodge there, he was tolerably sure to be particularly wanted, because such a step augured a state of his finances which was far from enabling him to fee the officers—a system which although now so very rare, was a hundred years ago flourishing in all its iniquity and glory.

To the sheds, then, of the market, Jacob Gray resolved to go, but by many fortuitous accidents, he was doomed not to get there.

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LXXII. The Return of Learmont.—The Interview.—Doubts and Fears

In his way Jacob Gray passed Learmont’s house, and he had scarcely got half a dozen yards from the door, when he was compelled to step aside, to allow a cavalcade to pass him, consisting of some half-dozen footmen bearing links, followed by a chair containing their master.

One of the curtains of the sedan was but partially drawn, and Gray, at a glance, saw that Learmont himself was the occupier of it. His resolution was formed in a moment. He would risk whatever construction the squire chose to put upon such a visit, at so singular an hour, and procure some money from him at once for present pressing exigencies.

He could easily frame some lie to account for his visit at such an hour; and whether Learmont believed it or not, it must pass current, for who could contradict it?

He watched the haughty arbiter of his fortunes get out of the chair, and ascend the steps of the mansion. Then, before the door could be closed, he stepped forward; and being just behind Learmont, he said,—

“I have waited for you.”

Learmont turned suddenly, and looked perfectly astonished to see Gray. For a moment neither spoke. Then the squire said, in a low tone,—

“To-morrow morning, early.”

“No,” said Gray. “My business is urgent and important, I must see you to-night.”

“Must?”

“Yes—must!”

Learmont bit his lip, and passed into the house, which Gray taking as a passive permission to follow him, did so, until Learmont paused in a room devoted to the purpose of a library, and which was but dimly lighted. Then turning to Gray, he said,—

“Well?” in a brief stern voice.

Gray had hastily concocted in his mind what he should say to Learmont, and after carefully closing the door, he replied in nearly his usual low and cautious tone, although his voice shook a little,—

“It is not all well. Squire Learmont, me thinks I should have a better reception for coming some distance, and waiting long to tell you news of more importance to you than to me.”

Jacob Gray was unconscious that he touched a chord in Learmont’s heart, which had vibrated painfully ever since his interview with Britton; but he saw, by the nervous clutching of a back of a chair with his fingers, that Learmont was alarmed, and that was what he wished.

“What—what—mean you?” said Learmont.

“I mean this,” replied Gray, “that Sir Francis Hartleton—”

“Hartleton again!” cried Learmont, clenching his fist. “By all that’s damnable—that man is born to be my bane—my curse—I will have his blood.”

Gray saw that he had struck the right chord, and he added,—“I fear he is plotting and planning some mischief.”

“You only fear?”

“Nay, I am almost certain.”

“State all you know.”

“I will. And it is because I know so much that I come to you at so unseasonable an hour.”

“Heed not that,” said Learmont. “All hours—all times by night and by day—are alike to me, for they all teem with alarms. The shadow of some dreadful coming evil seems to press upon my soul. Bad tidings crowd upon me. Say on, Jacob Gray, I am prepared too well.”

“What I have to tell you,” said Gray, “consists more of a certain knowledge that there is something to discover than that something itself.”

“Say on—say on.”

“Before I speak, will you, for the first time, let me have a cup of wine, for I am very—very faint.”

“Help yourself,” said Learmont, pointing to a buffet at the further end of the room, on which were refreshments.

Gray eagerly poured himself a glass of rich wine; and as he felt the generous fluid warm him, his blood seemed to flow easier through his veins, and he appeared to have lifted half of his cares from his heart.

“Now—now,” said Learmont, impatiently. “Tell me all.”

“I will. Early this evening, I went into a small hostel, in Pimlico, near to the public office of this Hartleton—”

“Yes—yes.”

“And there was one,” continued Gray, lying with a volubility that would have taken any one in,—“there one belonging to the magistrate’s office, who had already taken more drink than his brains would stand.”

“You—you—plied him well.”

“I did when my suspicions were awakened. He was talking loudly, and amongst other things, he said ‘His master had an eye upon a certain squire, not a hundred miles from Westminster, who bid fair for Tyburn.’”

“The knave!—What—what more?”

“On that I thought, of course, on you,” said Gray, with a sneering malice in his tone.

“Well—well—what followed?”

“Why, knowing no other squire in Westminster but yourself, with whom I could couple the allusion to Tyburn, I called for more drink and brought him to converse with me.”

“And—and—what?”

“He dwelt but in obscure hints,” continued Gray, “and at last dropped off into a drunken sleep, which smothered all his faculties.”

“And you heard no more?”

“No more.”

“’Tis not much.”

“Enough for apprehension,” suggested Gray.

“Ay; but not enough for action.”

“True—but you can think of it.”

“There is the curse! I can think of—thought is my hell!”

“Such thoughts lured unpleasant images; but ’tis better to have such slender information of coming danger than to dream on of safety, but to be roughly awakened by it when it comes to your doors.”

“No—no. Apprehension is a fiend of far more awful aspect than danger. It only suggests the terrible, and leaves to the shrinking, trembling fancy to fill up the ghastly picture. Show me danger, and I have nerve to face it. Only tell me it is coming, and in some unknown shape, and I—I—do quail before it. Yes I—even I do quail before it.”

He sank into a chair as he spoke, and turned deathly white.

“Arm yourself with fortitude,” said Gray. “You may yet triumph.”

“There is but one course open,” said Learmont, in a low earnest tone. “Among us we must find a means to lay the troublesome spirit of this Hartleton, Jacob Gray, where is all the deep cunning that would enable you to circumvent hell itself? I say, where is it now, if you cannot summon it to your aid, to rid us all of this man, who will otherwise destroy us.”

“You may yet triumph,” muttered Gray, with a meaning look. “Hear me Squire Learmont: I am sick and weary of the life I lead, an’ would fain now lend an ear to some proposal from you, which would enable me to feel more peace here.”

He struck his breast as he spoke, and fixed his keen eye upon Learmont, who in his turn, from beneath his knitted brows, peered anxiously into the face of Gray.

“You understand me,” continued Gray; “I am willing, if I could do so with safety, to leave you at peace—to secure you from the worst evils that can befall you—to deliver you from your greatest feelings of apprehension.”

“Say on, Jacob Gray,” said Learmont, in a low indifferent tone.

“Nay, I would now hear from you,” remarked Gray, “what proposal you would make to me for surrendering to you your worst foe.”

“The child?”

“Ay; but a child no longer,” hastily interrupted Gray. “Years have now rolled on, and the child that was, has in the due progress of time passed that age and become a dangerous enemy to you. An enemy only controlled by me. I am as one holding in my grasp the thunderbolt which, were I for a moment to let loose, would rush with fearful certainty at your devoted head. I—but I want your proposal, squire—I am willing to accede to some terms, but they must be to me, both safe and profitable.”

Learmont was silent for some moments, then he said,—

“Tell me your demand, Jacob Gray, and at large particularise your proposal.”

“Nay, squire, I repeat I have no proposal—none whatever—but I have bethought me that danger threatens around us, and that some day when the horizon of our fortunes may appear unclouded, a storm may come which will sweep us to destruction.”

Learmont groaned, and then fixing his eyes upon Gray, he said with a fearful and intense earnestness,—

“Jacob Gray, you are a man of crimes—you have shed blood more causelessly than I—and I would ask you if ever in your solitude, when none have been near you, you have seen or heard—”

Gray licked his parched lips, as he said with trembling apprehension,—

“What—what mean you, squire? I—I have seen nothing—heard nothing, ’Twas Andrew Britton struck the blow—he—he did it.”

“Peace, peace!” cried Learmont; “nor with a hollow sophistry try to cleanse your soul of the deep spots that eat, like a wild splash of burning lava, to its inmost part.”

Gray shrank and cowered before the frightened looks of Learmont, and after a pause he said,—

“What have you seen—what heard?”

“Twice now I have seen a face which, to look upon has nearly turned my heart to stone.”

“A—a—face?”

“Yes—’tis an angel or a devil. Listen to me.”

“I—I will—I will.”

“Once on the steps of this, my mansion, at an hour when my heart was lighter than its wont, and I was far from dreaming of such a sight, a face appeared before me. It seemed that of a young girl, but so like—oh, so like him—who sleeps in that dread spot which ever rises like a spectre before my affrighted eyes.”

“The smithy?” said Gray.

“And once again,” continued Learmont, not heeding Gray’s interruption, “once again I saw it. Then another was with me, and I know it was not of this world because he saw it not.”

“The same face?”

“The same.”

“And of a young girl, say you—pale and noble, with a look of gentleness, yet pride—a—brow of snow—long raven hair?”

“The—the same—you have seen it, Jacob Gray—you have seen it—you are cursed as well as I.”

“In a dream,” muttered Gray.

“Only a dream? I saw it on a bright morning when all was light and life around.”

“Was that recently?” said Gray.

“This very morning.”

Gray would have given much at that moment to be able to ask with unconcern where Learmont had seen Ada, for that it was she he did not entertain a shadow of a doubt, but it was several minutes before he could command his voice sufficiently to say,—

“Where saw you this appearance?”

“Where all my fears are concentrated—where my worst foe resides—I saw it at the window of Sir Francis Hartleton’s house from the park.”

Gray drew a long breath as he thought, “So my worst fears are confirmed. She is with the magistrate.” He then said, with a more assumed and confident air than he had hitherto assumed:—

“These fancies would leave you were you more at ease—I grieve that you should as yet have missed the enjoyments which your wealth should have brought within your grasp.”

“Enjoyment!” said Learmont, with a deep groan—“you mock me, Jacob Gray—what enjoyments have you and Andrew Britton left me? Have you not between you surrounded me with danger and suspicion? I have been tempted, for the great favours I owe you both, to take some day a step that should rid me of you for ever.”

“Indeed!”

“Yes—but we will talk more another time—the hour waxes late—shall we meet in the morning?”

“The—the night would suit me better,” said Gray, who by no means relished in his present dangerous circumstances a morning visit.

Learmont, with a forced air of unconcern, cried,—

“Pho—pho—let it be the morning—say at half-past ten.”

“I will take money of you now,” said Gray, evading the point, “in earnest of the sum which shall separate us for ever.”

“There is my purse,” cried Learmont, giving it to him. “’Tis moderately full—take it, and let me see you to-morrow by the hour I have named.”

“Squire Learmont,” said Gray, “for three thousand pounds I will rid you of the young object of your fears—of myself—and, perchance, of Andrew Britton.”

“Three thousand pounds?” said Learmont.

“Yes—a small sum you must own—a very small sum.”

“You will bring me here—”

“No—no—I will do this—on shipboard, I will hand you an address written on the back of my confession.”

“I will consider,” said Learmont, “and in the meantime bethink you of some means of ridding me of Hartleton. While that man lives I stand as it were upon a mine, and—and—you will be here in the morning by half-past ten.”

It would have been a curious study for any deep theorist on human nature to have remarked these two men, Learmont and Gray, at this moment, watching each other’s countenances, and yet endeavouring to avoid seeming so to do, and mutually suspicious that every word covered some hidden and covert meaning.

“What change has taken place, that Jacob Gray is so anxious to compromise with me for a sum of money at once?” was Learmont’s mental interrogatory.

“Why does he want me here by half-past ten so particularly?” thought Gray; “I will not come.”

Thus they parted, mutually hating and mutually suspicious of each other.

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Chapter LXXIII

The Troublesome Shoe-maker.—Gray’s Agony and Danger.—The Flight.

Jacob Gray no longer was necessitated to take a temporary lodging among the sheds of Covent-garden market, for upon, by the dim light of a lamp, examining Learmont’s purse, he found a sum nearly approaching to twenty guineas in it, and a ghastly smile same across his face, as, by the mere possession of money, he felt, or fancied he felt, considerably stronger and better than he had been for many days.

He walked with a firmer step and an air of greater self-possession than before. One of his first acts was to dive into a back street, for the purpose of finding some place in which he could lodge for the night, and he had not gone far before he saw a small dingy-looking public-house, where he thought he might find all he wanted in the way of rest and refreshment without risk.

It is strange how intense mental anxiety will overcome and smother almost entirely the consciousness of bodily pain. So it was with Jacob Gray—for although he had been suffering much pain now for many hours from his wounded face, his great anxiety of mind had thrown such mere physical annoyance quite into the shade; but now that he had money in his pocket, and fancied he saw light in the darkness of fate, he began to experience great agony from the wound, and previous to seeking refreshment or rest he wished to procure surgical assistance lest any shots should be remaining in his face. With this intent he walked on until he came to a chemist’s shop, near Westminster-bridge. On entering the little doorway, for a very little mean shop it was, he asked of a man behind the counter to examine his face.

“You have been wounded, and had better go to some hospital,” said the surgeon, who was one of the self-taught and self-dubbed medical men who flourished up to within the last thirty years.

“I have wherewithal to pay you for your services,” said Gray, taking out Learmont’s purse and laying down a guinea.

Upon this the surgeon, with a good deal of practical skill, carefully examined Gray’s face, and extracted several of the shots which had remained just beneath the skin.

“How did this accident happen to you?” said the surgeon.

“A careless boy was shooting sparrows,” replied Jacob Gray.

“Ah! People never will be careful in the use of fire-arms. You will do very well now; a little dry lint is all you require, but wash your face frequently with diluted milk.”

“Thank you,” said Gray, receiving fifteen shillings out of his guinea; “should I feel any uneasiness, I will call again.”

“That fellow has been robbing somebody, I’ll be sworn, and been shot at for his pains,” remarked the surgeon when Gray had gone. “Well—well, it’s all one to me, from a peer to a pickpocket.”

Gray felt very much relieved by the manipulation of the surgeon, and he retraced his steps towards a small public-house he had before noticed, and which from its plainness and obscurity, he thought would furnish him a tolerably secure retreat till he could venture out again.

He was dreadfully weary, and the stars were beginning to disappear, while a faint sickly light was slowly spreading itself over the eastern horizon.

A very few minutes’ walk brought him to the door of the house, and he dived down a steep step to enter it. A dim light only was in the bar, although it was one of those houses that keep open the whole of the night, under pretence of accommodating travellers, but really to accommodate thieves, watchmen and police-officers.

“Can I,” said Gray, to a man who was yawning in the bar,—“can I have a bed here, and some refreshment?”

The words were scarcely out of his lips, when he heard a noise behind him; and turning hastily around, his eyes were blasted by the sight of his tormentor, the amateur officer and Shoemaker, who, with a glass of some steaming beverage in one hand, and a pipe in the other, stood glaring at Jacob Gray as if he was some awful apparition.

“Bless me,” he at length found voice to say, “is it you?”

“I have no knowledge of you, sir,” said Gray, while a cold perspiration bedewed his limbs, and he glanced uneasily at the door, between which and him stood the troublesome man.

“I—I—you—you,” stammered the shoemaker, “you met me you know about two hours ago, and you said you was a going home.”

“Well, sir.”

“It’s an odd time of night to be out.”

“Then why don’t you go home?” said Gray, summoning all the presence of mind he could to his aid.

“Ah—yes—exactly, that is, a—hem!” said the shoemaker, feeling very much confused, for he was afraid to promote hostilities with Gray, and equally reluctant to let him go.

“Can you accommodate me,” said Gray, turning to the woman, “and two friends?”

“Three of you!” groaned the shoemaker.

“Yes,” said Gray, “I have two friends waiting for me.”

“There’ll be a great deal of danger in having anything to do with him,” thought the shoemaker, “but I’d wager ten guineas he’s the man that killed Vaughan.”

“I can’t accommodate you all,” said the woman. “You can stay here, if you like; and your friends can get a bed at the King’s Arms at the bottom of the street.”

“Thank you,” said Gray, “I will speak to them;” and he moved towards the door.

The little shoemaker, however, was not to be so easily cajoled, but gulping down his glass of hot liquor, with a speed that nearly choked him, and brought the tears into his eyes, he moved to the door at the same time as Gray, resolved to stick to him now as long as there was no actual bodily peril.

Gray paused at the door, and gave the man a look which caused him to recoil a step or two within the house. Then he walked out into the street; but the shoemaker, although daunted for a moment, was not quite got rid of, and with a hurried whisper to himself of,—

“It would be the making of me to take him single-handed, and get all the reward,” he bustled after Gray, with the intention of watching him.

In this, however, the amateur officer was disappointed; for Gray, after proceeding half-a-dozen paces, turned sharp round, and caught the shoemaker just coming out of the door of the public-house.

Gray was trembling with fear, but he had sense enough to feel that a bold face very frequently hides a shrinking heart, and he endeavoured to throw as much boldness as possible into his voice and manner as he said,—

“Do you want anything with me, sir?”

“Oh no, no, nothing,” said the shoemaker, “only I thought you might be curious in old houses, as you had popped into this one. It’s a most ancient house, and I was going to tell you that twenty-three years ago, to-day, my father apprehended the famous Jack Sheppard at the bar of this very house. Now that’s curious—what I call very curious.”

“Indeed,” said Gray, walking on and inwardly cursing his tormentor.

“Yes,” continued the shoemaker, keeping up with him, “if my father took him; one of his ladies was with him, and she got my father’s finger between her teeth, and wouldn’t leave go till she had bit it to the bone. Well, sir, my father took Jack to the watch-house in Great George-street, and what do you think happened there?”

“I cannot say.”

“When they got to the door, my father knocked, and the moment it was open, Jack seized hold of him like a tiger, and pitched him in right upon the stomach of the night-constable saying, ‘Take care of him. Good night, and off he went.’”

They had now reached the corner of the street, and Gray turned to his companion, saying,—

“Sir, I do not wish your company.”

“Past four and a cold morning,” growled an asthmatic watchman, from some distance off, at this moment.

“I’ll stick by him,” thought the shoemaker, “and when we come up to the watchman, I’ll call upon him to help me to take him. I must have him somehow.”

“Oh, you don’t want company! well, sir, I’ll only walk with you till you meet your two friends.”

Had Jacob Gray, at that moment of goaded passion, possessed any weapon that would have noiselessly and surely put an end to the ambition and the life of the troublesome shoemaker, he would have used it with exquisite satisfaction; but being quite unarmed, he considered himself powerless; and as is the case in many contests in life, the affair resolved itself simply to one point, namely, which should succeed in frightening the other. But then the watchman might be a powerful auxiliary to his opponent, and Jacob Gray screwed his courage up to the sticking place, to endeavour to get rid of his companion before such aid should arrive. He therefore turned abruptly and cried in a fierce angry tone,—

“How dare you, sir, intrude yourself upon me?”

The shoemaker started back several paces, and in evident alarm, cried,—

“No violence—no violence.”

“Then leave me to pursue my walk alone,” said Gray. “In a word, sir, I am well armed, and will not be intruded on; your design may be to rob me, for aught that I know.”

“Far from it—far from it,” said the man. “I am a respectable tradesman.”

“Then you ought to know better than to force your company upon those who desire it not,” said Gray.

“Very well, sir; very well. No offence; I’ll leave you. Good evening, or rather morning.”

“Past four, and a cold morning,” said the watchman again, and while the shoemaker paused irresolute for a moment, Gray walked hastily past the guardian of the night.

He felt then how impolitic it would be to look back, but he could not resist the impulse so to do, and saw the watchman in earnest conversation with his late companion, while the eyes of both were bent upon him.

The danger was great, but Gray felt that he should but provoke it to wear a still worse aspect by exhibiting any fear; so, although he kept all his senses on the qui vive, and every nerve strung for action, he walked but slowly away, with something of the same kind of feeling that an adventurous hunter might be supposed to feel in some Indian jungle when retreating before a crouching tiger, who he feels would spring upon him were he to show the least sign of trepidation, but who it is just possible may let him off if he show a bold front.

Jacob Gray reached in a few moments the corner of a street, and then he ventured another glance over his shoulder at the motions of the enemy. His heart sickened as he saw the watchman give a nod to his companion, and then commence running after him (Gray), at full speed.

With a spasmodic kind of gasp, produced by a choking sensation in his throat, as his extreme danger now rushed upon his brain, Jacob Gray dived down the narrow turning, and fled like a hunted hare.

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LXXIV. Ada’s Home.—A Happy Scene.—The Serenity of Goodness

Sir Francis Hartleton on that same evening was immersed in deep though on Ada’s prospects and affairs. So multifarious and complex had even what he knew concerning her and her fortunes become, putting aside all that he surmised, that now he had repaired to his own quiet little room, in which he was never interrupted and sat down, as much for the clearing of his own mind upon the subject, as for any other considerations, to write in detail all the various circumstances connected with the history and fortunes of Ada.

When he came fairly to separate what he knew from what he only surmised he felt much disappointed at the limited facts that really appeared upon paper, and as we have before intimated, he found himself in the disagreeable position of suspecting much and knowing little—able to surmise much more than he could prove, and morally certain of many things which he despaired of ever finding the means of making clear by proof.

The connection of Learmont with the same crimes in which Gray and Britton had been participators was very clear, but could he specify those crimes? It was not enough to say—“So and so is a criminal,” but it was necessary to tell and define such a charge; and Sir Francis Hartleton felt keenly all the advantage which such a man as Learmont would have over him, were he to make a loose and unsupported attack against him.

Having finished his narrative, Sir Francis sat in deep thought for more than an hour, but yet could not form any satisfactory conclusion, nor determine upon any course of action which would not be attended with what he considered the worst consequence of all, namely, putting Learmont thoroughly upon his guard.

He foresaw that he could not persevere, for a very long period of time, upon the unwilling and rather unprecedented power given to him by the Secretary of State, but that Jacob Gray must shortly be apprehended for the murder of Vaughan, when it was more than probable that all chance of discovering Ada’s real history through him would be lost; for what inducement could be offered to such a man as Gray to do an act of justice, when his own life could not by any possibility be spared, but must be taken by the hands of the law for a clear and distinct murder,—not to take into consideration the assassination of Elias, in the lone house at Battersea.

It had more than once occurred to the mind of the magistrate to search the ruins of the house in which Gray had resided, but then, as often, the extreme improbability of such a man leaving anything behind him of a character to criminate him in any way, saving the dead body of the murdered officer, came so strongly across him that he rejected as useless the attempt.

The smithy, too, at Learmont he longed to search effectually, but how could he do so without observation in such a place; and should such a proceeding come to the ears of Learmont, he might well complain of a trespass upon his own premises, for the purpose of endeavouring to get up some charge against him of a secret and undeclared nature.

“No,” exclaimed Hartleton, with disappointment, as he rose from his chair, “I must not. There is no resource but patience, and, for a short time, this man Gray, with all his crimes upon his head, must be suffered to remain at large, unless some meddling person apprehends him upon suspicion merely, in which case the law must take its course; for although I can and may take no steps to make him a prisoner, I dare not discharge him if once taken.”

As we have mentioned, it was mere humanity which induced Sir Francis Hartleton to order poor Maud to be brought to him. He was very far indeed from suspecting her possession of the important scraps of Jacob Gray’s written confession, which she had rescued from among the charred rafters of the house at Battersea and he received the report of the officer, who had been commissioned to find her to the effect that he had not yet been able to take her, without much feeling upon the subject, engrossed as his mind was with other matters.

After thus turning the whole affair over in his mind, and, for the present resolving to do nothing, but wait and see what the chapter of accidents would bring forth Sir Francis left his study, and sought the society of his young and amiable wife and Ada.

During the very short residence of Ada with Sir Francis Hartleton and his lady, she had endeared herself greatly to them. Her love of truth—her earnest depreciation of every wrong, and the sweet simplicity of her character had placed her so high in their esteem, that they had resolved she should never leave the friendly shelter of the roof, unless circumstances should arise to place her in a happy home of her own.

From all these circumstances and conclusions, it will be seen that not one of our characters, variously situated as they are, have great cause for congratulation on their prospects, with the exception of Ada, to whom it was a new and beautiful existence to be free from the persecutions of Jacob Gray. There was but one sad spot in the young girl’s heart now, and that was, that loving, respecting, and admiring as she did Sir Francis Hartleton and his lady, she did not feel for them what she felt for Albert Seyton; and many, very many of the gushing feeling of her heart were constrained to calmness and mere courtesy, because she felt that to the ears of a lover would they alone seem other than the enthusiastic dreams of a young and ardent imagination.

Sir Francis’s wife, as we have remarked, sympathised much more with Ada concerning the probable fate or circumstances of Albert Seyton, than her husband could be expected to do; and it was at her solicitation that he now gave directions to some of his most active officers, to spare neither expense nor trouble to discover if the young man was in London or not.

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Chapter LXXV

Britton in His Glory Again.—The Song and the Legal Functionary.—The Surprise.

The deadly hatred which Learmont felt for Sir Francis Hartleton was a mild feeling in comparison with that of the same nature which began to engross the entire mind of Andrew Britton. Learmont he did certainly, from the bottom of his heart, dislike; Jacob Gray he detested and hated most cordially; but under the circumstances in which he was placed, he had come to consider them both as out of reach of any species of revenge he would feel gratified in having upon them. Besides he looked upon them both as mixed up with himself in the various occurrences that had shaped the whole of his existence, and he began to think Learmont a poor creature, useful only to supply his extravagancies, and Jacob Gray as a kind of necessary or, at least, inevitable evil to be endured, as far as his existence went, with much the same feelings as he would put up with the disagreeables of the changing seasons, or some other bodily ailment it was in vain to fight against.

But Sir Francis Hartleton, what had he to do with the affair? And yet was he not perpetually thrusting himself forward in the most disagreeable manner, and thwarting him, Britton, at the most inauspicious moment, and in the manner calculated, of all others, to aggravate him—namely, by an exercise of personal strength?

When Britton was in that intermediate stage of intoxication which influenced his passions, he would dash his fist upon the table, and call down curses upon the head of his enemy, as terrible and fierce in their language as they were violent and outrageous in manner. Bond, the butcher, was his great companion on all such occasions, and no one was better calculated than that individual to second Britton in any word or deed of violence.

Britton had his usual large party at the Chequers, while Jacob Gray was being hunted through Westminster by the extremely officious shoemaker. His friend the butcher sat by his side, and whenever Britton roared out an oath, Master Bond was sure to cap it by some other of the most unique character.

The time was past midnight, and yet there was the rattling of glasses—the thumping of tankards—the shouts—screams—laughter and oaths of the motley assembly, proceeding in full vigour.

The landlord, when Westminster Abbey chimes struck the half hour past twelve, rushed into the room with a bland smile, after relieving his mind at the door by a hearty curse, and approaching Britton, he said,—

“Might I be so bold as to remind your most worshipful majesty that it is now half-past twelve?”

“No, you might not,” roared Britton; “what’s time to me, I should like to know? Are you king of the Chequers, or am I?”

“With humble submission to your majesty, of course your majesty is king of the Chequers, but your highness must be aware that the magistrates are dreadfully jealous of a poor fellow keeping his house open so late.”

“I suppose you may open as early as you like?” roared Britton.

“Certainly, your highness’s grace.”

“Very well; if any one comes to say a word, tell him you shut up at twelve, and open again at half-past. Do you hear, noodle, eh?”

“Do you hear his majesty’s suggestion?” said the landlord, “was there ever such a head piece?”

“No, never. Hurrah!” shouted the guests.

“His gracious majesty’s health,” said a man rising at the further end of the room; “and may I be butchered if he ain’t a out and outer.”

“What do you mean by may you be butchered?” said Bond.

“No reflection upon you, good Master Bond,” said the man; “I only—that is, I meant nothing.”

“Then don’t do it again,” said Bond, making three strides towards the man, and knocking his head against the wainscot till the lights danced again in his eyes.

That was just the kind of thing to arouse Britton, and he roared with laughter at the faces the man mad.

“Is a man,” remarked the butcher, “to have his trade, let it be ever so respectable, throwed slap in his face?”

“Bravo!” cried Britton; “well, landlord, bring us another bowl. Quick!”

“Yes, your majesty. Oh, he’s a wonderful man—I mean king. What a head-piece, my masters—if there’s any difficulty to be overcome, ask King Britton, and you have an answer pat at once—a most astonishing monarch he is, to be sure.”

“Well, who the devil are you?” said Britton, as a stranger entered the room.

“An’ it please you, sir, a serving man.”

“A serving man! Whom do you serve—eh?”

“The worshipful Sir Francis Hartleton, hard by.”

“Take that then,” said Britton, flinging a pewter measure at the poor fellow’s head, which luckily missed him; “how dare you come here, you sneaking spy?”

The man made a precipitate retreat, and when the landlord came with a steaming bowl of punch, Britton with an oath exclaimed,—

“Haven’t I told you that I would have none of that Hartleton’s people here?”

“Your majesty certainly was so gracious as to say so, but he, whom your grace has so very judiciously turned out, tells me he has only been for a day in his service, so, your highness, I knew him not as he passed in.”

“Sharpen your wits, then,” said Britton, throwing the remnants of the butcher’s flagon of strong ale in the landlord’s face.

“Oh, what a wit he has!”

“Curse Hartleton—curse him!” growled Britton.

“So say I,” said the butcher. “He has twice sent some one to condemn my scales.”

“Sing us a song, somebody,” cried Britton. “A song I say, I say. Do you hear!”

“Gentlemen—gentlemen—a song from some of you, if you please,” cried the landlord, bustling among the guests. “You hear that his majesty is musically inclined.”

“Well, gentlemen,” said a small man, with a twisted lace coat, “I don’t mind if I try my hand at a stave.”

There was a great thumping of tankards upon the tables, and cries of “Bravo!” in the middle of which the man who had volunteered the song commenced in a wheezing tone as follows:—

The Triple Tree

“Of all the trees that’s in the land,

There’s none like that I wot of;

The blossoms big upon this tree

Ne’er hang until they rot off.

But if it bloom at morning’s dawn,

The fruit’s so ripe and brown,

That when an hour has passed away,

We always cut it down,

Hurrah, boys!”

“Silence!” roared Britton, as the man was about to commence the second verse of his song. “What the devil’s song do you call that?”

“The Triple Tree.”

“And what may that be?”

“The gallows,” said the man, emphatically.

“Then who the devil are you?”

“The hangman!”

All shrunk from the man as he announced his calling; and for a minute or two a ghastly sallow paleness came over Britton’s face.

“Very well, gentleman,” said the hangman, “if you don’t like my song, you needn’t have the remainder of it I, am sure.”

Britton rose from his seat in a menacing attitude as he said,—

“Now, may I be smashed if ever I met with such assurance in all my life. You horrid—you infernal—”

“My good fellow, don’t put yourself in a passion,” said the hangman. “I’ve come all the way from Smithfield to see you.”

“See me?”

“Yes. I heard of you, and I came to take your weight in my eye—you understand. It will require a good piece of hemp to hold you up. You are bony, and that always weighs heavy. Good night—I’ll drop in again some evening.”

With these words the functionary of the law was off before Britton could make a rush at him, which he was just recovering sufficiently from his surprise to enable him to do.

As it was, when he found the hangman had fairly escaped him, he looked round him like some wild animal just turned out of a cage, and glaring about to seek for some enemy upon whom to wreak his pent-up vengeance.

“He ain’t far off, I’ll be bound,” cried the butcher, “I dare say he’s waiting outside.”

Britton upon this suggestion rushed from the room, and was at the street-door in a moment. There was a man shrinking just within the doorway, and without further examination, Britton seized him with both hands, and found himself face to face with Jacob Gray.

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Chapter LXXVI

The Old Associates.—Gray’s Fears.—The Old Attic at the Chequers.

There was a light in the passage, which shed a strong full glare upon the pallid care worn features of Gray; and Andrew Britton, as he held him at arm’s length turned nearly as pale as he was with the intense surprise of the meeting. He was sobered by the shock, and in a husky whisper he muttered the name of Jacob Gray.

Such awful and abject fear seemed to take possession of Gray that had not Britton held him, he must have fallen at his feet. All his presence of mind and cunning appeared to have deserted him, and it was not until Britton had again pronounced his name that he gasped,—

“Is—is it you, Andrew Britton? I—I am glad to see you look so well.”

“Yes by God,” said Britton, “it is me. What wind from hell blew you here?”

“I—I, you are looking very well,” said Gray, with a sickly smile.

“Curses on my looks, and yours too, I say again what brought you here?”

“To—to see you, of course. I thought as we had been old friends, I would come and—and see you. You rather hurt me, Britton.”

“You canting, whining villain,” said Britton, “I will know what brought you here, or I will smash your head against the door-post.”

“Violent, Britton, still violent to poor Jacob Gray, who comes to do you good. You know, my dear Britton—”

“Just say that again,” cried Britton, “and I’ll—”

He tightened his grasp upon Gray, who had just breath sufficient to gasp out—

“Remember—my—confession! The gallows!”

Britton relaxed his hold, and a slight tremor passed over his frame as he said in a lower tone,—

“Jacob Gray, you must have something damnable to say or propose to me!”

“Not exactly, Britton. But I think there is danger abroad to us both!”

“Danger?”

“Yes, Britton. Of course when I thought any danger threatened, I said to myself, shall I not warn good, kind, peaceable, inoffensive Britton.”

“You infernal liar!” cried Britton.

“So having,” resumed Gray, not heeding any interruption, “so having placed my written confession where, in case I return not soon, it would be easily found and forwarded to Sir Francis Hartleton, I came, you see, here at once.”

“Sir Francis Hartleton!” cried Britton; “if you have anything really to say it is of him, I’ll be sworn. He has been hunting me, but I will have his heart’s hood, I will!”

Gray caught at the suggestion, and immediately replied,—

“Yes—yes, Britton, it was of Sir Francis Hartleton I came to warn you.”

“Indeed, on your soul?”

“On my soul it was. He is hatching some mischief against us all, Britton, and do you think I will let an old friend fall into danger, and not warn him? So as I say, after placing my full and carefully written confession—”

“Now, Jacob Gray,” said Britton, “if you say another word about your d—d confession, I will brain you on the spot.”

“I only wished you to understand our relative positions, my good Britton,” said Gray, who was rapidly overcoming his first fright, and with his usual fertility of invention scheming to overcome Britton by cunning.

“There, there, that will do. Let me hear no more of it,” said Britton. “Come in.”

Gray hesitated a moment, and Britton, bending his brows upon him, said,—

“Why, you are as safe in the Chequers at Westminster, as you were at the Old Smithy at Learmont. Why do you shrink, man? You know, and I make no secret of it, that I would as soon dash out your brains as look at you, if I could do so with safety. Come in, I say.”

“I am quite sure,” muttered Gray, “I may depend upon such an old friend as Britton.”

He followed Britton as he spoke, and the smith, crossing the bar, ascended two flights of stairs to his own sleeping room, into which he ushered Jacob Gray.

“I have company down stairs, and be cursed to them,” he said. “Wait here till I come back to you.”

“You—you won’t be long, Britton?”

“But five minutes.”

Britton left the room, and after proceeding down about three stairs, he came back and, to Gray’s dismay, locked the door of the room.

“So—so,” murmured Gray, playing his fingers nervously upon the back of a chair. “Here I am hunted through Westminster, and forced at length to take refuge with Andrew Britton—he who has avowedly sought my life, and would take it now, but for fear of my confession. Have I ever been in such desperate straits as this before? Yes—yes—I have, and yet escaped. Surely he will not kill me. He dare not. Yet he drinks largely, and may remember then his revenge, and hatred against me, while he forgets his own safety. Oh, if Andrew Britton knew how safe it was to murder Jacob Gray, I should never see another sunrise. I am in most imminent danger—very imminent danger, indeed, and locked in too. What will become of me? What have toiled for, what committed crime upon crime for, what dipped my hands in blood for, if I am to be hunted thus, impoverished, and a price to be set upon my head?”

Jacob Gray leaned his head upon his hands, and groaned aloud, in the bitterness of his despair.

Then after a time he rose and carefully examined the door with a forlorn hope, that he might be able by some means to escape by it, and slinking down the staircase, leave the house; but it was quite fast, and although his strength might have been sufficient to break it open, that was a mode of operation attended with far too much noise to answer his purpose.

“I am a prisoner here,” he said,—“a prisoner to Andrew Britton, and my only chance of safety consists now in acting upon his fears, and arousing his anger more against Hartleton. He is long in coming,—what can be detaining him? Has he gone to Learmont’s, and are they together hatching some plot for my destruction? Am I safe, or—or am I on the very brink of the grave? My heart sinks within me. Surely he has been gone an hour. Shall I alarm the house? No—no. I am then taken for a thief; and, perhaps, dragged before Hartleton, who would not fail to recognise me. There is no weapon here to protect myself,—no means of escape.”

A sudden thought seemed to strike Gray, and he took up the candle which Britton had brought from the bar, and left with him.

“Does Britton,” he muttered, “keep his confession here with—my knife? Oh, if I could find those,—if I could, ’twere worth all the risk I now run. I would sell him to Learmont for a goodly sum.”

With a stealthy step, and a damp clammy perspiration of fear upon his brow, Jacob Gray crept about the room, which was at the top of the house, peering into every hole and corner in search of the much-dreaded confession of Andrew Britton.

His search was in vain—there was no paper to be found of any description and he sat down at length in despair.

“’Tis in vain—’tis in vain,” he groaned. “I am the victim of some contrivance of Britton’s to destroy me, or he would have returned eye this. I am lost—lost—lost.”

Jacob Gray wrung his hands, and wept like a child, as he thought his hour was come.

A long, straggling ray of light came in at the window now, and he started up exclaiming,—

“There is one hope more—the window—the window.”

The casement was one of those with diamond-shaped panes, held together by thin slips of lead, and Jacob Gray saw that immediately under it was a filthy gutter.

“One hope—one hope,” he muttered; and cautiously drawing himself through the window, he closed it again, and stood in the gutter. On one side of him was the high sloping roof of the attic, and on the other was a narrow crumbling parapet.

With a shudder, he looked down into the street. An itinerant breakfast provider had taken up his station immediately below, and several early passengers were hurrying onwards to different employments.

A boy looked up, and said,—

“There he goes!”

Gray could have cut his throat with pleasure, but he could only curse him, and creep on, while the urchin pointing him out to the saloon dealer, who, shading his eyes with his hands, said in a voice that came clearly to Jacob Gray’s ears,—

“It’s some thief, I’ll be bound, but it’s no business of mine—saloop!”

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LXXVII. The Smith’s Plot Against Gray.—An Accommodating Friend

When Britton left Jacob Gray in his room, he descended but to the first landing-place of the stairs, and then paused to consider what he had better do under the circumstances so new and so strange as Gray taking refuge with him from some danger to himself, or coming to consult with him upon some common danger to them both. This latter supposition was, however, too extravagant for Britton to believe; and when he came to consider all the circumstances—his finding Gray skulking by the door, and his evident confusion and fear when he was seized and seen, Britton with a blow of his clenched fist upon his hand exclaimed,—

“I see it now—the sneaking villain was acting the spy upon me. He wants to take my life—it’s all a d—d scheme of his, but I will be even with him, or my name ain’t Andrew Britton. Let me consider—I’ll get Bond to watch him home from here—a capital plan—he don’t know Bond, and will never suspect he is followed. Then when he finds out where he lives, we can go together, Bond and I, and knock his infernal brains out. That’ll do.”

Having satisfactorily to himself settled this line of operations, and considering Gray perfectly safe till he chose to release him, Britton made his appearance again in the parlour of the Chequers.

“Come on,” cried Bond, “there hasn’t been no time lost while you was gone for I’ve been drinking for you.”

“I thank you,” said Britton—“landlord, do you hear me, never open your door to a hangman again.”

“It was a piece of great impudence,” said the landlord, “of such a wretch coming here.” Then he added to himself, “Bless me, if he don’t seem quite sober all of a sudden, and he was a going it finely a little while ago. I do wonder now if he will recollect how much liquor he has had.”

“Hurrah!” cried Britton’s guests—“Hurrah for King Britton! We’ll drink his health again.”

“D—n you, then you’ll do it at your own expense,” said Britton. “What do you mean by sotting here at this time, eh? Clear out with you all, will you?”

“Well, I do think it’s—it’s nearly time to go,” hiccupped one man.

“Off with you all!” cried Britton. “Clear the house, landlord.”

The motley assembly, who among themselves could not have mustered the price of a jug of ale, rose in obedience to Britton’s commands, and avowing their intention of coming to see him on the morrow evening, they, with much noise and boisterous clamour, took their departure from the Chequers.

In a very minutes none were in the parlour but the landlord, Britton, and the butcher. The smith then turned to his host, and said,—

“Bring me some spiced canary, and keep every body out of here.”

“Yes, your majesty—most certainly—oh dear yes!”

The spiced canary was soon set before the precious couple, and then Britton, after a hearty draught, handed the liquor to the butcher, who with a nod that might imply any toast that his companion liked to translate it into, nearly finished the beverage.

“Bond,” said Britton, “I want you to do a little job for me.”

“I’m your man,” said the butcher. “What is it?”

“In my bedroom up stairs is a man.”

“A thief?”

“He is a thief, and be cursed to him! For he has robbed me for many years of my due.”

“You want him thrown out of window?”

“No, not exactly. I am interested for many reasons in finding out where he lives. When he leaves here, which I will take care he shall do soon, you follow him.”

“I see—I see.”

“You comprehend. He must not know you are after him, for he is as wily as a fox, but track him home, Bond, like a blood-hound!”

“Eh?” said Bond, rather astonished at the vehemence of Britton.

“I say you must follow him closely, and not let him escape you, on any account.”

“I tell you what will be the best plan,” said Bond; “you don’t want to lose him no how?“

“Dead or alive I will never let him escape me!”

“Then I’ll take my cleaver with me.”

“Your cleaver?”

“Yes; then, you know, then if he should turn round I can easily bring him down with that.”

“Yes—yes; but he has something at his home that I want.”

“Oh, very well. Then we must let him go home first, I suppose. But I’d rather have my cleaver with me, in case of anything handy and delicate being wanted.”

“You may have the devil with you if you like, so that you dog the fellow home, and come back with accurate news of where he lives. I hate him, and must have his life!”

“May I make so uncommon free as to ask what he’s done?”

“Done! He has swindled me out of my own. You know I am a smith? Well, for ten long years I beat the anvil, when I ought to be a gentleman, all through him. For ten years by myself—shunned by every one. I was forced to live by my—work by myself—drink by myself.”

“That was d—d hard.”

“It was; and all through this man. Hilloa there—more canary.”

Britton was fast relapsing into his former state of semi-intoxication, and he struck his fists repeatedly upon the table as he continued,—

“He has been my bane—my curse—and he is so now! He boasts of his cunning, and calls me a muddle-headed beast. I’ll muddle his head for him. Curse him—curse him.”

“A precious rogue he must be,” said the butcher.

“He is a sneaking, cowardly villain. He is one of those who won’t do his share of an ugly job, and yet wants more than his share of the reward.”

“Humph! An ugly job.”

“Yes—I said it—drink—drink.”

“What’s his name?” said the butcher.

“His name is Jacob Gray.”

“A nice name for a small party. Well, we’ll settle his business for him—humanely, you know, Master Britton, always humanely, say I. My cleaver is the thing—there ain’t no sort of trouble with it, you may depend.”

“Bond,” whispered Britton.

“Britton,” said Bond.

“If there should be any occasion, which I think there will be, to smash this fellow, do you mind lending me that same cleaver of yours?”

“Sartinly not.”

“Thank you—thank you. Keep a look out now, by the door, and when you see a pale, ill-looking scoundrel walk out—no, sneak out, I mean—follow him. He will be the proper man, I wait here your return, good Master Bond, and then we can take what steps, after you have found out where he lives, we may agree upon. More canary there!”

Britton kept taking huge draughts of liquor as he instructed the butcher, in what he wished him to do, and now his voice began to thicken, and he had but a very confused recollection of what he had confided to him, and what he had kept secret.

“D—n the Old Smithy,” he cried; “who cares? Not I. I’d live there again although there are some strange sights and sounds.”

The butcher looked confused, and then in his peculiar elegant phraseology he asked Britton what the h—ll he meant.

“What do I mean?” said Britton; “why, I mean what I say, to be sure. You know what I mean well enough—I tell you this infernal thing that’s now up stairs, kept me at the anvil for years, when I ought to have been, as I am now, a gentleman.”

“Oh,” said the butcher, “I suppose he gave you an amazing lot of work and wouldn’t pay for any of it till it was all done?”

“I suppose you’re a fool,” said Britton.

“Thank you,” replied Bond; “you may abuse me as much as you like, I’m your best friend, and can stand it. You know you’ll go far afore you can find another fellow as can drink as much as me.”

Britton seemed struck with the force and truth of this remark, and he took another huge draught of liquor before he replied,—

“That’s true—you are a good fellow; never mind me—I—I should like to see the Old Smithy again before the last drop goes down my throat.”

“The old who?”

“The Old Smithy at Learmont. I’ve had some pleasant hours there and some unpleasant ones, just as it happened. In for a penny, you know, and in for a pound, so I wasn’t going to say nay to the squire, you understand, and be d—d to you.”

“Yes, I understand, that is to say, I don’t exactly comprehend,” said Bonds trying to look very knowing.

“Then you’re a fool,” again cried Britton.

“Very well,” said Bond, with tipsy gravity, “very good—this here’s the state of the case:—You’ve got an animal up stairs, you says—very good. You wants me to take my cleaver, and see what’s to be done.”

“That’s the thing.”

“Then what the deuce do you mean by keeping the creature waiting for, eh?”

“Because I know him,” laughed Britton. “It’s Jacob Gray, you know.”

“Oh, is it? It may be Jacob anything else for all I know about him.”

“I tell you it’s Jacob Gray,” reiterated Britton, striking his fist on the table.

“Very well,” roared the butcher, dealing a much louder blow than Britton’s and making the glasses dance again.

“Then I know he’s trembling—groaning with fear. He thinks his last hour is come—I know he does. He suffers now more than as if we were to go up now and cut his throat.”

“Stop a bit,” said the butcher, “always knock creturs on the head afore you cuts their throats—mallet ’em first—always mallet first—it’s so very humane, it is.”

“Come on,” cried Britton; “you, know what you have to do. Follow him closely and surely, and bring me word where he lives. Then we can go to-morrow night, and you may mallet him till he has no head to mallet—hurrah!”

“A d—d fool!” muttered the butcher, as he immersed a considerable portion of his immense red face in the bowl of liquor before him, nor took it out while there was a drain left.

The bar was not half-a-dozen paces from the door of the room in which Andrew Britton and Bond had been sitting, and half drunk as the smith was, he fancied, when he had his hand upon the door, that he heard the scuffling of some one’s feet running away from it. This circumstance raised his ire wonderfully, and the suspicion it gave rise to, that the landlord was playing the spy upon him, nearly choked him with rage.

He paused a moment and glanced towards the bar, but no one was to be seen by the lamp which cast a tolerable light over the many bottles and bright measures there collected. Britton muttered a curse, and was about to pass on towards the staircase, when he saw from the other side of the bar a head slowly rise and then suddenly pop down again.

An exclamation of anger was upon his lips, but he repressed it, and a strong desire to perpetrate some practical joke upon the landlord for his cunning propensities occurred to him. After a few moments’ thought, he returned to the room he had just left, and arming himself with a massive poker, he winked mysteriously at the butcher, who followed him in silent amazement, wondering against whom the powerful weapon was about to be used.

When Britton reached the bar, he placed his finger on his lips, as an invocation to Bond to keep silence, and then he stationed himself with the poker in such a position, that if the head should protrude again, he could by a lateral sweep of the heavy bar of iron, for such if was, make sure of dealing upon it a tolerable rap.

In point of fact, the landlord had been listening to the dialogue between Britton and his friend, the butcher, and then had scampered into his own bar, and with an excess of cunning for which there was no sort of occasion, had stooped down behind his own bar, where he might have showed himself boldly, with far less suspicion attached to him.

Britton had taken his measures well, for in less than a minute the top of the landlord’s head appeared, but before his eyes got to the level of the bar, the smith dealt what there was of his head such a terrible thwack with the poker, that he fell down in the bar with a deep groan.

Britton’s delight at this achievement knew no bounds, and without caring in the least whether the landlord’s skull was fractured or not, he sat down on the stairs and laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks.

“Here,” he then cried to the butcher, “take this back,” throwing the poker to him, which Bond caught very dexterously in one of his immense hands. “I haven’t been so amused for a long time; keep watch, and I’ll send the fellow down stairs in a minute.”

“That Britton is certainly a clever man in some things,” remarked the butcher, quite confidently to himself, as he lit his pipe calmly by the lamp.

Britton was in a remarkably good humour as he ascended the staircase to liberate Jacob Gray, who, he had not the least idea, had made his escape in the manner we have related. He had had plenty of drink, Jacob Gray, as he imagined, was in his power, and he had been just most amazingly amused by the little affair of the poker.

“Who says Andrew Britton is a fool and a thick-headed brute?” he muttered as he ascended the stairs; “I will be one too many for cunning clever Jacob Gray yet. I have him now safe—I have him. He cannot escape me—though what the devil brought him here, I can’t guess. That’s all a lie about coming here to warn me of anything; he must have been set on to watch me by Learmont, and yet would he venture? I must make him tell me before he goes.”

Britton paused a moment and took a clasped knife from his pocket. Then he added, coolly,—

“I’ll cut off one of his ears if he don’t tell exactly what brought him here. Besides that, it will be a good plan, for he’ll then be identified wherever he goes.”

Britton stopped at the door of the attic to laugh before he unlocked it.

“Jacob is in a horrid fright—I’m sure he is,” he muttered; “d—n me, I’ll—I’ll alarm him a bit.”

Britton applied his mouth to the key-hole, and made an unearthly kind of noise, that had Jacob Gray been there, would have gone far towards frightening him into fits. Then he dealt the door a bang with his fists, that made the whole attic shake again.

“He’s half dead, I know he is,” he cried; “upon my word I haven’t had such a pleasant evening for a long time.”

The smith then, after several efforts, for he was not in the steadiest condition, succeeded in unlocking the door. There burnt the light, nearly expiring, and Jacob Gray was gone.

For a moment Britton could scarcely believe his eyes. He then rushed to the open window, and the truth flashed across his mind. After all Jacob Gray had escaped him. A torrent of curses burst from his lips, and he sunk upon a chair quite exhausted by his ungovernable passion.

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Chapter LXXVIII

Gray on the House Tops.—Specimens of the Rising Generation.—The Old Attic.

Gray’s situation on the house tops was as far from being safe as it was far from pleasant, for the rapidly advancing daylight, he felt conscious, would very soon make him a prominent object to the whole liberty of Westminster, if he found not some means of descending.

His standing upon the parapets, and in the gutters, along which he crawled, was insecure in the extreme, and his nervousness, from repeated slips which nearly precipitated him into the street, increased each moment, so that he began to feel that, unless he got refuge speedily somewhere, he should meet with a fatal and disastrous accident. His idea was to get in at some attic window, and so make his way into the street through the house; but this, although the only possible means that he could think of, for rescuing him from his very precarious situation, was fraught with dangers and difficulties; for who would allow a man to get in at an attic window, and walk undisturbed through their house into the street?

Jacob Gray, groaned as he thought of this, and wrung his hands in despair. “I cannot fight my way out,” he muttered. “There is but one remote chance for me, and that is to get into some house where there are no men. I may succeed in alarming females, so that they may be glad to let me go in peace, but what a slender hope is that.”

“There he goes!“ shouted a baker’s boy at this moment, looking up and pointing at Gray, who nearly fell into the street with the suddenness of the alarm.

Several chance passengers now stopped, and pointed Gray out to others; so that his situation was becoming every moment more precarious.

“Stop thief! There he goes!” shouted the boy again, setting down his basket of bread, and resolved, as boys always are under such circumstances, to see the affair out.

“Who is it?” cried several.

“Guy Fawkes,” said the boy.

There was a laugh among the crowd, which was rapidly increasing; and now an old lady put her head out of the window of the house on the parapet of which was the trembling Jacob Gray, and inquired, in an angry tone, what was the matter, and particularising the baker’s boy as a young ruffian, wanted to know how he had collected the crowd opposite the house.

The boy with the peculiar wit of his “order” placed his hand to his ear, affecting not to have heard the old lady, upon which, to the great amusement of the crowd, she screamed out—,

“Oh, you villain, I heard you call me a guy, but I’ll speak to your master, I will, you wretch.”

“You’ll make yerself ill, mum,” said the boy, “if yer hexerts yer old lungs so.”

The old lady shook her fists at him, and the crowd roared with laughter.

Jacob Gray could see that the mob was very much amused at something, but what it could be he had no means of knowing, for the same obstacle, in the shape of a projecting parapet, which prevented the old lady from seeing him, also prevented him from seeing her. He endeavoured to crawl round an angle of a roof and escape, observation while the altercation was going on; but neither the baker’s boy nor a sweep who had joined his persecutors, would permit such a thing for a moment, and they at once called out,—

“There he goes—there he goes!”

“What do you mean?” screamed the old lady to the sweep.

“There’s a poll parrot, mum, a-top o’ your house,” replied the sweep.

“A what?” screamed she leaning as far out of the window as she could, and looking up.

“Mind yer eye, mum,” shrieked the baker’s boy, and amid a perfect roar of laughter, the old lady withdrew her head in a moment.

“You—you little abominable miscreant,” she cried, “I’ll come down to you!”

“Thank you, mum.”

“There’s a man on the roof,” said some one near.

“A man?”

“Yes; just on the corner of the parapet.”

“Preserve us,” cried the old lady, leaning out of the window again and looking.

“Lean out as far as you can, mum,” cried the sweep.

“I am,” said the old lady.

“A little further, then, and you’ll see him.”

Here was another laugh, and Jacob Gray, with a great effort, succeeded in turning the corner of the roof just as the old lady produced a tremendous rattle, which she began springing violently at the window, to the rapturous delight of the crowd below.

“He’s gone into Smith-street,” cried several of the throng, and a rush round the corner was made to keep Jacob Gray in sight.

When he got round the corner of the roof which had cost him so much trouble, the first thing that poor Jacob Gray did was to fall over a pail that was set out at an attic window, into a dirty drain full of black slimy mud, interspersed here and there with delicate streaks of green and blue. When he recovered from the shock of his fall, his first thought was to rise as quickly as possible, but his second was to lie where he was, as by so doing he was hidden by the parapet from the gaze of those in the street.

But Jacob Gray was not at all aware of the ready invention and cunning of boys in the streets of London, and it was with a curse that, if curses were effective as implements of death would have destroyed both the sweep and the baker’s boy he heard the latter suggest,—

“Oh, he is in the drain—I know he is—give us a stone, and I’ll hit him.”

“If ever,” muttered Gray, “I come across you, and I shall know your confounded cracked voice again, I’ll wring your neck.”

The words were scarcely out of his mouth, when a good-sized stone came down upon him with a very disagreeable plump. It had been thrown by the boy with that accuracy that boys acquire in throwing stones from the abundance of practice that they have in that polite accomplishment.

“Well, my covey, did it hit you?” cried the boy then in a very insulting tone.

Gray looked up from among the mud, and he saw that the attic window was open. It was very low, and he thought he might crawl in without being seen; at all events it was better than being pelted with stones in a gutter,—and having satisfied himself that the attic was empty, he partially rose from the gutter, and had the satisfaction, such as it was, of gliding over the window-sill without being seen.

This was one object gained at all events, and he stood the picture of misery and wretchedness, gazing around him upon the scantily furnished room, in which there was nothing but a small bed made upon a board laid across trussels, and one rickety chair.

Exhausted, dispirited, and weak, Jacob Gray sat down upon the chair, but it seemed as if in small matters as well as great, the fates would never have done persecuting him, for he had not noticed that his chair was minus a leg, and the consequence was that Jacob Gray came down on the floor with a great noise, which was more than sufficient to alarm anybody in the house.

He in an agony of apprehension rose instantly, and flew to the window, but then the risk of traversing house tops in broad daylight, which it now very nearly was, came across him, and he recoiled from the window, feeling that in all probability, his least danger lay in remaining where he was, and endeavouring to excite by some spurious tale the compassion of the persons of the house.

His heart, however, felt sick and faint as he waited in trembling expectation of some one coming; and as minute after minute rolled onwards, leaving him still alone, he felt it would be a relief to his mind if they would come at once, and not leave him on the rack of apprehension.

His senses became powerfully acute to the least noise, and once or twice he fancied he heard a creaking noise upon the staircase, as if some one was coming cautiously up to capture him. This feeling grew each moment until it became awfully intolerable, and he trembled so excessively that he could not, as he wished open the door to see if any one was upon the stairs.

A dreadful apprehension came across his mind that whoever was coming might be armed with, perhaps, a blunderbuss, which might, on the moment of his appearance, be discharged in his, Jacob Gray’s, face, and so finish his career at once by a death of agony. The moment this apprehension began to haunt him he looked around him for some place of temporary concealment, and observing a cupboard at one end of the room, he glided cautiously towards it, resolving to take refuge within it until he should hear, by the voices of those who might be coming, what might probably be their station in life and their intentions.

The cupboard door was only fastened with a button, and Jacob Gray turned cautiously. The door, from the pressure of something inside, immediately came wide open. A cry of terror burst from Jacob Gray, as a dead body apparently frightfully mangled, fell at his feet.

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Chapter LXXIX

The Interview between Albert and Learmont.—The Promise, and Albert’s Relation.

Albert Seyton was punctual to his appointment with Learmont, and after waiting for ten minutes, was ushered into the small room in which the miserable squire usually sat.

Days seemed to be doing the work of years upon Learmont. His coal-black hair was tinged with grey, and there were deep furrows on his cheeks, which were of that dead ashy-looking white colour, if colour it could be called at all, that the former sallow tint of his complexion had recently given way to.

Take his appearance altogether as he there sat in a chair, the back of which was placed against the wall with a table and writing materials before him, he looked a man to be shunned or pitied, according as the observer might translate his looks to imply disease of body, or that worse disease of the mind resulting from a perturbed conscience.

He slightly started as Albert entered the room, and then, in reply to his bow, he said in a hollow voice, which sounded as if it came from the lips of a corpse risen from the grave,—

“Good day, young sir.”

“Good day, sir,” replied Albert. “I am here in obedience to your command.”

“Yes—yes,” muttered Learmont, leaning his head upon his hand. “You are here, and punctual—very punctual.” He then seemed to fall into a fit of abstraction, and added, “He is not here. Can he have taken alarm? Or he will be here anon?”

“Sir,” said Albert.

Learmont started, exclaiming,—

“Who spoke?”

“I thought you addressed me, sir?”

“No—no—I—I—said nothing. You are very young, and yet have known trouble, you say?”

“There has been much trouble, sir, crowded into the brief space of my existence,” replied Albert. “I have lost all that I loved.”

“All?” echoed Learmont.

“Yes, sir, all,” sighed Albert.

“You have no ties then to bind you to the world, and make you pause in any undertaking? You are like me, a lone man. I am lone, and quite desolate; but I pride myself upon my isolation. I would not be surrounded by what the mass of mankind rejoice in, in the shape of connexions, for worlds.”

Albert said nothing, and, after a pause, Learmont added, hastily,—

“You bear in mind our conversation of yesterday?”

“I do, sir, and am ready to perform the honourable service you mentioned to me.”

Albert laid some stress upon the word honourable, and Learmont replied, coldly,—

“Well, sir, it is honourable service.”

“I know it is, sir.”

“You know it is.”

“Yes, sir—I know it is so, or, as the son of a soldier and a gentleman, I should never have had it proposed to me by you.”

A sneer passed over Learmont’s face as he said,—

“My young friend, soldiers, and gentlemen, and their sons, are not all as particular as you.”

“I am sorry for it, sir.”

“Nay, why should you be? Among stars would you not wish to shine the brightest? ’Tis well that some soldiers and gentlemen are not so very scrupulous; for don’t you see, young sir, that it makes your great virtue shine with double lustre.”

Albert did not wholly relish the tone of irony in which this was said, and his cheek slightly flushed as he replied,—

“It were unbecoming in me to dispute with you, sir.”

There was a silence of some moments’ duration, and then Learmont said, abruptly,—

“You will follow the man home upon whose track I will put you. Awaken in his mind no shadow of doubt, or all—I—I mean much is lost. He is crafty; but bear this in mind through life—to outwit the crafty, you have but to be simple.”

“I will do my best, sir.”

“Do so, and your reward will be commensurate with your deserts. Surely he will come.”

“I hope you will find him honester than you suppose him to be,” remarked Albert.

“You hope I may find him honest! May all the torments of hell consume him!”

“Sir?”

“I—I don’t mean him. No matter—I am not quite well. Young man, beware, whatever you may see, hear, or surmise in this house, must remain locked in your own heart.”

“Sir,” said Albert shrinking from the basilisk glance of Learmont, “my duty is simple. I have but to obey your honourable orders, and I shall do so to the utmost of my humble ability. It were, indeed, a poor return for your kindness to me, to babble of you or your affairs.”

“Well, so it would—you are right there,” said Learmont. “I would fain bind you to me and my interests by kindness—such substantial kindness as you would appreciate; and never forget I am rich—have some power, and am willing to use my wealth, and exert my influence. Can I serve you in any matter? You hinted that you had a source of trouble.”

Albert’s heart beat, tumultuously at these words, and his first thought was,—

“Will he exert his wealth and influence in assisting me to discover Ada?”

Learmont saw his agitation and said,—

“Speak freely. But should the man whom I wish you to follow arrive here during our converse, you must finish your story another time. I wish you to speak freely, and if I can bind you to me by benefit conferred upon you, I shall think myself well repaid.”

“Sir,” said Albert, “were—were you—you—”

“What?”

“Ever in love, sir?”

“I love?—I in love?—I?”

“Pardon me, sir, for asking the question, but the sadness that has hung like a leaden weight upon my heart for so long has arisen from the deep sympathy felt for the forlorn condition of one who even then seemed by some mysterious influence, creeping around my heart.”

Learmont leaned back in his chair with a slight yawn, but Albert was too much interested in his own subject to notice the contemptuous impatience of his auditor.

“When my poor father died,” he continued, “I felt great grief; but that was a grief that time would assuage. It left nothing to the imagination to work upon, and continue building up unavailing sorrow. On the contrary, when the first shock of parting with those we love—when death has robbed us of them, is over, and when reason resumes her reign—we should rejoice that they have left such fleeting and uncertain joys as this world affords for that which is eternal and knows no change; but where I loved, where I gave my whole heart’s affection, sir, there indeed I have much cause for sorrow, and there is far too ample food for dreamy fancy to work upon.”

“Indeed,” said Learmont.

“I fear I tire you, sir.”

“Not at all, not at all, go on.”

“A considerable time since, sir, and I believe before your worship came to London, my father and I lodged in a mean house not very far from here, for we were poor. My father was waiting for his just remuneration for services rendered to ungrateful people. I was but a boy, sir, but from the time of my residence in that house, I may date the commencement of a love which, although I knew not then its existence, became a part of my nature, and will accompany me to the grave.”

“Oh,” said Learmont. Then he muttered to himself, “what can detain Jacob Gray?”

Albert continued:—

“In the same house, sir, lodged a strangely matched couple. The one was a man of wily and sinister aspect, ever crawling instead of walking—insinuating, rather than saying, what he wished to convey—a man that had villain stamped upon, his face.”

“I rather think,” said Learmont, “I could match you such a man.”

“Let us hope, sir, there are few such,” added Albert, “but of such a character was he, who daily slunk in and out of this house, living apparently in great poverty. With him dwelt a young girl.”

“Ah,” thought Learmont, “love and poverty, the old story.”

“Oh, sir, she was beautiful—beautiful as Heaven, and her face was as a speaking mirror in which you might read all the pure and noble feelings of her soul. She must have been of noble and high origin, for the seeds of every high virtue were implanted in her breast, and even then were budding forth in beauty.”

“The soft blush of an Italian dawn, sir, was not more beautiful than were her eyes. Her brow, of snowy whiteness, rivalled the rarest sculpture, and her mouth—”

“You may describe her to me some other time,” said Learmont, with a slight tone of impatience.—“I should like to know how I can serve you.”

“I have lost her, sir.”

“Oh! You have lost her. Well, I presume she is to be found?”

“By your influence and means, sir, she may; but alas! I scarcely know in what direction to commence the search.”

“Did you wed her?”

“No, sir; had I done so, a world in arms should not have separated us.”

“The father then, I presume, was adverse to your suit?”

“She had no father, sir—no mother—no relations—no friend in the world but me, and I left her in peril; and never saw her more—never—never!”

“Go on with your story.”

“He who was with her, or rather held her in durance, was a mysterious man. I have often thought, sir, some great crime weighed heavily upon his heart.”

“Perhaps so,” said Learmont, in a hollow voice. “Perhaps so. His life might have been one long mistaken, and he bartered for gold that which was priceless. Go on—go on.”

“He seemed, sir, ever wakeful to some great danger, and if ever there was a miserable man, it was that man.”

“Well—well,” said Learmont.

“Time passed, and still I fondly, dearly loved. She would have left him, or denounced him for his cruelty, but then she always had the dread upon her spirit that he might be what he appeared to be—her father; so, sir, she bore with much, and with a noble spirit would not sacrifice him, by which I much fear she has sacrificed herself. Still are they living in some dark obscurity in London, or—or he has killed her! Alas! Alas! My poor Ada!”

“Ada was her name?”

“It was, sir.”

“Why does this cold shudder come over me?” muttered Learmont as he trembled in his chair.

“But the most strange circumstance of all,” continued Albert, “connected with the affair, was that this man Gray—”

A cry arose from Learmont that startled Albert to his feet in a moment, and with pale, ghastly features and distorted lips, the squire stood opposite to him, glaring in his face with distended eyes and such an awful expression, that step by step, the young man went backwards towards the door, for the thought flashed across his mind that his patron was a madman.

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Chapter LXXX

The Unfortunate Confidence of Albert Seyton.—Learmont’s Promises and Treachery.

When Albert Seyton got near the door, Learmont cried in a harsh voice,—

“Stop, stop—’twas only a passing spasm, I am subject to them, very subject to them. Come back, young sir, come back.”

He reeled a step or two as he spoke, and then sunk into a chair, muttering,—

“I—I have not strength now to bear me up against these sudden surprises. Can it be really he, and I, listening with so much indifference to what touched me so nearly, and yet it cannot be—I dare not question him.”

“Are you better, sir?” said Albert.

“Yes—yes, better now. Ring yon bell, and order wine.”

Albert rung a lusty peal upon the bell, and an attendant promptly answered the summons, standing respectfully for orders.

Learmont rose and approached the man, who became evidently much frightened lest his imperious master was for some real or imagined fault going to execute summary vengeance upon him.

“Mercy, sir, your worship,” he cried.

“Fool!” growled Learmont, as he reached the door; and then inclining his head close to the man’s ear he said;—“If Jacob Gray should come while this young gentleman is with me, show him into a room, but do not announce him.”

“Yes, yes, your worship.”

“Make no mistake, or I will have you hung, fellow.”

“No—no—no, your worship, I won’t make any mistake, I ain’t to announce Jac—”

“Silence, and begone,” cried Learmont, in a loud voice, and the man precipitately retired in a great fright.

“Oh! I forgot the wine,” said Learmont, as he turned from the door, “ring again if you please.”

Albert rung, and with a pale face the servant just came to the threshold of the door.

“Wine,” cried Learmont, and the man disappeared immediately with a jerk, as if he had been pulled away by some wire.

“You will continue your narration,” said Learmont, trying to impart some moisture to his parched lips—“you—you—named Gray, I think, as the man’s name?”

“I did, sir—Jacob Gray.”

Learmont was prepared for this, and he only gave a slight start, as the familiar name came upon his ears. “Go on—go on,” he said.

“I was about to tell you that he kept a mysterious written paper in his room, addressed on the outside to Sir Francis Hartleton, the magistrate.”

“Addressed on the outside to Sir Francis Hartleton, the magistrate,” muttered Learmont—“then, then, it was true.”

“Sir!”

“Go on—go on.”

“This paper he always charged his young and beautiful companion to repair with herself to Sir Francis Hartleton, should he on any occasion not return or send to her within three clear days of the time he had limited his absence to extend to.”

“Indeed. ’Twas very strange.”

“It was, sir, and I always believed that the paper contained some particulars concerning the gentle girl he had held in such cruel and unjustifiable bondage.”

“No doubt—no doubt; well what happened next? Go on.”

“From that place one day they mysteriously removed, leaving behind them only an old trunk in which this strange paper used to be kept, and it was long ere I saw them again.”

“But you did!”

“I did, sir—I should, however, have informed you of another circumstance, but I fear, sir, I weary you—you are not well, sir.”

“Yes, yes—quite well.”

“Some other time when you may feel disposed to listen to me, sir—I—”

“Go on, now—go on—it amuses me much—very much—I have not been so interested in anything for a long time—I beg you will go on.”

“You are very kind, sir. Then as I was saying I forgot to tell you that this young girl was, when I first knew her, disguised in the dress of a boy, and called Harry Gray.”

“Disguised as a boy?—Humph—An artful, very cunning trick.”

“Yes, sir, but objectless surely—I thought her a boy, and then she was beautiful, and I could have lived or died for Harry Gray, but when after that, I saw her in the clothing more becoming to her sex, and knew her as my own beautiful Ada, how different were my feelings—I passionately loved her.”

“And she?”

“Returned my heart’s devotion with all the frankness of her noble nature.”

“Where was she when you saw her last?”

“I met her in St. James’s Park—she had fled from the house to which this man Gray had hurried her, and where he had kept her a close prisoner for a weary space of time. Then I madly parted with her, as I thought but for an hour, and I have never seen her since.”

“Where was the house?”

“A ruined condemned house by South Lambeth—a wretched den.”

Learmont drew a long breath, as he said,—“You say she has escaped from him? How was that?”

“Some men had sought his life, she told me, and he had assured her that his only chance of preservation lay in their not finding her with him; and moreover, as they supposed her a boy, she might escape and so preserve herself and him by attiring herself in the proper habiliments of her sex.”

“Yes—yes—she did?”

“She did, sir, on the mere doubt that he might be her father.”

“Well? And after that?”

“After that I never saw her. I have searched in every place in London. I have wearied myself with a long and useless hunt. I have inquired until I met with insolence from some, and mockery from others. Oh, sir, if indeed you will aid me in this matter, I do, from my heart, believe that while you make two beings happy who will ever bless your name,—you will likewise be unmasking some monstrous villany which this man Jacob Gray has been concerned in.”

“Bless my name,” muttered Learmont, with a shudder.

“With your means, and your influence with the authorities, we must surely succeed,” continued Albert. “Oh, then, sir, consider what a glorious reflection it will be to you to see our happiness, and tell yourself that if was all your work.”

“The—the wine, sir,” said the trembling servant, coming into the room. Learmont motioned it to be laid before him, and then filled a bumper that quite astonished Albert, and tossed it off at one draught.

“Drink,” he said, as he pushed a decanter across the table to Albert. “It will raise your spirits to tell me the remainder of your strange eventful story.”

Albert drank a small quantity of the generous fluid, and then he said,—

“I have nearly told you all, sir. Everything else with me must be conjecture. I should, however, mention that I called upon Sir Francis Hartleton, with the hope of interesting him in the affair, but he took but little heed of it.”

“Indeed!”

“Yes; he was but lukewarm as regarded all I told him, and I believe did nothing in the matter.”

“And yet you told him all you have related to me,” said Learmont.

“All, sir; but there are some men who will not step out of the beaten track of their duty for any consideration.”

“True, true, Mr. Seyton. I believe this man to be an overpraised man. Indeed, I am far from having the high opinion of him he seems to have obtained from most persons. I should advise you to shun him. Do not call upon him; and, should you even by chance meet him, avoid any conversation concerning this matter. I am chary of interfering with men’s reputation, but I know sufficient of this Sir Francis Hartleton to beware of him as a hollow friend.”

“In truth, sir, I believe,” said Albert, “that I shall have but little trouble in shunning him; for I was denied admittance to him twice when I called, since my first interview.”

“Ay, that shows you the man. He found that there was difficulty, and perhaps danger, in the affair, and no immediate profit or reputation; so, you see, he treated you coldly.”

“He did treat me coldly.”

“Then you rely upon me. If needs be, I will become such powerful assistance for you that you must succeed; and should you by any means discover the abode of this Jacob Gray, I think you had better bring me word, without adopting any mode of action of your own, and then we can consult upon some safe and effectual means of serving you.”

“I feel your kindness, sir, most sensibly,” said the grateful Albert, “and—”

“Well, well,” interrupted Learmont—“I am sure you will be grateful. I have no service for you to-day, for it is long past the hour this man should have been here; but attend me here to-morrow morning at the same time.”

“I shall be punctual, sir,” said Albert rising.

“Good day—good day,” said Learmont.

Albert bowed and left the room.

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