THE OATH—NED WARBECK IS ARRESTED FOR MURDER.
When Captain Jack had run himself out of breath, and had come to a dead standstill from sheer exhaustion, he leaned against a lamp-post, and, puffing and blowing, began to think what he had better do.
“What the devil must I do?” he mused. “I know not which way to go, or what to be up to. If I attempt to rob Colonel Blood to get money, the chances are ten to one I shall get a pistol ball in my head, or a sword through my side. If I do not get the money, why, then, those grim devils will skin me alive. Then I have to arrest Ned Warbeck, not an easy matter, for he has hosts of friends who would fight to the last for him.”
“Yet something must be done, and quickly,” he thought; “for though I have run away from that cursed house as fast as my legs would let me, I have no doubt that I am watched already, and followed about like a shadow.”
While he thus thought, a drunken man knocked against him.
“Hulloa, where are you going to?” said Captain Jack, feeling desirous of drawing his sword, and taking revenge upon somebody for the sad adventures of the night.
“Hulloa, where are you going to?”
“Where are you going to?” was the reply; “don’t you know a gentleman when you see one?”
“I do; but you are not one.”
“You seem to know me then.”