The prisoner, deeply sensible of his precarious position, embraced his trembling wife: but Susi would not leave him; she clung to him in all the madness of sorrow.
"I say! you've had time enough to howl and lament!" cried the justice. "Make an end of it, and be off!" And suiting the action to the word, he seized Susi by her dress, and led her to the door. Mr. Catspaw and the steward followed her; but the justice stayed behind, gloating over the sufferings of the prisoner. At length he laughed, and said,—"I say, Viola, who's the man that's in at the death? Who'll swing? I said I'd do it, and you see I'm as good as my word!" And turning on his heels, he left the room, and locked the door.
Two of the soberest men were placed in the hall to watch that door; but even they, thanks to the endeavours of Janosh, were not sober enough for Mr. Catspaw, who was just in the act of lamenting that, in consequence of their host's excessive liberality, there was not a man in the house but was drunk, when he was interrupted by Mr. Skinner.
"Who is drunk? What is drunk?" said the worthy justice, turning fiercely upon the attorney. "I say, sir, nobody's drunk here—no one was drunk here—no one will be drunk—and indeed no one can be drunk! That's what I say, sir! Who dares to contradict me?"
"Don't be a fool!" whispered the attorney; "who the devil said any thing of you? But look at these fellows! they're roaring drunk."
"D—n you, he's right!—Confound you, you are roaring drunk! Blast me, I'll have you hanged! If that robber escapes, one of you shall swing in his place! I say, fellows, look sharp! It's truly disgusting," continued the sapient justice, "that men will get drunk—drown their reason in wine, for all the world like so many beasts."
The sentinels vowed, as usual, that they had not had a drop ever so long, and that the prisoner should not escape though he were the very devil; but Mr. Catspaw, alike distrustful of their vigilance and sobriety, insisted on seeing the door double-locked, and on taking away the key. Mr. Skinner protested against this encroachment on the duties of his office. He knew that the attorney suspected him of being less sober than he might have been, and this suspicion rendered him the more obstinate. He pocketed the key and sought his bed-room, denouncing drink and drunkards in the true temperance meeting style.
The inmates of Kishlak manor-house followed his example. The judges, the sentinels at the gate and round the house, the steward, and all retired to rest; and although Susi watched, though Kalman paced his own room with all the impatience of his age, and though old Kishlaki himself, for the first time since many years, courted sleep in vain, yet the house and its environs were hushed and silent. Stillness reigned in the prisoner's cell; the sentinels at the door stood gaping, and waiting for the hour of their relief. The night was cold, and though they did their best to keep the cold out, or at least out of their stomachs, they shivered and complained of the chilly night air. Janosh, who seemed to like the cold and darkness, had meanwhile met Peti, who held Viola's horse at the further end of the garden. The gipsy brought a crowbar and all other tools which they wanted for their purpose; he told the hussar that the Gulyash Ishtvan had promised to bring his cart and horses to the threshing-floor, in order to take away Susi and her children. The old soldier was greatly pleased with this good news. He tied the horse to the garden gate, and told the gipsy to conceal himself somewhere near the loft. This done, he went to look after the sentinels, whom, to his great disgust, he found still awake.
"Is it not ten o'clock?" asked one of them, when Janosh came up.
"Of course it is!" said his comrade. "I'd rather do any robot service than this cold kind of work. It's too much for a soldier, and it's far too much for me. My comrade here was in the wars; he tells me they never force soldiers to play the sentinel so long as we must."