“Never did my eye misguide me, or my aim swerve a hair’s-breadth from its target! I thought once, when I learned the art as a boy, that in battle, rather than in the execution of a single criminal, that skill would avail me.”
“Well, we shall have a glorious opportunity to-morrow night!” answered the first speaker; “that is, if it does not rain so infernally as it does this night; but we shall have a watch of many hours, I dare say.”
“That matters but little,” replied the other conspirator; “nor even if, night after night, the same vigil is renewed and baffled, so that it bring its reward at last.”
“Right,” quoth the first; “I long to be at it!—ugh! ugh! ugh!—what a confounded cough I have! it will be my death soon, I’m thinking.”
“If so,” said the other, with a solemnity which seemed ludicrously horrible, from the strange contrast of the words and object, “die at least with the sanctity of a brave and noble deed upon your conscience and your name!”
“Ugh! ugh!—I am but a man of colour, but I am a patriot, for all that, my good friend! See, the violence of the rain has ceased; we will proceed;” and with these words the worthy pair left the place to darkness and Mr. Brown.
“O Lord!” said the latter, stepping forth, and throwing, as it were, in that exclamation, a whole weight of suffocating emotion from his chest, “what bloody miscreants! Murder his Majesty’s ministers!—‘shoot them like pigeons!’—‘d—d pretty shot!’ indeed. O Lord! what would the late Lady Waddilove, who always hated even the Whigs so cordially, say, if she were alive? But how providential that I should have been here! Who knows but I may save the lives of the whole administration, and get a pension or a little place in the post-office? I’ll go to the prime minister directly,—this very minute! Pish! ar’n’t you right now, you cursed thing?” upbraiding the umbrella, which, half-right and half-wrong, seemed endued with an instinctive obstinacy for the sole purpose of tormenting its owner.
However, losing this petty affliction in the greatness of his present determination, Mr. Brown issued out of his lair, and hastened to put his benevolent and loyal intentions into effect.