“Five guineas!” echoed the parson with an oath: “five testers; five groats; five copper farthings—what life is worth more? Give him the lead, Jemmy.”
“Hold! I’m Captain Macartney!”
“Captain——! Phew—w—w!”
A moment’s intense silence followed. The two amazed ruffians looked at one another with eyes into which a gleeful cupidity was slowly born. “Captain!” Their gaze was transferred to the sitting figure. Jemmy lowered his pistol. The parson was all one ineffable smile.
“It fits, by God!” said he. “Why did it never occur to me? Two hundred pound, Jemmy, my boy! There’s Sir Townley Shore handy. We must risk it. Up with him before you. You’ve given us the best reason the last, Captain, my love. And you prefer the gallows to a bullet? Well, that’s just a matter of taste.”
They bound his arms behind him, and Jemmy set him before him on the big Flanders mare that he rode; and so they carried their prize, choosing the obscure ways in preference, to the house of Sir Townley Shore, the great county magistrate and magnate of Stoke d’Abernon, which lay a couple of miles the other side of Cobham.
There was a fine excitement in the Court when it was known that the notorious Captain was apprehended. Sir Townley, who was just come in and sitting down to his dinner, ordered in his staff, with a stout ranger or two for extra support, and sent for the prisoner and his guard. But the moment he clapped eyes on the former: “Why, Jack,” cried he in astonishment, “what the plague do you in this company?”
The two rogues, at that cry, stiffened aghast; but their captive advanced with a grin.
“I’ll tell you, Townley,” said he. “I’d not left you and the White Lion Inn a quarter of an hour, when, going on my way, these two gentlemen shot my horse, and, falling upon me, would have murdered me too had I not thought of the expedient of calling myself Macartney; whereby I not only incited them, hoping for the reward, to carry me into a place of safety, but I have the pleasure of presenting you with a couple of very complete gallows-birds for your trussing.”
He turned on the paralysed ex-cleric with a little gasp of laughter.