“Harkee! Mr. Tuke. I don’t say I would have withheld my men from their just resentment; but that I took no active part in it is the truth.”
“What sucking infants, to be sure, are you and your schoolmaster! I shall believe just this—that Cutwater stabbed himself in twenty places and then jumped his neck into the chains. But—to be candid again, Mr. Fern—what an unperspicacious rascal you must have been to kill your goose with the golden eggs.”
“Sir, there is one crime that, to my mind, cries to heaven above all others for vengeance, and that is treachery on the part of a confederate. What was I to hesitate, if I was chosen the minister of a divine retribution? And now, by your leave, we will come to business.”
“What can there possibly be of that between us?”
“A little, sir—a little. The question of ransom, for instance.”
“Ransom—ransom? in the matter of a few hundreds of yards of drive?”
“What is that to the point? One may lie in Newgate and only three feet of wall separate him from free pavement.”
“Very pertinently put; and you have all the advantage of knowing. But, do you seriously propose, as a sane man, Mr. Fern, to place, at this end of the eighteenth century, a gentleman’s private house under siege?”
“I am bound to confess I do.”
“Well, you have your plans, I presume, that you are not likely to acquaint me of.”