‘Well!’ said Mr Dennis, mournfully, ‘if you an’t enough to make a man mistrust his feller-creeturs, I don’t know what is. Desert the banners! Me! Ned Dennis, as was so christened by his own father!—Is this axe your’n, brother?’
‘Yes, it’s mine,’ said Hugh, in the same sullen manner as before; ‘it might have hurt you, if you had come in its way once or twice last night. Put it down.’
‘Might have hurt me!’ said Mr Dennis, still keeping it in his hand, and feeling the edge with an air of abstraction. ‘Might have hurt me! and me exerting myself all the time to the wery best advantage. Here’s a world! And you’re not a-going to ask me to take a sup out of that ‘ere bottle, eh?’
Hugh passed it towards him. As he raised it to his lips, Barnaby jumped up, and motioning them to be silent, looked eagerly out.
‘What’s the matter, Barnaby?’ said Dennis, glancing at Hugh and dropping the flask, but still holding the axe in his hand.
‘Hush!’ he answered softly. ‘What do I see glittering behind the hedge?’
‘What!’ cried the hangman, raising his voice to its highest pitch, and laying hold of him and Hugh. ‘Not SOLDIERS, surely!’
That moment, the shed was filled with armed men; and a body of horse, galloping into the field, drew up before it.
‘There!’ said Dennis, who remained untouched among them when they had seized their prisoners; ‘it’s them two young ones, gentlemen, that the proclamation puts a price on. This other’s an escaped felon.—I’m sorry for it, brother,’ he added, in a tone of resignation, addressing himself to Hugh; ‘but you’ve brought it on yourself; you forced me to do it; you wouldn’t respect the soundest constitootional principles, you know; you went and wiolated the wery framework of society. I had sooner have given away a trifle in charity than done this, I would upon my soul.—If you’ll keep fast hold on ‘em, gentlemen, I think I can make a shift to tie ‘em better than you can.’
But this operation was postponed for a few moments by a new occurrence. The blind man, whose ears were quicker than most people’s sight, had been alarmed, before Barnaby, by a rustling in the bushes, under cover of which the soldiers had advanced. He retreated instantly—had hidden somewhere for a minute—and probably in his confusion mistaking the point at which he had emerged, was now seen running across the open meadow.