“A hawful tride, if I may say so without offence,” he ventured. “Would it be the Peckham Rye murderer as you’re buying this rope for, or that poor soul who lost his temper with his wife’s mother down Forest Hill wye?”
“Neither,” I answered. “It is a man called Honeybun.”
“Honeybun! Ah! A ugly, crool nime! What’s he done?”
“Made a fool of himself.”
“Lord! if we was hung for that, there wouldn’t be much more talk of over-population—eh? Well, well, I s’pose he’ll be as ’appy with you and that bit of Jubbulpore as we can hope for him. A iron nerve it must want. Yet Mr. Ketch was quite the Christian at ’ome, I b’lieve. Not your first case, of course?”
I picked up the rope and prepared to depart.
“My very first experience,” I said.
“Pore soul!” exclaimed the feeling tradesman, but he referred to the criminal, not to me.
“For Gord’s sake don’t bungle it!” were the last husky words I heard from him; and then I set forth to hang Arthur Honeybun, who deserved hanging if ever a man did. I told myself this, and made a quotation which I forget.
And now arose one of the most sinister concatenations easily to be conceived in the life of a respectable citizen. Here was I on the brink of self-destruction; I only waited for some fellow-creature to restrain me. But nobody attempted to do so! My folly in disguising the truth from the little rope-merchant now appeared. Had he known, he had doubtless shown me my dreadful error in time; now it was too late; his only advice—sound undoubtedly—had been not to bungle it. The world pursued its own business quite regardless of me and my black secret and my hidden rope. Apparently there was really nothing for me to do but to lose my wager or hang myself—an alternative which I well knew would represent for my family a total pecuniary loss considerably greater than the sum involved.