"Frisbie, stop lying. Did it herself, eh? I saw you do the deed. The razor was in your hands. She struggled and begged, poor creature, and cut her poor hands in her efforts to save her throat; but you completed your purpose effectually before I could appear and prevent you from murdering her. Then I kept your secret, since no good could have come of my telling it."
"Mercy, mercy, my lord! indeed it was unpremeditated! It was done in the heat of passion. She had driven me mad with jealousy!"
"Bosh! what do you suppose I care whether you committed the crime in hot blood or cold blood? whether it was the result of a momentary burst of frenzy or of a long premeditated and carefully arranged plan? It is enough for me to know that I saw you do the deed. You murdered that girl, and if the coroner's jury had not been just about the stupidest lot of donkeys that ever undertook to sit on a case, you would be now in jail waiting your trial for murder before the next assizes."
"Mercy, mercy, my lord! I am in your power!"
"Hold your tongue and get up off your knees and listen to me, you cowardly knave. Don't you know that if I had wished to hang you I could have done so by lodging information against you? Nonsense! I don't want to hang you. I think, with the Quaker, that hanging is the worst use you can put a man to. Now, I don't want to put you to that use. I have other uses for you. Get up, you precious knave!"
"Oh, my lord! put me to any use your lordship wishes, and no matter what it is, I will serve you faithfully in it!" said the wretch, rising from his knees and standing in a cowed and deprecating manner before his master.
"It is perfectly clear to me, Frisbie, that you settled that girl to silence a troublesome claimant of whom you could not rid yourself in any other way."
"Your lordship knows everything. It was so, my lord. She was all the time bothering me about broken promises and all that."
"And so you settled all her claims by one blow. Well, you have got rid of the woman that troubled you; and now I mean that you shall help me to get rid of one who troubles me."
"In—in—in the same manner, my lord?" gasped the man, in an accession of deadly terror.