“Well, well,” says the man of the Church, “mayhap that’s an assumed name; but surely, now, Sir, with not two hours of life left you, to me, me alone, Sir, it were wiser drop all disguises. Surely now you are not Sir Robin McTart?” in a soothing and sorrowful tone.
Peggy winces.
“Go seek and ask all the noblemen and gentlemen I’ve named, Sir, they’ll quickly set me to rights in your eyes, I pledge you. Oh, Sir, for the love of God!” cries she, whispering very low. “I speak the truth! I am no highwayman.”
“I am used to quibbles, Mr. Kidde; I know that now you are no robber, but merely a prisoner under sentence of death.”
“What!” cries she. “’Tis not possible that a man is taken, tried, disallowed to prove himself, and put out of the world, betwixt sunrise and breakfast, in the reign of His Majesty George the Third!”
“’Tis so,” answers the Curate, pulling the rope and leathers, and pushing Her Ladyship around a bit toward the east, as he points what he considers a salutary finger. “Yonder’s the gibbet, Mr. Kidde, and from it you must hang by eight. I implore of you now—”
Lady Peggy’s eyes are fastened upon the arms and cross-beams of the gallows, which are outlined clearly against the deep blue sky, and full in the shine of the spring sun.
“Well,” says she to herself, all in a flash, as thoughts can travel three abreast ofttimes, and twelve times quicker than the scrivener can set ’em down—“I’ve been a very accursedly wicked girl; but, thank God! my pride ain’t all gone yet. I’ll hang! but I’ll never give up my secret! When I’m gone, if they find it out—I won’t be here to be a-hearin’ of the taunts and jeers and sympathies; and of my mother’s and father’s sorrows!” At this point Peggy is very near to tears, when the Curate says, interrupting their possible flow:
“Now, Mr. Kidde, if you have any message for—your wife—perhaps?” he ejaculates hesitatingly, and with good knowledge that the marriage ceremony was one usually omitted from the code of gentlemen of the road.
“I have no wife!” cries Her Ladyship, in a heat betwixt her remorse for her parents and the unconscious ridiculousness of Mr. Frewen’s question.