"It's the lad, sure enough. Why, Cyril," he went on, seizing him by the hand, and shaking it violently, "we had never thought to see you alive again; we made sure that those pirates had knocked you on the head, and that you were food for fishes by this time. There has been no comforting my good wife; and as to Nellie, if it had been a brother she had lost, she could not have taken it more hardly."
"They did knock me on the head, and very hard too, Captain Dave. If my skull hadn't been quite so thick, I should, as you say, have been food for fishes before now, for that is what they meant me for, and there is no thanks to them that I am here at present. I am sorry that you have all been made so uncomfortable about me."
"We should have been an ungrateful lot indeed if we had not,
considering that in the first place you saved us from being ruined by
those pirates, and that it was, as we thought, owing to the services
you had done us that you had come to your end."
"But where have you been, Master Cyril?" Nellie broke in. "What has
happened to you? We have been picturing all sorts of horrors, mother
and I. That evil had befallen you we were sure, for we knew that you
would not go away of a sudden, in this fashion, without so much as
saying goodbye. We feared all the more when, two days afterwards, the
wretches were so bold as to attack the constables, and to rescue
Robert Ashford and another from their hands. Men who would do this in
broad daylight would surely hesitate at nothing."
"Let him eat his supper without asking further questions, Nellie," her father said. "It is ill asking one with victuals before him to begin a tale that may, for aught I know, last an hour. Let him have his food, lass, and then I will light my pipe, and John Wilkes shall light his here instead of going out for it, and we will have the yarn in peace and comfort. It spoils a good story to hurry it through. Cyril is here, alive and well; let that content you for a few minutes."
"If I must, I must," Nellie said, with a little pout. "But you should remember, father, that, while you have been all your life having adventures of some sort, this is the very first that I have had; for though Cyril is the one to whom it befell, it is all a parcel with the robbery of the house and the capture of the thieves."
"When does the trial come off, Captain Dave?"
"It came off yesterday. Marner is to be hung at the end of the week. He declared that he was but in the lane by accident when two lads opened the gate. He and the man with him, seeing that they were laden with goods, would have seized them, when they themselves were attacked and beaten down. But this ingenuity did not save him. Tom Frost had been admitted as King's evidence, and testified that Marner had been several times at the gate with the fellow that escaped, to receive the stolen goods. Moreover, there were many articles among those found at his place that I was able to swear to, besides the proceeds of over a score of burglaries. The two men taken in his house will have fifteen years in gaol. The women got off scot-free; there was no proof that they had taken part in the robberies, though there is little doubt they knew all about them."
"But how did they prove the men were concerned?"
"They got all the people whose property had been found there, and four of these, on seeing the men in the yard at Newgate, were able to swear to them as having been among those who came into their rooms and frightened them well-nigh to death. It was just a question whether they should be hung or not, and there was some wonder that the Judge let them escape the gallows."
"And what has become of Tom?"