"No, no, no," said the peer, "it must be better arranged than that. Let me see. The windows of the strong room look out into the close wood, and any one from the outside could saw away the iron bars. Yes, that will do. But the lad himself must be tutored in the first place. Quick, then, Harvey, go and bring your friend; and in the meantime I will see the boy alone. Do not come in till you hear that I have sent for you."
The keeper retired, and the peer again rang the bell, to direct that the young gipsy should be brought before him once more. His orders were promptly obeyed, and two stout fellows appeared, with the prisoner between them.
"Leave him with me," said the peer, as soon as they had brought him two or three steps forward in the room. The men, who had calculated on enjoying all the pleasures of a cross-examination, and who had even in their hearts formed the aspiration that they hoped his lordship would pump him well, stared with some mortification at being excluded from witnessing the mental torture of their fellow-creature; but Lord Dewry, who read something of the kind in their countenances, not only repeated his command, but bade them wait at the end of the adjoining passage till they were joined by Harvey, the head keeper. There was no resource; and therefore they obeyed, shutting the door, and leaving the peer face to face with the captive.
The gipsy youth might be eighteen or nineteen years of age; that season of life when enjoyment is in its first freshness; when all the world is as bright, and as sweet, and as sparkling as a summer morning; when imagination and passion are setting out hand in hand upon the ardent race that soon wearies them, and when memory follows them quick, gathering up the flowers that they pluck and cast away as they go, but not as yet burdened with any of the cares, or sorrows, or disappointments which they are destined to encounter in the end: he was, in fact, at that age when life is the sweetest. His form was full of nascent vigour, and his face was fine; but his whole countenance, though speaking, by its variety and play of feature, active imagination, and perhaps a degree of enterprise, betrayed a sort of uncertain, undecided expression, which is never to be seen in the face of the firm and the determined. The peer gazed on him for a moment, seeing all, and calculating all, in order to work upon his prisoner's mind by both his circumstances and his weaknesses.
"You are very young," he said at length, in a tone of stern gravity--"you are very young to be engaged in crimes like these. What is your age?"
That sort of dogged sullenness, half shyness, half hatred, which a contemned and separate race are from their infancy taught by nature to display towards their oppressors, was the only source of resistance in the character of the young gipsy, whose powers of resolution were naturally small, and whose mind was unfortified by firm and vigorous principles of any kind. It was sufficient in the present instance, however, to keep him silent; and he stood, with his dark eyes fixed upon the ground, and his arms hanging by his side, apparently as unmoved as if the peer had addressed him in a language that he did not comprehend.
"You are very young," repeated Lord Dewry, after waiting some time in vain for an answer--"you are very young to be engaged in crimes like these. Life must be sweet to you: there must be a thousand pleasures that you are just beginning to enjoy, a thousand hopes of greater pleasures hereafter; there must be many friends that you grieve to part with--and some," he added, seeing the youth's lip quiver--"and some that, doubtless, you love beyond anything on earth."
A tear rolled over the rich brown cheek of the gipsy boy, and betrayed that he not only understood what was said to him, but felt every word at his heart's core, as the peer, with barbarous skill, sought out every fresh wound in his bosom, and tearing them open one by one, poured in the rankling poison of insincere commiseration. "Ah!" continued Lord Dewry, "it is sad and terrible, indeed, to think of being--at the very moment when one is the happiest--at the very moment when one loves one's friends the best--at the very moment, perhaps, when all our hopes are about to be fulfilled--to think of being cut off from them all, and to die a horrid and painful death! and yet such must be your fate, my poor boy; such must be inevitably your fate, as a punishment for the murder committed in my park last night."
"I murdered no one," cried the youth, with a convulsive sob, that nearly rendered what he said unintelligible. "I murdered no one."
"But your companions did," answered the peer, glad to have forced him into breaking silence. "You were not present, it is true; but you trespassed on my park for evil purposes with those who did commit murder, and are therefore an accessary to the deed. Banish all hope, poor boy; for to-morrow I must certainly commit you to the county jail, from which you will only go to trial and to execution. I am sorry for you, I grieve for you, to think that you must never see again those you love; that you must be cut off in the prime of youth and happiness--I grieve for you, indeed."