Joy glistened in the eyes of the peer while he listened. He had had doubts, he had had apprehensions, lest the testimony of his keeper against the gipsy should remain unsupported by other authority; and he had not left unremarked Harvey's implication that some of the other persons present differed with him in their account of the affair. But the assertion of Sir Roger Millington was conclusive; as he well knew, from his own former experience as a lawyer, what an effect the dying declaration of a murdered person always has upon a jury.
During the last twenty-four hours he had sometimes doubted whether he had or had not somewhat too intricately complicated his plans, in his eagerness to snatch at every thing which gave an additional chance of security; but now he congratulated himself that he had acted as he had done, and fancied that if he confidently and boldly pursued them, his mind was sufficiently acute to guide each of the schemes he had engaged in to the same great end and object,--the ensuring his own security by crushing those who could destroy it.
He now felt armed at all points. By the transactions of the preceding day he could prove the impossibility of his having committed the crime which he believed that Pharold would cast back in his teeth; and from the events of the preceding night he felt secure that if the gipsy should even be cleared of the murder of his brother and of his son, the last charge, in regard to the violence in Dimden Park, would be made good against him, and lay his dangerous lips in the silence of the grave. But in his eagerness to secure this advantage beyond the power of fate, Lord Dewry somewhat outran discretion. Without giving either himself or Sir Roger time to pause, he exclaimed, eagerly, "Will it not be better, my dear Sir Roger, at once to make a declaration, upon oath, of your recollections concerning the affair of last night?"
Sir Roger Millington looked at him suspiciously. "Do you think me dying, or do you not. Lord Dewry?" he demanded; "for if I am not dying, but likely to recover, I shall have plenty of time to make the declaration when I am not in such pain, or give the vivâ voce evidence, which is much better in a court of justice. So let me know the truth, my lord."
Lord Dewry saw that it was in vain to hope he would make the declaration he desired unless he believed himself to be dying; but the peer had a keen knowledge of human nature, and saw all the dangers which would attend the disclosure of his real state to Sir Roger Millington. He knew that men who have confronted the chance of death a thousand times, and, if one may use the expression, have bearded "the lean, abhorred monster" in his most angry moods, will writhe and flutter like a scared bird when he has got them in his inevitable grasp, and when they know that they cannot escape. He knew that these are the moments "that make cowards of us all;" and he feared lest some lingering notions of crime, and repentance, and another world should tempt Sir Roger Millington to an endeavour towards atoning past errors, by the confession of all those evil designs which were still in their passage between the past and the future, between the revocable and the irretrievable; and he would not have risked the chance for a world. He saw, however, that he had already created a doubt which might be dangerous; but, he extricated himself dexterously.
"God forbid, my dear Millington," he said, "that anything should be even likely to prevent your giving evidence when the trial of these gipsies comes on; but my only reason for wishing you to make the declaration was, that it might be produced at once before the magistrates, whom I shall request to meet here to-morrow or the day after, either to take measures for pursuing the villains vigorously, if they have not been arrested before that time, or to investigate the matter if they have, which I trust may be the case, as I have already set half the county on their track. Now what I wish is, that this Pharold may be committed directly; and you know that among a number of country magistrates there is always some prating, troublesome fellow, who throws difficulties in the way; and in this instance, it must be remembered, some of the people did not recognise Pharold, so that your evidence is of vital importance."
"Let them come to me," said Sir Roger, vehemently--"let them come to me, and I will give such evidence as would hang him half a dozen times over. I should like to be but a quarter of an hour in the same room with the scoundrel with two good small-swords. Only to think, my lord, of me--who have made the daylight shine through many a pretty man as one would wish to see--being hurt in this way by a stinking yellow fox of a gipsy, that is only fit to be hunted down by a good pack of hounds!"
"I trust we shall catch him," said the peer, who saw that it was vain to press the wounded man any further upon the subject of the declaration.
"Catch him!" cried Sir Roger, who was working himself up into a state of vehement excitement--"catch him! you cannot miss catching him, if you take proper means. By Jupiter, if you miss him, I'll undertake, for a small sum, to catch him myself as soon as I am well; or rather, I should say, catch the whole of them, for curse me if I know which of them it was that fired the shot."
"Indeed!" cried Lord Dewry; "I am sorry for that; I thought you were certain it was Pharold."