The fence groaned audibly.
"Fear not for your life," continued the highwayman: "I am no murderer:—my hands were never stained with blood—neither shall they be now! But, in regaining that which is my own—and with interest—aye, compound interest, too—I shall teach a heartless, grasping wretch a lesson that may render him more cautious in future how he sacrifices every human tie at the shrine of avarice! For even amongst such as you—such as I—such as the veriest wretches whose villany has helped to fill these stores,—the claims of kinship—the bonds of relationship have a recognition and a name. Many and many a man who is noted for his misdeeds—or who has even shed the blood of a fellow-creature—would respect the vow which he pledged to rear his dead sister's child. But you—you ruthlessly thrust away the helpless infant,—you cast off the offspring of that connexion which your own fearful thirst for gold had brought about! Now, then, shall I punish you through the medium of that passion which prompted you to sell my mother to the nobleman, and myself to the gipsy!"
With these words Rainford advanced close up to his prisoner, and said in a short, commanding manner, "The key of that safe—where is it?"
"The key?" repeated Old Death, his countenance becoming ghastly white.
"Yes—the key!" cried the highwayman; and he thrust his hands into the pockets of his captive's grey coat.
"No—no: you shall not have my gold!" howled the fence, agitating convulsively on his chair.
"Keep quiet!" thundered Rain; "or I shall do you a mischief yet! Keep quiet, I say.—Ah! here is the key! And now roll about, and rave, and foam as you will—I care not!"
"Villain! what are you doing?" exclaimed Old Death, his eyes glaring with ferocious hate—with infernal spite—with blood-thirsty malignity,—glaring, indeed, like those of a famished tiger caught in the snare of the hunter, and beholding a stately deer at a little distance: "what are you doing? You are going to rob me—to plunder me—after all I have done for you—all the good things I have put in your way! But I will be revenged yet—I will send you to the scaffold—I will wreak a terrific vengeance on your head. Keep off, I say—touch not that safe! Damnation light upon you!—perdition seize you! Oh! Tom—dear Tom—don't rob me—don't! You'll drive me to despair—I shall die of grief—and you will be my murderer Tom—do listen to me! Ah! he opens the safe—the wretch—the villain!"
Thus did Old Death menace and pray—coax and moan by turns; but at last his voice swelled into a howl of fiend-like rage, which rose like the wailing of a damned soul upon the silence of that early morning-hour.
But Rainford seemed indifferent alike to his earnest beseechings and his paroxysms of fury.