"Yes, sir," replied the youth, in a respectful manner.
The Black then quitted the room; and Jeffreys remained with the lad who had been addressed by the name of Cæsar.
CHAPTER LXXXVIII.
SCENES AT THE BLACKAMOOR'S HOUSE.
When the Black returned to the parlour where he had received from the lips of Jeffreys revelations which had produced a strange effect upon his mind, he threw himself upon the sofa, and gave way to his reflections.
Although he had been up all night, yet he experienced no sensation of weariness: he possessed a soul of such indomitable energy that by a natural kind of sympathy between mind and matter, it sustained even the physical powers to a wondrous degree.
We must follow him in the train of meditations into which he was plunged; for the affairs in which he suddenly found himself interested, through the confessions of John Jeffreys, were of so complicated and so difficult a nature,—involving, too, so many delicate points,—that to a mind endowed with one whit less of courage, or with one gleam less of clearness, those affairs would have appeared to be entangled beyond all possibility of a safe and prudent unravelling.
Let the reader bear in mind that there were two distinct affairs in question; although they might at a first glance be confounded, because certain persons who were connected with one were also involved in the other.
The first of these affairs was the scheme of Old Death to avenge himself on the Earl of Ellingham,—a scheme involving many frightful details, such as the exhumation of a coffin, the capture of Esther de Medina and Lady Hatfield, and the atrocity of blinding those fair and interesting creatures.
The other affair was the accusation of Mr. Torrens of a crime which he had not committed, and the necessity of proving his innocence.
"If those miscreants Tim the Snammer and Josh Pedler be informed against," reasoned the Black within himself, "they will be certain that either Benjamin Bones or John Jeffreys has betrayed them, and they will accordingly give a full and complete explanation, the result of which would be that the whole four would swing together. But I am bound to save Jeffreys from that terrible fate; and God forbid that that I should be the means, direct or indirect, of sending Benjamin Bones to the scaffold! And yet, on the other hand, knowing all that I have elicited from Jeffreys, and acting in the true spirit of that mission which I have voluntarily undertaken, I dare not allow this innocent man Torrens to be condemned by a frightful combination of circumstantial evidence, when the utterance of a single word will prove him guiltless and fix the crime on those who really perpetrated it. How stands the matter, then? Torrens must be saved on the one hand; but the real murderers must be allowed to escape on the other! Oh! this is a fatal necessity—a dreadful alternative; and yet it is imperious!"