“Give us your gold,” exclaimed the leader furiously, pricking the peddler with his bayonet until the blood followed his pushes in streams. At this instant a slight movement was heard in the adjoining room, and Harvey cried, imploringly:
“Let me—let me go to my father, and you shall have all of it.”
“I swear you shall go then,” said the Skinner.
“Here, take the trash,” cried Birch, as he threw aside the purse, which he had contrived to conceal, notwithstanding the change in his garments.
The robber raised it from the floor with a fiendish laugh.
“Aye, but it shall be to your father in heaven.”
“Monster! have you no feeling, no faith, no honesty?”
“To hear him, one would think there was not a rope around his neck already,” said the other laughing. “There is no necessity for your being uneasy, Mr. Birch; if the old man gets a few hours the start of you in the journey, you will be sure to follow him before noon to-morrow.”
This unfeeling communication had no effect on the peddler, who listened with gasping breath to every sound from the room of his parent, until he heard his own name spoken in the hollow, sepulchral tones of death. Birch could endure no more, but shrieking out: