“Boat!—Boat!” he cried, impatiently, and from a mean habitation a boy immediately emerged.
“Can you row me across?” cried Learmont.
“Yes, your worship,” replied the boy. “This way, an’ it please your honour.”
He led the way to a wherry which was moored close to some little wooden steps, and Learmont, seating himself in the boat, said,—
“Quick!—Quick! I am in haste.”
The boy handled his skulls with dexterity, and the boat soon reached the Middlesex shore. Throwing him a piece of silver, Learmont strided over the boy, and was soon at his own house in Westminster. Without deigning the slightest notice to his servants at the hall of the mansion, who made obsequious way for him as he entered, he strode onwards till he came to the room in which he had sat the preceding evening, when his thoughts had been so great a torment to him, and, flinging himself into a chair, he began to think over the singular events of the night, and to arrange the plan that he had already conceived for the destruction of Gray, and the possession of his young charge.
“This is indeed a stroke of good fortune,” he said. “By Gray’s destruction I gain much. The dull-witted sot Britton is not half the annoyance that this Jacob Gray has proved to me. I hate—I abhor him. Let me consider how the case stands.—He lives in a solitary, miserable abode, out of the way of note or observation. Oh, Master Gray, you have outwitted yourself here! With him, of course, is the great object of all my fears. My worst enemy is that boy, whose existence I am so far sure of from the statement of the babbling fool who has paid with life for meddling with affairs beyond his comprehension. So far, so good. Those papers containing Gray’s written confession that he speaks of, let me consider well of them. The object of writing them was that they should be found, in case of his death—found where? In his home, of course, and easily found, too, most easily; because they were to fall into the hands of persons not searching for them; so they must be in some place easy of discovery; and most simple of access. How easy then will it be for me to find them, knowing that they are there, and determined to leave no nook or corner unsearched till I do find them. Good, good; and the result: Gray dead—the boy is in my power, and the confession, which was to preserve him so well to be my torment—in the flames. Yes, all is clear, quite clear; and now for the immediate means.”
For several minutes he paced the apartment in silent thought, then suddenly pausing, he exclaimed:—
“Certainly; who so proper as Britton? It is a great and important principle in all these matters to confine them to as few hands as possible. Britton already knows enough for mischief, and his knowledge being a little extended, cannot make him much more noxious. He shall aid me. He and I will storm your garrison, Master Jacob Gray! Cunning, clever, Jacob Gray! And then, why then, I have but one more object to accomplish, and that is the death of Britton! The boy, too—By Heavens, I always had my doubts if it were a boy! This drunken fool, who I have been compelled to put out of the way of mischief, saw him though, and doubt vanishes. He shall either die, or be rendered innoxious! Oh, clever, artful, Jacob Gray, I have you on the hip!”
A servant now opened the door slowly, and Learmont turning quickly on him with a frowning brow, cried,—