“Bill,” remarked the other, after a pause of intense thought, “you should have been Lord Chancellor, that’s what you should! We’ll do it, my boy. Forty pounds is the blood money for hanging a poor fellow, and it’s very well known a chap never will get taken by the officers so long as he can make it guineas to let him go, except we comes across that d—d Sir Francis Hartleton, and he wouldn’t let a chap go for nothink or the whole world, he wouldn’t. What business has a beak to be poking as he does, instead of sitting quiet in his arm-chair, and leaving the business to be settled ’atween such as us and the receivers? It’ an iniquity, and no good can come of it.”
“Very true,” said Bill. “You hide the money somewheres, while I go and get the cart, for we must start this chap somewhere afore daylight.”
“Bill,” said the other, “you wouldn’t like to cut his throat?”
“Not exactly.”
“Well, well. I only mention it. I’m afraid he’s a sneak, but let him do his worst. Get the chaise-cart, and bring it round to the corner by Jem Medbourn’s.”
Bill nodded, and went to execute his errand, and during his absence, the other carefully concealed the money beneath the floor of the room, excepting about two hundred pounds, which he reserved for himself and companion. Then lighting his pipe, he again sat down very composedly by the fire-side.
“Well, well,” he said suddenly, as if he had arrived at some mental conclusion that he could not help, and yet did not like. “Bill may have it his own way, but I would never have let that chap,” nodding at Gray, “have a chance o’ being venomous. He’s cut out for a sneaking lump o’ evidence against others he is, and I shouldn’t a bit wonder if he gets into trouble himself, but he speaks agin us about the money just out o’ a nasty bit o’ revenge.”
He then resumed his smoking as if he had been reasoning upon some very common place affair indeed, and in about ten minutes more Bill made his appearance, saying,—
“It’s all right—they have guved up the search for to-night, and we shall get on famously.”
“Where do you mean to take him?” said he, who had suggested the notion of cutting Gray’s throat.