“Still, sir, we cannot smother this affair; justice must be done.”
“Of course, I know all that; the majesty of justice must be upheld; only, you see, seven votes are something, and I only mentioned how awkward it is—I may say confoundedly awkward—for we have scarcely a majority: but, however, you may take your authority, Sir Francis.”
CHAPTER LXVI.
Gray’s Visit to Learmont.—The Disappointment.—A Week of Terror.—The Street Newsvender.
Evening was casting its broad shadows across the Hampstead fields, and the air was varied with the songs of thousands of birds retiring to roost, when Jacob Gray with pain and difficulty began his descent from the tree which had afforded him so hazardous and painful a refuge for so many hours.
Stiffened and benumbed as he was in every limb, he found it no easy matter to crawl down from his high perch; and it was only after many minutes of uneasiness and terror that he at last reached the ground; then he leaned against the trunk of the tree, and with dizzy eyes and a bewildered brain looked anxiously around him. A death-like silence reigned around, broken by nothing but the twittering of the sparrows, and the occasional chirp of a grasshopper. He put his hand up to his wounded face, but the blood had ceased to flow, and he only now felt a heavy, deadening sensation about the region of his wounds. After a time then, he ventured to leave the tree, and with a slow, uncertain and tottering step he walked towards the pond.
The direful pangs of hunger, which in his recumbent position in the tree had not greatly afflicted him, now began to make themselves felt in earnest, and Jacob Gray groaned in his agony.
“Oh,” he cried, “for a crust—the hardest morsel that ever a dainty beggar cast from him as unworthy of his wallet—I shall die of hunger ere I reach Westminster!”
Still he tottered on towards the pond, and when he reached its grassy brink, he lay down as he had done before, and drank largely at the clear water.
Then he bathed his face, and washed away partially the stains of blood that had hardened into coagulated masses upon his cheeks; and he was again somewhat refreshed, although still terribly faint from want of sustenance.