Learmont was getting each moment more and more enraged at Gray’s pertinacity in refusing him the confession, and he made one last effort to induce him to produce it to him.
“Give me the confession,” he said, “and you may go from this room now while I remain here.”
“We will go together,” said Gray. “My cloak—God bless you, squire!—We will go together!—My cloak—My cloak!”
Learmont shook his clenched hand, and uttering an awful curse, he added,—
“The hour has come!”
In a moment, Andrew Britton stood before the terrified gaze of Gray, who seemed perfectly paralysed with terror, for although his lips moved, he uttered no sound, but stretching his arms out before him, as if to keep off the smith, he still knelt in the room where Learmont had left him.
The smith stepped up close to the horror-stricken man, and then his sides shook with demoniac mirth as he said—
“Ho! Ho! Cunning Jacob Gray is in the toils at last—clever, artful Jacob—run down at last by the drunken son with the middle brain. Ho! Ho! Ho!—Why don’t you laugh, squire—why don’t you laugh, Jacob? you may as well, you know—it’s all the same.”
Gray appeared from the moment of Britton’s entrance to give himself up for lost. With one gasping sob he let his head sink on his breast, and the only sign of life he gave was in the nervous twitching of his fingers which played with each other convulsively.
Britton then stepped up to him, and producing the cleaver from behind his back, he held it close to Jacob Gray’s face, saying—