Rough hands were now laid upon me; I saw George's fist raised threateningly, but caught it in my grasp.
"Good-by," said I, "good-by, George, and don't look so downcast, man." But we were forced apart, and I was pushed and pulled and hustled away, through a crowd of faces whose eyes damned me wherever I looked, along panelled passage ways, and into a long, dim room, where sat the gentleman I had seen on the horse, busily tying his cravat, to whom I delivered up the pistol, and answered divers questions as well as I might, and by whom, after much jotting of notes and memoranda, I was delivered over to four burly fellows, who, with deep gravity, and a grip much tighter than was necessary, once more led me out into the moonlit street, where were people who pressed forward to stare into my face, and people who leaned out of windows to stare down upon my head, and many more who followed at my heels.
And thus, in much estate, I ascended a flight of worn stone steps into the churchyard, and so—by a way of tombs and graves—came at last to the great square church-tower, into which I was incontinently thrust, and there very securely locked up.
CHAPTER XLIV
THE BOW STREET RUNNERS
It was toward evening of the next day that the door of my prison was opened, and two men entered. The first was a tall, cadaverous-looking individual of a melancholy cast of feature, who, despite the season, was wrapped in a long frieze coat reaching almost to his heels, from the pocket of which projected a short staff, or truncheon. He came forward with his hands in his pockets, and his bony chin on his breast, looking at me under the brim of a somewhat weather-beaten hat—that is to say, he looked at my feet and my hands and my throat and my chin, but never seemed to get any higher.
His companion, on the contrary, bustled forward, and, tapping me familiarly on the shoulder, looked me over with a bright, appraising eye.
"S'elp me, Jeremy!" said he, addressing his saturnine friend, "s'elp me, if I ever see a pore misfort'nate cove more to my mind an' fancy—nice an' tall an' straight-legged—twelve stone if a pound—a five-foot drop now—or say five foot six, an' 'e'll go off as sweet as a bird; ah! you'll never feel it, my covey—not a twinge; a leetle tightish round the windpipe, p'r'aps—but, Lord, it's soon over. You're lookin' a bit pale round the gills, young cove, but, Lord! that's only nat'ral too." Here he produced from the depths of a capacious pocket something that glittered beneath his agile fingers. "And 'ow might be your general 'ealth, young cove?" he went on affably, "bobbish, I 'ope—fair an' bobbish?" As he spoke, with a sudden, dexterous motion, he had snapped something upon my wrists, so quickly that, at the contact of the cold steel, I started, and as I did so, something jingled faintly.
"There!" he exclaimed, clapping me on the shoulder again, but at the same time casting a sharp glance at my shackled wrists—"there—now we're all 'appy an' comfortable! I see as you're a cove as takes things nice an' quiet, an'—so long as you do—I'm your friend—Bob's my name, an' bobbish is my natur'. Lord!—the way I've seen misfort'nate coves take on at sight o' them 'bracelets' is something out-rageous! But you—why, you're a different kidney—you're my kind, you are what do you say, Jeremy?"
"Don't like 'is eye!" growled that individual.