“Come; are you for making a move?”
“Agreed. Where is my hat? I suppose a man may get his hat!—ha! ha!—I can't very well go in this cap—-”
“You use mine—with the greatest pleasure. I do not need—Ah? quite the fit, quite the fit”.
“Why, so it is. Ha! ha! why, it's a curate's hat, and—I'm a Jew!”
“Excellent, excellent, ha! ha!”
So they made merry, and, with the bitter lip-corners of forced merriment, went out, while Rebekah, who had caught a great deal of that dialogue, crouched a long time there, agitated, uncertain what to do.
That her father should coolly look on at an assassination for a fortune was no revelation to her: she had long despised, yet, with an inconsistency due to the tenderness of Jewish family ties, still loved him; the notion of appealing to the police, therefore, who might ruin Hogarth, too, did not enter her head.
She ran and wrote: “Your life and bag of gems are at this moment in danger”; and sent it by a mounted messenger addressed to “The Guest at the Paper Shop”.
But in twenty minutes the messenger returned to her with it, Hogarth having gone to the rendezvous at the elm—long before the appointed time.
When, accordingly, Frankl, O'Hara, and Harris arrived at the paper-shop back yard, and Harris had stolen up the back stairs, he presently, to the alarm and delight of the others, sent a whisper from the window: “No one 'ere as I can see!”