“Riding away! You took his horse then?”
“Sure, Master Henry, you wouldn’t a had me to walk, with a beest standin’ ready, saddled on the road afore me? He couldn’t a been no use howsomedever to the cooreer: as he warn’t a’ goin’ any furrer that night. Beside ye see, I had all them clothes to carry. I couldn’t leave them behind: not knowin’ as they mightn’t some day betray me—after I had turned honest.”
“Garth! Garth! I doubt that day will never come. I fear you are incorrigible.”
“Master Henry!” cried the ex-footpad, in a tone in which serious sincerity was strangely blended with the ludicrous. “Did you iver know o’ me to break a promise? Did ye iver in yer life?”
“Well, in truth,” answered the cavalier, responding to the earnest appeal which his old servitor had addressed to him, “in the letter I do not remember that I ever have. But in the spirit—alas! Gregory,—”
“Oh! Master; doan’t reproach me no more. I can’t abear it from you! I made that promise the t’other night, an’ ye’ll see if I don’t keep it. Ah! I’ll keep it if I shud starve. I will by—”
And the ex-footpad uttering an emphatic phrase, as if more fixedly to clinch his determination, struck his right hand forcibly against his ribs—his huge chest giving out a hollow sound—as though it had received the blow of a trip-hammer.
“Gregory Garth,” said the cavalier speaking in a serious tone, “if you would have me believe in the sincerity of your conversion, you must answer me one question, and answer it without evasion. I do not ask it either out of idle curiosity, or with any wish to use the answer, whatever it be, to your prejudice. You know me, Gregory; and you will not deceive me?”
“Trust me for that, Master Henry—niver, niver! Ask your question. Whatsomever it be, I’ll gie ye a true answer.”
“Answer it, only if ye can say, Yes. If your answer must be in the negative, I don’t want to hear it. Your silence will be sufficient.”