| Let me sit heavy on thy soul to-morrow. KING RICHARD III. |
It was not until long after noon of the day of trial that Affidavy woke from the stupefaction into which he was plunged by the cup he had so craftily qualified; and then it was some time before he could summon his recollection, and conceive where he was. He found himself in a cell obviously of the prison; for the single window that lighted it was strongly grated, and the door fast bolted on the outside. There was a bed hard by, in which, as was apparent from its condition, some one had passed the night; but who that might have been he knew not, no one being now visible. As for himself, he found that his couch had been nothing better than the hard floor; and close by where he lay, he discovered a pool of coagulated blood. He was seized with alarm, and finding the door refuse all egress, he ran to the window, and beheld in the yard which it overlooked, a sight that, besides filling him with new terror, conveyed an inkling to his mind of his true situation and its cause. This was nothing less than the dead bodies of two men, lying stiff and gory upon a bench, without even a cloth to conceal them from the light of day.
"Botheration, and God bless my soul!" he cried, "I'm a ruined man!"
"Done up,—as clean as a skinned eel," said a voice at his back; and, looking round, he beheld his friend, the jailer, enter the cell, with a grim smile on his visage, which was not much improved in beauty by a red handkerchief, that swathed it round from jaw to top-knot. "Done up, Teffy, my boy, as slick as a new bolt. Who'll you have for your counsel?—or do you think of pleading your own cause? Ods bobs, you can make a good speech;—I always said that for you."
"Counsel!—cause!—speech!" echoed the man of law;—"God bless our two souls!"
"Amen,—or e'er a one of 'em," said Lingo, with solemn utterance; "for I'm thinking it will go hard with one of us. Howsomever, I'm glad to see you in your senses. Sorry you had so hard a bed of it; but howsomever, when they hang your client up there, I'll give you better quarters. I reckon, it will be imprisonment for life with you; though some says, they are to try you on the capital charge of aiding and 'betting with the tories, which is clean hanging treason."
"God bless our two souls!" said Affidavy, with an air of wo and terror so irresistibly ludicrous, that Lingo, perceiving his utterance failed to supply any further expressions, burst into a loud laugh, and threw himself on the vacant bed, where he rolled over and over, giving way to mirth and triumph together.
"Blarney and ods bobs!" he cried, after he had amused himself awhile in this fashion; "and so you thought to come the humbug over me, old Teff! Ha, ha, ha! I always said you could make a good speech, and so you can; but as to pulling straws with Bob Lingo, why I never said no such thing, for I won't lie for no man. How did you like the cock-tail, with the cherry-bounce and doctor's stuff in it? Ods bobs, did you think I could go any such liquor as that? But now you see what you've come to,—clean done up, broke, smashed, pounded into hominy, and cribbed under lock and key. So much for not playing fair, and making honest snacks of the plunder! Where's them seventeen guineas in goold? and the note for two thousand more? Oh, you old ox-fly! would you have sucked the poor young feller's blood?"
At the mention of these valuables, Affidavy, who stood mute with surprise and dismay, clapped his hands into his pockets, first into one and then the other, and groaned to find them empty. "You've robbed me, Bob Lingo!" he said.
"As clean as ever I curried a horse," said the jailer, betaking himself to his own pockets, and displaying both the money and the treacherous note, the latter of which he moved before Affidavy's eyes with peculiar glee, saying,