“Let me go, and I swear to you--I swear by all those ten thousand eyes o’ heaven looking down on us--that I will do for you what you have done for me.”
“That is an idle promise,” said Kate; “you never can do that.”
“Who can say what is to be, or is not to be? Let me go, for my wife and poor children’s sake.”
She did not answer.
“Let me go because I spared Jan Pooke.”
She did not move.
“Let me go for the little dead Joan’s sake--that when she lies i’ the churchyard, they may not say of her, ‘Thickey there green mound, wi’ them daisies on it, covers a poor maid whose father were hanged.’”
Then Kate let go the string, it ran round the rowlock, and the man scrambled to his feet.
“Cut it with my knife,” he said.
She took the swinging knife, opened the blade, and with a stroke cut through the cord that held his wrists.