“Yea, but thou didst promise to take me,” cried Mrs. Kyle, a flood of tears bursting from her eyes, as she began to reproach Sang, with a voice half-chocked by the violence of her sobbing. “So false foiterer that thou art, I—I—I—I must be foredone by thee, must I, after all thy losengery and flattery? Here have I kept goodman Kyle all this time i’ the vault, ygraven, as a body may say, that I mought the more sickerly follow thee when thou wentest. Oh, what will become of me? I am but as one dead.”
“Why, thou cruel giglet, thou,” cried Sang, “didst thou in very truth mean to go off to Scotland with me, and leave thy poor husband ygraven i’ the vault to die the most horrible of deaths? Did not I tell thee to let him out at thy leisure and on thine own good terms? By the mass, a pretty leisure hast thou taken, and pretty terms hast thou resolved to yield him.” [[81]]
“Nay, judge not so hastily, good Sir Squire,” replied Mrs. Kyle. “That I would boune me to Scotland is sure enow; but, as to leaving Sylvester Kyle to die a cruel death, Thomas Tapster here knows that I taught him the use of the sliding plank and the clicket of the trap door, and that Master Sylvester was to receive his franchise as soon as Tweed should be atween us. But what shall I do? I can never go back to the Norham Tower again; goodman Sylvester will surely amortise me attenes when he doth get freedom.”
“Squire,” said Hepborne, “thou must e’en get thee back to the village, and make her peace with the bear her husband: we shall wait for thee at the ferry-boat.”
“Nay, as for that matter,” said Sang, “I must go back at any rate, for I have yet to pay the rascal for the excellent supper we had of him, and for the herborow of our party for the night we spent there. Come along then, Dame Kyle, I see thou art not quite so savage as I took thee to be.”
They soon reached the hostel, and Master Mortimer Sang, dismounting from his horse in the yard, entered, and strode along the passage to the place where he knew the trap-door to be, and, sliding aside the plank that covered its fastenings, he hoisted up the lever.
“Sylvester Kyle, miserable lossel wight,” cried he, “art thou yet alive? Sinner that thou art, I have compassion on thee, and albeit thou hast been there but some short space—small guerdon for thy wicked coulpe, seeing thou art in the midst of so great a mountance of good provender and drink, with which to fill thine enormous bowke—I condescend to let thee come forth. Come up, come up, I say, and show thy face, that we may hold parley as to the terms of thine enlargement.”
A groaning was heard from the farther end of the place, and by and by Sylvester’s head appeared above the steps, his countenance wearing the most miserable expression. Horrible fear of the agonizing death he had thought himself doomed to die had prevented him from touching food; but the anxious workings of his mind had done even more mortification upon him than a starvation of a fortnight could have accomplished. The red in his face was converted into a deadly pale copper hue, for even death itself could never have altogether extinguished the flame in his nose; his teeth projected beyond his lips, and chattered against each other from the cold he had undergone: and his eyes stared in their sockets, from the united effects of want and terror.
“Should it please me to give thee the franchise, thou [[82]]agroted lorrel, thou,” said the Squire, “wilt thou give me thy promise to comport thyself more honestly in time to come, to have done with all knavery and chinchery, and to give thy very best to all Scots who may, in time to come, chance to honour thy hostelry with their presence?”
“Oh, good Sir Squire,” replied the host, “anything—I will promise anything that thou mayest please.”