Sir Geoffrey was staggered by the amount, but he was as ardent a gambler as his companion, and reputed a much luckier one. "As your lordship pleases," he replied, with well-assumed indifference. "But I warn you that the higher the stake, the more certain I shall be to win it, even if I have to carry the lady off by force."
"Oh! if you have to resort to force—"
"If I have to resort to force, the stake should be doubled!" exclaimed Sir Geoffrey, "but I have no fear of that. Did your lordship say a thousand? or was it five?"
"Let it be five thousand," returned Beachcombe. "I'll wager five thousand guineas that you do not marry the Viscountess Brooke within—shall we say a month?"
Sir Geoffrey signified his satisfaction; each gentleman made a memorandum of the bet, and as the carriage had already been standing some minutes at Prue's door, her betrothed alighted, thanked his friend for his courtesy in giving him a lift, and hastened in to press his suit with renewed ardor.
As the carriage was driven off Lord Beachcombe pulled the check-string and ordered the coachman to drive with all speed to Newgate Prison.
Newgate Prison, in the reign of Queen Anne, was a festering sink of iniquity and horror. Almost every crime under the sun was punishable by death—from stealing a penny loaf to robbing a church, and from snaring a pheasant to slaughtering a family. In fact the laws in relation to property were far more strictly enforced than those for the protection of human life, unless the value of the life was enhanced by the rights of property. There, in noisome pens, criminals of every degree herded together—men, women and children—all brought to an equality under the shadow of the gallows. But money was just as powerful there as anywhere else, and the prisoner who could pay might have privacy, company, the best of food and wine—everything except cleanliness—that no power could bring into Newgate Prison, and it needed the cleansing fires of destruction to purge it off the face of the earth.
Robin Freemantle, the condemned highwayman, had money enough to secure him a cell to himself. One of the poorer prisoners, for a consideration, had swept it out, and he had hired a table and chair from the jailer at about twice the price for which they had been bought ten years ago.
At his table he sat writing, with a bottle of wine at his elbow, and the debris of a substantial meal on a tray. Through a barred window above his head enough light slunk reluctantly in to show the fine athletic form and bronzed, manly face, on which the pallor of imprisonment was already toning down the ruddy glow of health. On the page before him he had inscribed but four words, at which he sat gazing irresolutely while he nibbled the feather of his pen. The key turned in the lock and a hoarse voice outside announced, "A visitor for you, Robin Highwayman."
Lord Beachcombe walked in, and the door closed behind him.