“And what is the child in this?” he said.
“The kid, my lad? Why, everything. You fine gentlemen can’t stay here for ever, and when you go north or south or east or west, the kid’ll stay here until you’re safe. And if you don’t come safe, he’s a card you’ll be glad to have the use of to clear your necks, my lads!”
Thistlewood turned on his heel again.
“I’ll none of it,” he said, dark and haughty. “It’s no gentleman’s game, this!”
“Gentleman be hanged!” cried Giles, and Lunt echoed him. “Do you call”—with temper—“what you were for this morning a gentleman’s game? Do you call killing a dozen unarmed men round a dinner-table a gentleman’s game?”
“It’s our lives against theirs!” Thistlewood answered with a sombre glance. “And the odds with them, and a rope if we fail! Wrong breeds wrong,” he continued, his voice rising—as if already he spoke in his defence. “Did they wait until we were armed before they rode us down at Manchester? or at Paisley? or at Glasgow? No! And, I say, they must be removed, no matter how. They must be removed! They are the head and front of offence, the head and front of this damnable system under which no man that’s worth ten pounds does wrong, and no poor man does right! From King to tradesman they stand together. But kill a dozen at the top, and you stop the machine! You terrify the traders that find the money! You bring over to our side all that is timid and fearful and fond of ease—and that’s nine parts of the country! For myself,” extending his arms in a gesture of menace, “I’d as soon cut the throats of Castlereagh and Liverpool and Harrowby as I’d cut the throats of so many calves! And sooner, by G—d! Sooner! But for messing with children I’ll none of it! I’ve said my say.” And he turned again to the fire.
The girl, as he stirred the logs with his boot-heel, eyed him strangely; and in her heart she approved not his arguments, but his courage. Here was what she had sighed for—a man! Here was what she thought that she had found in Walterson—a man! And Walterson himself approved in his heart; and envied the strong man who dared to speak out where he with his life at stake dared not. The thing was cruel, was dastardly. But then—it might save his neck! For the others, they were too low, too brutish to be much moved by Thistlewood’s words.
“Ah, but we’ve got necks as well as you!” Giles muttered. “And if we risk ’em to please you, we’ll save ’em the way we please!”
Then, “Look at the kid!” Lunt muttered. “He’s hearing too much, and picking it up. Stow it for now!”
The girl turned to the child which she had laid on the bed. Thistlewood had knocked the fire together, and the blaze, passing by him, fell upon the wide-open eyes that from the bed regarded the scene with a look of silent terror, a look that seemed uncanny to more than one. Had the boy wept or screamed, or cried for help, had it given way to childish panic and tried to flee, they had thought nothing of it. They had twitched it back, hushed it by blow or threat, and cursed it for a nuisance. But this passive terror, this self-restraint at so tender an age, struck the men as unnatural, and taken with its small elfish features awoke qualms in the more superstitious.