"You know more than I do then; but enough of this folly. I wish, I hardly know why, to save you. It was not you, I am quite aware, that fired the fatal shot, but that makes no difference as to your legal guilt. But I think if you could put us on the track of your associates, you might yourself escape."
The lad's fine eyes perfectly lightened with scorn and indignation: "Turn informer!" he exclaimed. "Betray them that loved and trusted me! Never—if they could hang me a thousand times over!"
I made no answer, and nothing more was said till we had reached and were passing the Abbey ruins. The boy then abruptly stopped, and with quivering voice, while his eyes filled with tears, said: "I should like to see my mother."
"See your mother! There can be no particular objection to that; but she lives further on at Weston, does she not?"
"No, we have sold off, and moved to Aunt Diaper's, at Netley, up yonder. In a day or two we should have started for Hull, where mother's father's brother lives, and I was to have been 'prenticed to the captain of a Greenlander; but now," he continued with an irrepressible outburst of grief and terror, "Jack Ketch will, you say, be my master, and I shall be only 'prenticed to the gallows."
"Why, if this be so, did your mother permit you to join the lawless desperadoes to whom you owe your present unhappy and degraded position?"
"Mother did not know of it; she thinks I am gone to Southampton to inquire about the day the vessel sails for Hull. Mother will die if I am hanged!" exclaimed the lad with a renewed burst of passionate grief; "and surely you would not kill her?"
"It is not very likely I should wish to do so, considering that I have never seen her."
"Oh yes—yes, you have!" he sharply rejoined. "Then perhaps you do not know! Untie or cut these cords," he added, approaching close to me and speaking in a low, quick whisper; "give me a chance: mother's girl's name was Ellen Dible!"
Had the lad's fettered arm been free, and he had suddenly dealt me a blow with a knife or dagger, the stroke could not have been more sharp or terrible than these words conveyed.