Reu. (at door). There’s no signs of him yet.
Jas. Then give reins to thy voice and hail him. He took the road to the left. (Exit Reuben shouting—his voice dies away in the distance.) Here’s a plight for the Lord of Combe-Raven! Stripped of an ancestral mansion and two thousand old acres; hunted to his death by broad-brimmed bloodhounds—separated from his pretty wife by some two hundred miles of barren land and stormy water, and saddled with a confounded brat that hampers his flight, let him turn whithersoever he will! And say that I cross this accursed Channel—how am I to get to Paris—penniless as I am? When I think of what I have before me, I’m minded to make short work with this world, and try another! By the Lord Harry!—(stamps impatiently; his foot starts a board over Dan’l’s hoard.) Ha! Why, what’s this? Not gold? (Takes out some.) Gold—and in profusion! Here’s a way out of our difficulties, if Combe-Raven were but the man to take it. The old miser! (Handling the money.) Bah—in another week’s time we may, perhaps, come down to this sort of thing—who knows? But not yet—no, not yet. (Throws it into hole.) Lie there—I’ll not meddle with thee, though (closing hole) thou’lt be spent on a worse errand than helping Jasper Combe to his wife and his king, I’ll be sworn.
Enter Reuben in breathless haste. Jasper quickly covers the hole.
Reu. Yes, sir—we must fly—and that at once.
Jas. What d’ye mean?
Reu. I mean treachery—the old man has played us false!—I hear the horses’ hoofs in the distance——
Jas. A thousand devils wring his damnable neck! Run to the boat—get her ready for the sea. I’ll join thee at once and we’ll launch her together.
Reu. But——
Jas. Well?
Reu. If there’s such a thing as a crust of bread, or the tail of a dried mackerel——