She grinned as she repeated and dwelt upon the fatal monosyllable, with the emphasis of a vindictive fiend.
“Then why don’t you hang—hang—hang him?” said Frank, repeating her words contemptuously. “There would be more sense in that, than in wreaking yourself here upon two wenches that have done you and your daughter no ill.”
“No ill?” answered the old woman—“and he to marry this jail-bird, if ever she gets her foot loose!”
“But as there is no chance of his marrying a bird of your brood, I cannot, for my soul, see what you have to do with all this,” again replied the robber, shrugging his shoulders. “Where there is aught to be got, I’ll go as far as my neighbours, but I hate mischief for mischiefs sake.”
“And would you go nae length for revenge?” said the hag—“for revenge—the sweetest morsel to the mouth that over was cooked in hell!”
“The devil may keep it for his own eating, then,” said the robber; “for hang me if I like the sauce he dresses it with.”
“Revenge!” continued the old woman; “why, it is the best reward the devil gives us for our time here and hereafter. I have wrought hard for it—I have suffered for it—and I have sinned for it—and I will have it,—or there is neither justice in heaven or in hell!”
Levitt had by this time lighted a pipe, and was listening with great composure to the frantic and vindictive ravings of the old hag. He was too much, hardened by his course of life to be shocked with them—too indifferent, and probably too stupid, to catch any part of their animation or energy. “But, mother,” he said, after a pause, “still I say, that if revenge is your wish, you should take it on the young fellow himself.”
“I wish I could,” she said, drawing in her breath, with the eagerness of a thirsty person while mimicking the action of drinking—“I wish I could—but no—I cannot—I cannot.”
“And why not?—You would think little of peaching and hanging him for this Scotch affair.—Rat me, one might have milled the Bank of England, and less noise about it.”