“You are a fool!” said Cleveland, endeavouring to shake his friend off.—“Let me go! for, by Heaven, I will be foul of him!”
“Hold him fast,” said the pedlar, “good dear merry gentleman, hold him fast!”
“Then say something for yourself,” said Bunce; “use your gob-box, man; patter away, or, by my soul, I will let him loose on you!”
“He says I stole these goods,” said Bryce, who now saw himself run so close, that pleading to the charge became inevitable. “Now, how could I steal them, when they are mine by fair and lawful purchase?”
“Purchase! you beggarly vagrant!” said Cleveland; “from whom did you dare to buy my clothes? or who had the impudence to sell them?”
“Just that worthy professor Mrs. Swertha, the housekeeper at Jarlshof, who acted as your executor,” said the pedlar; “and a grieved heart she had.”
“And so she was resolved to make a heavy pocket of it, I suppose,” said the Captain; “but how did she dare to sell the things left in her charge?”
“Why, she acted all for the best, good woman!” said the pedlar, anxious to protract the discussion until the arrival of succours; “and, if you will but hear reason, I am ready to account with you for the chest and all that it holds.”
“Speak out, then, and let us have none of thy damnable evasions,” said Captain Cleveland; “if you show ever so little purpose of being somewhat honest for once in thy life, I will not beat thee.”
“Why, you see, noble Captain,” said the pedlar,—and then muttered to himself, “plague on Pate Paterson’s cripple knee, they will be waiting for him, hirpling useless body!” then resumed aloud—“The country, you see, is in great perplexity,—great perplexity, indeed,—much perplexity, truly. There was your honour missing, that was loved by great and small—clean missing—nowhere to be heard of—a lost man—umquhile—dead—defunct!”