“But I,” said Rochecliffe, “am as much alive as you are.”
“Thou alive!—thou! Joseph Albany, whom my own eyes saw precipitated from the battlements of Clidesthrow Castle?”
“Ay,” answered the Doctor, “but you did not see me swim ashore on a marsh covered with sedges—fugit ad salices—after a manner which I will explain to you another time.”
Holdenough touched his hand with doubt and uncertainty. “Thou art indeed warm and alive,” he said, “and yet after so many blows, and a fall so tremendous—thou canst not be my Joseph Albany.”
“I am Joseph Albany Rochecliffe,” said the Doctor, “become so in virtue of my mother’s little estate, which fines and confiscations have made an end of.”
“And is it so indeed?” said Holdenough, “and have I recovered mine old chum?”
“Even so,” replied Rochecliffe, “by the same token I appeared to you in the Mirror Chamber—Thou wert so bold, Nehemiah, that our whole scheme would have been shipwrecked, had I not appeared to thee in the shape of a departed friend. Yet, believe me, it went against my heart to do it.”
“Ah, fie on thee, fie on thee,” said Holdenough, throwing himself into his arms, and clasping him to his bosom, “thou wert ever a naughty wag. How couldst thou play me such a trick?—Ah, Albany, dost thou remember Dr. Purefoy and Caius College?”
“Marry, do I,” said the Doctor, thrusting his arm through the Presbyterian divine’s, and guiding him to a seat apart from the other prisoners, who witnessed this scene with much surprise. “Remember Caius College?” said Rochecliffe; “ay, and the good ale we drank, and our parties to mother Huffcap’s.”
“Vanity of vanities,” said Holdenough, smiling kindly at the same time, and still holding his recovered friend’s arm enclosed and hand-locked in his.