“Hear me out, if you please. Jackson never wastes a candle to drink or sleep by, and at this time of the year there will be no fire. If he speaks to his wife he does not expect her, from her wooden deafness, to answer him. Do you begin to perceive my drift?”
“What; if upon awaking, Jackson finds that his wife is Mr. Waters, and that Mr. Waters relates to him all that he has disclosed in his sleep: that Mr. Hursley’s plate is buried in the garden near the lilac-tree; that he, Jackson, received a thousand pounds six weeks ago of Henry Roger’s fortune, and that the money is now in the recess on the top-landing, the key of which is in his breast-pocket; that he was the receiver of the plate stolen from a house in the close at Salisbury a twelvemonth ago, and sold in London for four hundred and fifty pounds. All this hurled at him,” continued the woman with wild energy and flashing eyes, “what else might not a bold, quick-witted man make him believe he had confessed, revealed in his brief sleep?”
I had been sitting on a bench; but as these rapid disclosures burst from her lips, and I saw the use to which they might be turned, I rose slowly and in some sort involuntarily to my feet, lifted up, as it were, by the energy of her fiery words.
“God reward you!” I exclaimed, shaking both her hands in mine. “You have, unless I blunder, rescued an innocent woman from the scaffold. I see it all. Farewell!”
“Mr. Waters,” she exclaimed, in a changed, palpitating voice, as I was passing forth; “when all is done, you will not forget me?”
“That I will not, by my own hope of mercy in the hereafter. Adieu!”
At a quarter past nine that evening I, accompanied by two Farnham constables, knocked at the door of Jackson’s house. Henry Rogers, I should state, had been removed to the village. The door was opened by the woman-servant, and we went in. “I have a warrant for your arrest, Jane Riddet,” I said, “as an accomplice in the plate stealing the other day. There, don’t scream, but listen to me.” I then intimated the terms upon which alone she could expect favor. She tremblingly promised compliance; and after placing the constables outside, in concealment, but within hearing, I proceeded to the parlor, secured the terrified old woman, and confined her safely in a distant out-house.
“Now, Riddet,” I said, “quick with one of the old lady’s gowns, a shawl, cap, etcetera.” These were brought, and I returned to the parlor. It was a roomy apartment, with small, diamond-paned windows, and just then but very faintly illumined by the star-light. There were two large high-backed easy-chairs, and I prepared to take possession of the one recently vacated by Jackson’s wife. “You must perfectly understand,” were my parting words to the trembling servant, “that we intend standing no nonsense with either you or your master. You cannot escape; but if you let Mr. Jackson in as usual, and he enters this room as usual, no harm will befall you: if otherwise, you will be unquestionably transported. Now, go.”
My toilet was not so easily accomplished as I thought it would be. The gown did not meet at the back by about a foot; that, however, was of little consequence, as the high-chair concealed the deficiency; neither did the shortness of the sleeves matter much, as the ample shawl could be made to hide my too great length of arm; but the skirt was scarcely lower than a Highlander’s, and how the deuce I was to crook my booted legs up out of view, even in that gloomy starlight, I could hardly imagine. The cap also was far too small; still, with an ample kerchief in my hand, my whiskers might, I thought, be concealed. I was still fidgeting with these arrangements when Jackson knocked at his door. The servant admitted him without remark, and he presently entered the room, carefully locked the door, and jolted down, so to speak, in the fellow easy-chair to mine.