Rookwood - William Harrison Ainsworth (best free ebook reader for android .txt) 📗

dress within it. Dart into that thick copse--save yourself."

"But Bess--I cannot leave her," exclaimed Dick, with an agonizing look at his horse.

"And what did Bess die for, but to save you?" rejoined the patrico.

"True, true," said Dick; "but take care of her, don't let those dogs of hell meddle with her carcase."

"Away," cried the patrico, "leave Bess to me."

Possessing himself of the wallet, Dick disappeared in the adjoining copse.

He had not been gone many seconds when Major Mowbray rode up.

"Who is this?" exclaimed the Major, flinging himself from his horse, and seizing the patrico; "this is not Turpin."

"Certainly not," replied Balthazar, coolly. "I am not exactly the figure for a highwayman."

"Where is he? What has become of him?" asked Coates, in despair, as he and Paterson joined the major.

"Escaped, I fear," replied the major. "Have you seen any one, fellow?" added he, addressing the patrico.

"I have seen no one," replied Balthazar. "I am only this instant arrived. This dead horse lying in the road attracted my attention."

"Ha!" exclaimed Paterson, leaping from his steed, "this may be Turpin after all. He has as many disguises as the devil himself, and may have carried that goat's hair in his pocket." Saying which, he seized the patrico by the beard, and shook it with as little reverence as the Gaul handled the hirsute chin of the Roman senator.

"The devil! hands off," roared Balthazar. "By Salamon, I won't stand such usage. Do you think a beard like mine is the growth of a few minutes? Hands off! I say."

"Regularly done!" said Paterson, removing his hold of the patrico's chin, and looking as blank as a cartridge.

"Ay," exclaimed Coates; "all owing to this worthless piece of carrion. If it were not that I hope to see him dangling from those walls"--pointing towards the Castle--"I should wish her master were by her side now. To the dogs with her." And he was about to spurn the breathless carcase of poor Bess, when a sudden blow, dealt by the patrico's staff, felled him to the ground.

"I'll teach you to molest me," said Balthazar, about to attack Paterson.

"Come, come," said the discomfited chief constable, "no more of this. It's plain we're in the wrong box. Every bone in my body aches sufficiently without the aid of your cudgel, old fellow. Come, Mr. Coates, take my arm, and let's be moving. We've had an infernal long ride for nothing."

"Not so," replied Coates; "I've paid pretty dearly for it. However, let us see if we can get any breakfast at the Bowling-green, yonder; though I've already had my morning draught," added the facetious man of law, looking at his dripping apparel.

"Poor Black Bess!" said Major Mowbray, wistfully regarding the body of the mare, as it lay stretched at his feet. "Thou deservedst a better fate, and a better master. In thee, Dick Turpin has lost his best friend. His exploits will, henceforth, want the coloring of romance, which thy unfailing energies threw over them. Light lie the ground over thee, thou matchless mare!"

To the Bowling-green the party proceeded, leaving the patrico in undisturbed possession of the lifeless body of Black Bess. Major Mowbray ordered a substantial repast to be prepared with all possible expedition.

A countryman, in a smock-frock, was busily engaged at his morning's meal.

"To see that fellow bolt down his breakfast, one would think he had fasted for a month," said Coates; "see the wholesome effects of an honest, industrious life, Paterson. I envy him his appetite--I should fall to with more zest were Dick Turpin in his place."

The countryman looked up. He was an odd-looking fellow, with a terrible squint, and a strange, contorted countenance.

"An ugly dog!" exclaimed Paterson: "what a devil of a twist he has got!"

"What's that you says about Dick Taarpin, measter?" asked the countryman, with his mouth half full of bread.

"Have you seen aught of him?" asked Coates.

"Not I," mumbled the rustic; "but I hears aw the folks hereabouts talk on him. They say as how he sets all the lawyers and constables at defiance, and laughs in his sleeve at their efforts to cotch him--ha, ha! He gets over more ground in a day than they do in a week--ho, ho!"

"That's all over now," said Coates, peevishly. "He has cut his own throat--ridden his famous mare to death."

The countryman almost choked himself, in the attempt to bolt a huge mouthful. "Ay--indeed, measter! How happened that?" asked he, so soon as he recovered speech.

"The fool rode her from London to York last night," returned Coates; "such a feat was never performed before. What horse could be expected to live through such work as that?"

"Ah, he were a foo' to attempt that," observed the countryman; "but you followed belike?"

"We did."

"And took him arter all, I reckon?" asked the rustic, squinting more horribly than ever.

"No," returned Coates, "I can't say we did; but we'll have him yet. I'm pretty sure he can't be far off. We may be nearer him than we imagine."

"May be so, measter," returned the countryman; "but might I be so bold as to ax how many horses you used i' the chase--some half-dozen, maybe?"

"Half a dozen!" growled Paterson; "we had twenty at the least."

"And I ONE!" mentally ejaculated Turpin, for he was the countryman.


BOOK V


THE OATH

It was an ill oath better broke than kept--
The laws of nature, and of nations, do
Dispense with matters of divinity
In such a case.

TATEHAM.


CHAPTER I

THE HUT ON THORNE WASTE

Hind. Are all our horses and our arms in safety?

Furbo. They feed, like Pluto's palfreys, under ground.
Our pistols, swords, and other furniture,
Are safely locked up at our rendezvous.

Prince of Prigs' Revels.


The hut on Thorne Waste, to which we have before incidentally alluded, and whither we are now about to repair, was a low, lone hovel, situate on the banks of the deep and oozy Don, at the eastern extremity of that extensive moor. Ostensibly its owner fulfilled the duties of ferryman to that part of the river; but as the road which skirted his tenement was little frequented, his craft was, for the most part, allowed to sleep undisturbed in her moorings.

In reality, however, he was the inland agent of a horde of smugglers who infested the neighboring coast; his cabin was their rendezvous; and not unfrequently, it was said, the depository of their contraband goods. Conkey Jem--so was he called by his associates, on account of the Slawkenbergian promontory which decorated his countenance--had been an old hand at the same trade; but having returned from a seven years' leave of absence from his own country, procured by his lawless life, now managed matters with more circumspection and prudence, and had never since been detected in his former illicit traffic; nor, though so marvellously gifted in that particular himself, was he ever known to
nose upon any of his accomplices; or, in other words, to betray them. On the contrary, his hut was a sort of asylum for all fugitives from justice; and although the sanctity of his walls would, in all probability, have been little regarded, had any one been, detected within them, yet, strange to say, even if a robber had been tracked--as it often chanced--to Jem's immediate neighborhood, all traces of him were sure to be lost at the ferryman's hut; and further search was useless.

Within, the hut presented such an appearance as might be expected, from its owner's pursuits and its own unpromising exterior. Consisting of little more than a couple of rooms, the rude whitewashed walls exhibited, in lieu of prints of more pretension, a gallery of choicely-illustrated ballads, celebrating the exploits of various highwaymen, renowned in song, amongst which our friend Dick Turpin figured conspicuously upon his sable steed, Bess being represented by a huge rampant black patch, and Dick, with a pistol considerably longer than the arm that sustained it. Next to this curious collection was a drum-net, a fishing-rod, a landing-net, an eel-spear, and other piscatorial apparatus, with a couple of sculls and a boat-hook, indicative of Jem's ferryman's office, suspended by various hooks; the whole blackened and begrimed by peat-smoke, there being no legitimate means of exit permitted to the vapor generated by the turf-covered hearthstone. The only window, indeed, in the hut, was to the front; the back apartment, which served Jem for dormitory, had no aperture whatever for the admission of light, except such as was afforded through the door of communication between the rooms. A few broken rush-bottomed chairs, with a couple of dirty tables, formed the sum total of the ferryman's furniture.

Notwithstanding the grotesque effect of his exaggerated nasal organ, Jem's aspect was at once savage and repulsive; his lank black hair hung about his inflamed visage in wild elf locks, the animal predominating throughout; his eyes were small, red, and wolfish, and glared suspiciously from beneath his scarred and tufted eyebrows; while certain of his teeth projected, like the tusks of a boar, from out his coarse-lipped, sensual mouth. Dwarfish in stature, and deformed in person, Jem was built for strength; and what with his width of shoulder and shortness of neck, his figure looked as square and as solid as a cube. His throat and hirsute chest, constantly exposed to the weather, had acquired a glowing tan, while his arms, uncovered to the shoulders, and clothed with fur, like a bear's hide, down, almost, to the tips of his fingers, presented a knot of folded muscles, the concentrated force of which few would have desired to encounter in action.

It was now on the stroke of midnight; and Jem, who had been lying extended upon the floor of his hovel, suddenly aroused by that warning impulse which never fails to awaken one of his calling at the exact moment when they require to be upon the alert, now set about fanning into flame the expiring fuel upon his hearth. Having succeeded in igniting further portions of the turf, Jem proceeded to examine the security of his door and window, and satisfied that lock and bolt were shot, and that the shutter was carefully closed, he kindled a light at his fire, and walked towards his bedroom. But it was not to retire for the night that the ferryman entered his dormitory. Beside his crazy couch stood a litter of empty bottles and a beer cask, crowding the chamber. The latter he rolled aside, and pressing