“We must support life. How?”
“How!” repeated the blind man. “By eating and drinking. And how get meat and drink, but by paying for it! Money!” he cried, slapping his pocket. “Is money the word? Why, the streets have been running money. Devil send that the sport's not over yet, for these are jolly times; golden, rare, roaring, scrambling times. Hallo, bully! Hallo! Hallo! Drink, bully, drink. Where are ye there! Hallo!”
With such vociferations, and with a boisterous manner which bespoke his perfect abandonment to the general licence and disorder, he groped his way towards the shed, where Hugh and Barnaby were sitting on the ground.
“Put it about!” he cried, handing his flask to Hugh. “The kennels run with wine and gold. Guineas and strong water flow from the very pumps. About with it, don't spare it!”
Exhausted, unwashed, unshorn, begrimed with smoke and dust, his hair clotted with blood, his voice quite gone, so that he spoke in whispers; his skin parched up by fever, his whole body bruised and cut, and beaten about, Hugh still took the flask, and raised it to his lips. He was in the act of drinking, when the front of the shed was suddenly darkened, and Dennis stood before them.
“No offence, no offence,” said that personage in a conciliatory tone, as Hugh stopped in his draught, and eyed him, with no pleasant look, from head to foot. “No offence, brother. Barnaby here too, eh? How are you, Barnaby? And two other gentlemen! Your humble servant, gentlemen. No offence to YOU either, I hope. Eh, brothers?”
Notwithstanding that he spoke in this very friendly and confident manner, he seemed to have considerable hesitation about entering, and remained outside the roof. He was rather better dressed than usuaclass="underline" wearing the same suit of threadbare black, it is true, but having round his neck an unwholesome-looking cravat of a yellowish white; and, on his hands, great leather gloves, such as a gardener might wear in following his trade. His shoes were newly greased, and ornamented with a pair of rusty iron buckles; the packthread at his knees had been renewed; and where he wanted buttons, he wore pins. Altogether, he had something the look of a tipstaff, or a bailiff's follower, desperately faded, but who had a notion of keeping up the appearance of a professional character, and making the best of the worst means.
“You're very snug here,” said Mr Dennis, pulling out a mouldy pocket-handkerchief, which looked like a decomposed halter, and wiping his forehead in a nervous manner.
“Not snug enough to prevent your finding us, it seems,” Hugh answered, sulkily.
“Why I'll tell you what, brother,” said Dennis, with a friendly smile, “when you don't want me to know which way you're riding, you must wear another sort of bells on your horse. Ah! I know the sound of them you wore last night, and have got quick ears for “em; that's the truth. Well, but how are you, brother?”
He had by this time approached, and now ventured to sit down by him.
“How am I?” answered Hugh. “Where were you yesterday? Where did you go when you left me in the jail? Why did you leave me? And what did you mean by rolling your eyes and shaking your fist at me, eh?”
“I shake my fist!—at you, brother!” said Dennis, gently checking Hugh's uplifted hand, which looked threatening.
“Your stick, then; it's all one.”
“Lord love you, brother, I meant nothing. You don't understand me by half. I shouldn't wonder now,” he added, in the tone of a desponding and an injured man, “but you thought, because I wanted them chaps left in the prison, that I was a going to desert the banners?”
Hugh told him, with an oath, that he had thought so.
“Well!” said Mr Dennis, mournfully, “if you an't enough to make a man mistrust his feller-creeturs, I don't know what is. Desert the banners! Me! Ned Dennis, as was so christened by his own father!—Is this axe your'n, brother?”
Yes, it's mine,” said Hugh, in the same sullen manner as before; “it might have hurt you, if you had come in its way once or twice last night. Put it down.”
“Might have hurt me!” said Mr Dennis, still keeping it in his hand, and feeling the edge with an air of abstraction. “Might have hurt me! and me exerting myself all the time to the wery best advantage. Here's a world! And you're not a-going to ask me to take a sup out of that “ere bottle, eh?”
Hugh passed it towards him. As he raised it to his lips, Barnaby jumped up, and motioning them to be silent, looked eagerly out.
“What's the matter, Barnaby?” said Dennis, glancing at Hugh and dropping the flask, but still holding the axe in his hand.
“Hush!” he answered softly. “What do I see glittering behind the hedge?”
“What!” cried the hangman, raising his voice to its highest pitch, and laying hold of him and Hugh. “Not SOLDIERS, surely!”
That moment, the shed was filled with armed men; and a body of horse, galloping into the field, drew up before it.
“There!” said Dennis, who remained untouched among them when they had seized their prisoners; “it's them two young ones, gentlemen, that the proclamation puts a price on. This other's an escaped felon. —I'm sorry for it, brother,” he added, in a tone of resignation, addressing himself to Hugh; “but you've brought it on yourself; you forced me to do it; you wouldn't respect the soundest constitootional principles, you know; you went and wiolated the wery framework of society. I had sooner have given away a trifle in charity than done this, I would upon my soul. —If you'll keep fast hold on “em, gentlemen, I think I can make a shift to tie “em better than you can.”
But this operation was postponed for a few moments by a new occurrence. The blind man, whose ears were quicker than most people's sight, had been alarmed, before Barnaby, by a rustling in the bushes, under cover of which the soldiers had advanced. He retreated instantly—had hidden somewhere for a minute—and probably in his confusion mistaking the point at which he had emerged, was now seen running across the open meadow.
An officer cried directly that he had helped to plunder a house last night. He was loudly called on, to surrender. He ran the harder, and in a few seconds would have been out of gunshot. The word was given, and the men fired.
There was a breathless pause and a profound silence, during which all eyes were fixed upon him. He had been seen to start at the discharge, as if the report had frightened him. But he neither stopped nor slackened his pace in the least, and ran on full forty yards further. Then, without one reel or stagger, or sign of faintness, or quivering of any limb, he dropped.
Some of them hurried up to where he lay;—the hangman with them. Everything had passed so quickly, that the smoke had not yet scattered, but curled slowly off in a little cloud, which seemed like the dead man's spirit moving solemnly away. There were a few drops of blood upon the grass—more, when they turned him over— that was all.
“Look here! Look here!” said the hangman, stooping one knee beside the body, and gazing up with a disconsolate face at the officer and men. “Here's a pretty sight!”
“Stand out of the way,” replied the officer. “Serjeant! see what he had about him.”
The man turned his pockets out upon the grass, and counted, besides some foreign coins and two rings, five-and-forty guineas in gold. These were bundled up in a handkerchief and carried away; the body remained there for the present, but six men and the serjeant were left to take it to the nearest public-house.
“Now then, if you're going,” said the serjeant, clapping Dennis on the back, and pointing after the officer who was walking towards the shed.
To which Mr Dennis only replied, “Don't talk to me!” and then repeated what he had said before, namely, “Here's a pretty sight!”