The Fortunes of Nigel

judge.

'You would have him escape,' resumed she, fixing her eyes on him sternly.

'By cock and pie,' replied Hildebrod, 'did it depend on me, the murdering cut-throat should hang as high as ever Haman did—but let me take my time. He has friends among us, that you wot well; and all that should assist me are as drunk as fiddlers.'

'I will have revenge—I will have it,' repeated she; 'and take heed you trifle not with me.'

'Trifle! I would sooner trifle with a she-bear the minute after they had baited her. I tell you, mistress, be but patient, and we will have him. I know all his haunts, and he cannot forbear them long; and I will have trap-doors open for him. You cannot want justice, mistress, for you have the means to get it.'

'They who help me in my revenge,' said Martha, 'shall share those means.'

'Enough said,' replied Hildebrod; 'and now I would have you go to my house, and get something hot—you will be but dreary here by yourself.'

'I will send for the old char-woman,' replied Martha, 'and we have the stranger gentleman, besides.'

'Umph, umph—the stranger gentleman!' said Hildebrod to Nigel, whom he drew a little apart. 'I fancy the captain has made the stranger gentleman's fortune when he was making a bold dash for his own. I can tell your honour—I must not say lordship—that I think my having chanced to give the greasy buff-and-iron scoundrel some hint of what I recommended to you to-day, has put him on this rough game. The better for you—you will get the cash without the father-in-law.—You will keep conditions, I trust?'

'I wish you had said nothing to any one of a scheme so absurd,' said Nigel.

'Absurd!—Why, think you she will not have thee? Take her with the tear in her eye, man—take her with the tear in her eye. Let me hear from you to-morrow. Good-night, good-night—a nod is as good as a wink. I must to my business of sealing and locking up. By the way, this horrid work has put all out of my head.—Here is a fellow from Mr. Lowestoffe has been asking to see you. As he said his business was express, the Senate only made him drink a couple of flagons, and he was just coming to beat up your quarters when this breeze blew up.— Ahey, friend! there is Master Nigel Grahame.'

A young man, dressed in a green plush jerkin, with a badge on the sleeve, and having the appearance of a waterman, approached and took Nigel aside, while Duke Hildebrod went from place to place to exercise his authority, and to see the windows fastened, and the doors of the apartment locked up. The news communicated by Lowestoffe's messenger were not the most pleasant. They were intimated in a courteous whisper to Nigel, to the following effect:—That Master Lowestoffe prayed him to consult his safety by instantly leaving Whitefriars, for that a warrant from the Lord Chief-Justice had been issued out for apprehending him, and would be put in force to-morrow, by the assistance of a party of musketeers, a force which the Alsatians neither would nor dared to resist.

'And so, squire,' said the aquatic emissary, 'my wherry is to wait you at the Temple Stairs yonder, at five this morning, and, if you would give the blood-hounds the slip, why, you may.'

'Why did not Master Lowestoffe write to me?' said Nigel.

'Alas! the good gentleman lies up in lavender for it himself, and has as little to do with pen and ink as if he were a parson.'

'Did he send any token to me?' said Nigel.

'Token!—ay, marry did he—token enough, an I have not forgot it,' said the fellow; then, giving a hoist to the waistband of his breeches, he said,—' Ay, I have it—you were to believe me, because your name was written with an O, for Grahame. Ay, that was it, I think.—Well, shall we meet in two hours, when tide turns, and go down the river like a twelve-oared barge?'

'Where is the king just now, knowest thou?' answered Lord Glenvarloch.

'The king! why, he went down to Greenwich yesterday by water, like a noble sovereign as he is, who will always float where he can. He was to have hunted this week, but that purpose is broken, they say; and the Prince, and the Duke, and all of them at Greenwich, are as merry as minnows.'

'Well,' replied Nigel, 'I will be ready to go at five; do thou come hither to carry my baggage.'

'Ay, ay, master,' replied the fellow, and left the house mixing himself with the disorderly attendants of Duke Hildebrod, who were now retiring. That potentate entreated Nigel to make fast the doors behind him, and, pointing to the female who sat by the expiring fire with her limbs outstretched, like one whom the hand of Death had already arrested, he whispered, 'Mind your hits, and mind your bargain, or I will cut your bow-string for you before you can draw it.'

Feeling deeply the ineffable brutality which could recommend the prosecuting such views over a wretch in such a condition, Lord Glenvarloch yet commanded his temper so far as to receive the advice in silence, and attend to the former part of it, by barring the door carefully behind Duke Hildebrod and his suite, with the tacit hope that he should never again see or hear of them. He then returned to the kitchen, in which the unhappy woman remained, her hands still clenched, her eyes fixed, and her limbs extended, like those of a person in a trance. Much moved by her situation, and with the prospect which lay before her, he endeavoured to awaken her to existence by every means in his power, and at length apparently succeeded in dispelling her stupor, and attracting her attention. He then explained to her that he was in the act of leaving Whitefriars in a few hours— that his future destination was uncertain, but that he desired anxiously to know whether he could contribute to her protection by apprizing any friend of her situation, or otherwise. With some difficulty she seemed to comprehend his meaning, and thanked him with her usual short ungracious manner. 'He might mean well,' she said, 'but he ought to know that the miserable had no friends.'

Nigel said, 'He would not willingly be importunate, but, as he was about to leave the Friars—' She interrupted him—

'You are about to leave the Friars? I will go with you.'

'You go with me!' exclaimed Lord Glenvarloch.

'Yes,' she said, 'I will persuade my father to leave this murdering den.' But, as she spoke, the more perfect recollection of what had passed crowded on her mind. She hid her face in her hands, and burst out into a dreadful fit of sobs, moans, and lamentations, which terminated in hysterics, violent in proportion to the uncommon strength of her body and mind.

Lord Glenvarloch, shocked, confused, and inexperienced, was about to leave the house in quest of medical, or at least female assistance; but the patient, when the paroxysm had somewhat spent its force, held him fast by the sleeve with one hand, covering her face with the other, while a copious flood of tears came to relieve the emotions of grief by which she had been so violently agitated.

'Do not leave me,' she said—'do not leave me, and call no one. I have never been in this way before, and would not now,' she said, sitting upright, and wiping her eyes with her apron,—'would not now—but that—but that he loved me. if he loved nothing else that was human- -To die so, and by such hands!'

And again the unhappy woman gave way to a paroxysm of sorrow, mingling her tears with sobbing, wailing, and all the abandonment of female grief, when at its utmost height. At length, she gradually recovered the austerity of her natural composure, and maintained it as if by a forcible exertion of resolution, repelling, as she spoke, the repeated returns of the hysterical affection, by such an effort as that by which epileptic patients are known to suspend the recurrence of their fits. Yet her mind, however resolved, could not so absolutely overcome the affection of her nerves, but that she was agitated by strong fits of trembling, which, for a minute or two at a time, shook her whole frame in a manner frightful to witness. Nigel forgot his own situation, and, indeed, every thing else, in the interest inspired by the unhappy woman before him—an interest which affected a proud spirit the more deeply, that she herself, with correspondent highness of mind, seemed determined to owe as little as possible either to the humanity or the pity of others.

'I am not wont to be in this way,' she said,—'but—but—Nature will have power over the frail beings it has made. Over you, sir, I have some right; for, without you, I had not survived this awful night. I wish your aid had been either earlier or later—but you have saved my life, and you are bound to assist in making it endurable to me.'

'If you will show me how it is possible,' answered Nigel.

'You are going hence, you say, instantly—carry me with you,' said the unhappy woman. 'By my own efforts, I shall never escape from this wilderness of guilt and misery.'