So along the Strand, up Swallow Street, into the Oxford Road, and thence to his house in Welbeck Street, near Cavendish Square, whither he was attended by a few dozen idlers; of whom he took leave on the steps with this brief parting, “Gentlemen, No Popery. Good day. God bless you.” This being rather a shorter address than they expected, was received with some displeasure, and cries of “A speech! a speech!” which might have been complied with, but that John Grueby, making a mad charge upon them with all three horses, on his way to the stables, caused them to disperse into the adjoining fields, where they presently fell to pitch and toss, chuck-farthing, odd or even, dog-fighting, and other Protestant recreations.
In the afternoon Lord George came forth again, dressed in a black velvet coat, and trousers and waistcoat of the Gordon plaid, all of the same Quaker cut; and in this costume, which made him look a dozen times more strange and singular than before, went down on foot to Westminster. Gashford, meanwhile, bestirred himself in business matters; with which he was still engaged when, shortly after dusk, John Grueby entered and announced a visitor.
“Let him come in,” said Gashford.
“Here! come in!” growled John to somebody without; “You’re a Protestant, an’t you?”
“I should think so,” replied a deep, gruff voice.
“You’ve the looks of it,” said John Grueby. “I’d have known you for one, anywhere.” With which remark he gave the visitor admission, retired, and shut the door.
The man who now confronted Gashford, was a squat, thickset personage, with a low, retreating forehead, a coarse shock head of hair, and eyes so small and near together, that his broken nose alone seemed to prevent their meeting and fusing into one of the usual size. A dingy handkerchief twisted like a cord about his neck, left its great veins exposed to view, and they were swollen and starting, as though with gulping down strong passions, malice, and ill-will. His dress was of threadbare velveteen—a faded, rusty, whitened black, like the ashes of a pipe or a coal fire after a day’s extinction; discoloured with the soils of many a stale debauch, and reeking yet with pothouse odours. In lieu of buckles at his knees, he wore unequal loops of packthread; and in his grimy hands he held a knotted stick, the knob of which was carved into a rough likeness of his own vile face. Such was the visitor who doffed his three-cornered hat in Gashford’s presence, and waited, leering, for his notice.
“Ah! Dennis!” cried the secretary. “Sit down.”
“I see my lord down yonder—” cried the man, with a jerk of his thumb towards the quarter that he spoke of, “and he says to me, says my lord, ‘If you’ve nothing to do, Dennis, go up to my house and talk with Muster Gashford.’ Of course I’d nothing to do, you know. These an’t my working hours. Ha ha! I was a-taking the air when I see my lord, that’s what I was doing. I takes the air by night, as the howls does, Muster Gashford.”
“And sometimes in the daytime, eh?” said the secretary—“when you go out in state, you know.”
“Ha ha!” roared the fellow, smiting his leg; “for a gentleman as ’ull say a pleasant thing in a pleasant way, give me Muster Gashford agin’ all London and Westminster! My lord an’t a bad ’un at that, but he’s a fool to you. Ah to be sure—when I go out in state.”
“And have your carriage,” said the secretary; “and your chaplain, eh? and all the rest of it?”
“You’ll be the death of me,” cried Dennis, with another roar, “you will. But what’s in the wind now, Muster Gashford,” he asked hoarsely, “Eh? Are we to be under orders to pull down one of them Popish chapels—or what?”
“Hush!” said the secretary, suffering the faintest smile to play upon his face. “Hush! God bless me, Dennis! We associate, you know, for strictly peaceable and lawful purposes.”
“I know, bless you,” returned the man, thrusting his tongue into his cheek; “I entered a’ purpose, didn’t I!”
“No doubt,” said Gashford, smiling as before. And when he said so, Dennis roared again, and smote his leg still harder, and falling into fits of laughter, wiped his eyes with the corner of his neckerchief, and cried, “Muster Gashford agin’ all England hollow!”
“Lord George and I were talking of you last night,” said Gashford, after a pause. “He says you are a very earnest fellow.”
“So I am,” returned the hangman.
“And that you truly hate the Papists.”
“So I do,” and he confirmed it with a good round oath. “Lookye here, Muster Gashford,” said the fellow, laying his hat and stick upon the floor, and slowly beating the palm of one hand with the fingers of the other; “Ob‑serve. I’m a constitutional officer that works for my living, and does my work creditable. Do I, or do I not?”
“Unquestionably.”
“Very good. Stop a minute. My work, is sound, Protestant, constitutional, English work. Is it, or is it not?”
“No man alive can doubt it.”
“Nor dead neither. Parliament says this here—says Parliament, ‘If any man, woman, or child, does anything which goes again a certain number of our acts’—how many hanging laws may there be at this present time, Muster Gashford? Fifty?”
“I don’t exactly know how many,” replied Gashford, leaning back in his chair and yawning; “a great number though.”
“Well, say fifty. Parliament says, ‘If any man, woman, or child, does anything again any one of them fifty acts, that man, woman, or child, shall be worked off by Dennis.’ George the
