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!”
“It's not one that you care for much, I should think,” observed the serjeant coolly.
“Why, who,” said Mr Dennis rising, “should care for it, if I don't?”
“Oh! I didn't know you was so tender-hearted,” said the serjeant. “That's all!”
“Tender-hearted!” echoed Dennis. “Tender-hearted! Look at this man. Do you call THIS constitootional? Do you see him shot through and through instead of being worked off like a Briton? Damme, if I know which party to side with. You're as bad as the other. What's to become of the country if the military power's to go a superseding the ciwilians in this way? Where's this poor feller-creetur's rights as a citizen, that he didn't have ME in his last moments! I was here. I was willing. I was ready. These are nice times, brother, to have the dead crying out against us in this way, and sleep comfortably in our beds arterwards; wery nice!”
Whether he derived any material consolation from binding the prisoners, is uncertain; most probably he did. At all events his being summoned to that work, diverted him, for the time, from these painful reflections, and gave his thoughts a more congenial occupation.
They were not all three carried off together, but in two parties; Barnaby and his father, going by one road in the centre of a body of foot; and Hugh, fast bound upon a horse, and strongly guarded by a troop of cavalry, being taken by another.
They had no opportunity for the least communication, in the short interval which preceded their departure; being kept strictly apart. Hugh only observed that Barnaby walked with a drooping head among his guard, and, without raising his eyes, that he tried to wave his fettered hand when he passed. For himself, he buoyed up his courage as he rode along, with the assurance that the mob would force his jail wherever it might be, and set him at liberty. But when they got into London, and more especially into Fleet Market, lately the stronghold of the rioters, where the military were rooting out the last remnant of the crowd, he saw that this hope was gone, and felt that he was riding to his death.
Chapter 70
Mr Dennis having despatched this piece of business without any personal hurt or inconvenience, and having now retired into the tranquil respectability of private life, resolved to solace himself with half an hour or so of female society. With this amiable purpose in his mind, he bent his steps towards the house where Dolly and Miss Haredale were still confined, and whither Miss Miggs had also been removed by order of Mr Simon Tappertit.
As he walked along the streets with his leather gloves clasped behind him, and his face indicative of cheerful thought and pleasant calculation, Mr Dennis might have been likened unto a farmer ruminating among his crops, and enjoying by anticipation the bountiful gifts of Providence. Look where he would, some heap of ruins afforded him
