rich promise of a working off; the whole town appeared to have been ploughed and sown, and nurtured by most genial weather; and a goodly harvest was at hand.
Having taken up arms and resorted to deeds of violence, with the great main object of preserving the Old Bailey in all its purity, and the gallows in all its pristine usefulness and moral grandeur, it would perhaps be going too far to assert that Mr Dennis had ever distinctly contemplated and foreseen this happy state of things. He rather looked upon it as one of those beautiful dispensations which are inscrutably brought about for the behoof and advantage of good men. He felt, as it were, personally referred to, in this prosperous ripening for the gibbet; and had never considered himself so much the pet and favourite child of Destiny, or loved that lady so well or with such a calm and virtuous reliance, in all his life.
As to being taken up, himself, for a rioter, and punished with the rest, Mr Dennis dismissed that possibility from his thoughts as an idle chimera; arguing that the line of conduct he had adopted at Newgate, and the service he had rendered that day, would be more than a set-off against any evidence which might identify him as a member of the crowd. That any charge of companionship which might be made against him by those who were themselves in danger, would certainly go for nought. And that if any trivial indiscretion on his part should unluckily come out, the uncommon usefulness of his office, at present, and the great demand for the exercise of its functions, would certainly cause it to be winked at, and passed over. In a word, he had played his cards throughout, with great care; had changed sides at the very nick of time; had delivered up two of the most notorious rioters, and a distinguished felon to boot; and was quite at his ease.
Saving—for there is a reservation; and even Mr Dennis was not perfectly happy—saving for one circumstance; to wit, the forcible detention of Dolly and Miss Haredale, in a house almost adjoining his own. This was a stumbling-block; for if they were discovered and released, they could, by the testimony they had it in their power to give, place him in a situation of great jeopardy; and to set them at liberty, first extorting from them an oath of secrecy and silence, was a thing not to be thought of. It was more, perhaps, with an eye to the danger which lurked in this quarter, than from his abstract love of conversation with the sex, that the hangman, quickening his steps, now hastened into their society, cursing the amorous natures of Hugh and Mr Tappertit with great heartiness, at every step he took.
When be entered the miserable room in which they were confined, Dolly and Miss Haredale withdrew in silence to the remotest corner. But Miss Miggs, who was particularly tender of her reputation, immediately fell upon her knees and began to scream very loud, crying, “What will become of me!'—'Where is my Simmuns!'—'Have mercy, good gentlemen, on my sex's weaknesses!'—with other doleful lamentations of that nature, which she delivered with great propriety and decorum.
“Miss, miss,” whispered Dennis, beckoning to her with his forefinger, “come here—I won't hurt you. Come here, my lamb, will you?”
On hearing this tender epithet, Miss Miggs, who had left off screaming when he opened his lips, and had listened to him attentively, began again, crying: “Oh I'm his lamb! He says I'm his lamb! Oh gracious, why wasn't I born old and ugly! Why was I ever made to be the youngest of six, and all of “em dead and in their blessed graves, excepting one married sister, which is settled in Golden Lion Court, number twenty-sivin, second bellhandle on the —!”
“Don't I say I an't a-going to hurt you?” said Dennis, pointing to a chair. “Why miss, what's the matter?”
“I don't know what mayn't be the matter!” cried Miss Miggs, clasping her hands distractedly. “Anything may be the matter!”
“But nothing is, I tell you,” said the hangman. “First stop that noise and come and sit down here, will you, chuckey?”
The coaxing tone in which he said these latter words might have failed in its object, if he had not accompanied them with sundry sharp jerks of his thumb over one shoulder, and with divers winks and thrustings of his tongue into his cheek, from which signals the damsel gathered that he sought to speak to her apart, concerning Miss Haredale and Dolly. Her curiosity being very powerful, and her jealousy by no means inactive, she arose, and with a great deal of shivering and starting back, and much muscular action among all the small bones in her throat, gradually approached him.
“Sit down,” said the hangman.
Suiting the action to the word, he thrust her rather suddenly and prematurely into a chair, and designing to reassure her by a little harmless jocularity, such as is adapted to please and fascinate the sex, converted his right forefinger into an ideal bradawl or gimlet, and made as though he would screw the same into her side— whereat Miss Miggs shrieked again, and evinced symptoms of faintness.
“Lovey, my dear,” whispered Dennis, drawing his chair close to hers. “When was your young man here last, eh?”
“MY young man, good gentleman!” answered Miggs in a tone of exquisite distress.
“Ah! Simmuns, you know—him?” said Dennis.
“Mine indeed!” cried Miggs, with a burst of bitterness—and as she said it, she glanced towards Dolly. “MINE, good gentleman!”
This was just what Mr Dennis wanted, and expected.
“Ah!” he said, looking so soothingly, not to say amorously on Miggs, that she sat, as she afterwards remarked, on pins and needles of the sharpest Whitechapel kind, not knowing what intentions might be suggesting that expression to his features: “I was afraid of that. I saw as much myself. It's her fault. She WILL entice “em.”
“I wouldn't,” cried Miggs, folding her hands and looking upwards with a kind of devout blankness, “I wouldn't lay myself out as she does; I wouldn't be as bold as her; I wouldn't seem to say to all male creeturs “Come and kiss me''—and here a shudder quite convulsed her frame—'for any earthly crowns as might be offered. Worlds,” Miggs added solemnly, “should not reduce me. No. Not if I was Wenis.”
“Well, but you ARE Wenus, you know,” said Mr Dennis, confidentially.
“No, I am not, good gentleman,” answered Miggs, shaking her head with an air of self-denial which seemed to imply that she might be if she chose, but she hoped she knew better. “No, I am not, good gentleman. Don't charge me with it.”
Up to this time she had turned round, every now and then, to where Dolly and Miss Haredale had retired and uttered a scream, or groan, or laid her hand upon her heart and trembled excessively, with a view of keeping up appearances, and giving them to understand that she conversed with the visitor, under protest and on compulsion, and at a great personal sacrifice, for their common good. But at this point, Mr Dennis looked so very full of meaning, and gave such a singularly expressive twitch to his face as a request to her to come still nearer to him, that she abandoned these little arts, and gave him her whole and undivided attention.
“When was Simmuns here, I say?” quoth Dennis, in her ear.
“Not since yesterday morning; and then only for a few minutes. Not all day, the day before.”
“You know he meant all along to carry off that one!” said Dennis, indicating Dolly by the slightest possible jerk of his head:—'And to hand you over to somebody else.”
Miss Miggs, who had fallen into a terrible state of grief when the first part of this sentence was spoken, recovered a little at the second, and seemed by the sudden check she put upon her tears, to intimate that possibly this arrangement might meet her views; and that it might, perhaps, remain an open question.
“—But unfort'nately,” pursued Dennis, who observed this: “somebody else was fond of her too, you see; and even if he wasn't, somebody else is took for a rioter, and it's all over with him.”
Miss Miggs relapsed.
“Now I want,” said Dennis, “to clear this house, and to see you righted. What if I was to get her off, out of the way, eh?”
Miss Miggs, brightening again, rejoined, with many breaks and pauses from excess of feeling, that temptations had been Simmuns's bane. That it was not his faults, but hers (meaning Dolly's). That men did not see through these dreadful arts as women did, and therefore was caged and trapped, as Simmun had been. That she had no personal motives to serve—far from it—on the contrary, her intentions was good towards all parties. But forasmuch as she knowed that Simmun, if united to any designing and artful minxes (she would name no names, for that was not her dispositions)—to ANY designing and artful minxes—must be made miserable and unhappy for life, she DID incline towards prewentions. Such, she added, was her free confessions. But as this was private feelings, and might perhaps be looked upon as wengeance, she begged the gentleman would say no more. Whatever he said,
