MAUD ROOKWOOD
“Haste, and God speed you!”
“God speed you!” echoed Dick, in his own voice, contemptuously. “The devil drive you! would have been a fitter postscript. And it was upon this precious errand you came, Mr. Coates?”
“Precisely,” replied the attorney; “but I find the premises preoccupied. Fast as I have ridden, you were here before me.”
“And what do you now propose to do?” asked Turpin.
“Bargain with you for the body,” replied Coates, in an insinuating tone.
“With me!” said Dick; “do you take me for a resurrection cove; for a dealer in dead stock, eh! sirrah?”
“I take you for one sufficiently alive, in a general way, to his own interests,” returned Coates. “These gentlemen may not, perhaps, be quite so scrupulous, when they hear my proposals.”
“Be silent, sir,” interrupted Turpin. “Hist! I hear the tramp of horses’ hoofs without. Hark! that shout.”
“Make your own terms before they come,” said Coates. “Leave all to me. I’ll put ’em on a wrong scent.”
“To the devil with your terms,” cried Turpin; “the signal!”
And he pulled the trigger of one of Coates’s pistols, the shot of which rang in the ears of the astounded attorney as it whizzed past him. “Drag him into the mouth of the vault,” thundered Turpin: “he will be a capital cover in case of attack. Look to your sticks, and be on the alert; away!”
Vainly did the unfortunate attorney kick and struggle, swear and scream; his hat was pushed over his eyes; his bob-wig thrust into his mouth; and his legs tripped from under him. Thus blind, dumb, and half-suffocated, he was hurried into the entrance of the cell.
Dick, meanwhile, dashed to the arched outlet of the ruin. He there drew in the rein, and Black Bess stood motionless as a statue.
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CHAPTER XIV
DICK TURPIN
TURPIN’S quick eye ranged over the spreading sward in front of the ancient priory, and his brow became contracted. The feeling, however, was transient. The next instant saw him the same easy, reckless being he had been before. There was a little more paleness in his cheek than usual; but his look was keener, and his knees involuntarily clasped the saddle more firmly. No other symptom of anxiety was perceptible. It would be no impeachment to Dick’s valour were it necessary to admit that a slight tremor crossed him as he scanned the formidable array of his opponents. The admission is needless. Dick himself would have been the last man to own it; nor shall we do the memory of our undaunted highwayman any such injustice. Turpin was intrepid to a fault. He was rash; apt to run into risks for the mere pleasure of getting out of them: danger was his delight, and the degree of excitement was always in proportion to the peril incurred. After the first glance, he became, to use his own expressive phrase, “as cool as a cucumber”; and continued, as long as they permitted him, like a skilful commander, calmly to calculate the numerical strength of his adversaries, and to arrange his own plan of resistance.
This troop of horsemen, for such it was, might probably amount in the aggregate to twenty men, and presented an appearance like that of a strong muster at a rustic fox-chase, due allowance being made for the various weapons of offence; to wit, naked sabres, firelocks, and a world of huge horse-pistols, which the present field carried along with them. This resemblance was heightened by the presence of an old huntsman and a gamekeeper or two, in scarlet and green jackets, and a few yelping hounds that had followed after them. The majority of the crew consisted of sturdy yeomen; some of whom, mounted upon wild, unbroken colts, had pretty lives of it to maintain their seats, and curveted about in “most admired disorder”; others were seated upon more docile, but quite as provoking specimens of the cart-horse breed, whose sluggish sides, reckless alike of hobnailed heel or ash sapling, refused to obey their riders’ intimations to move; while others again, brought stiff, wrong-headed ponies to the charge—obstinate, impracticable little brutes, who seemed to prefer revolving on their own axes, and describing absurd rotatory motions, to proceeding in the direct and proper course pointed out to them.
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