rang with the crime!' said Mortimer, impatiently.
'Hah!' Mr Riderhood very slowly and hoarsely chimed in, with several retrospective nods of his head. 'Warn't I troubled in my mind then!'
'When conjecture ran wild, when the most extravagant suspicions were afloat, when half a dozen innocent people might have been laid by the heels any hour in the day!' said Mortimer, almost warming.
'Hah!' Mr Riderhood chimed in, as before. 'Warn't I troubled in my mind through it all!'
'But he hadn't,' said Eugene, drawing a lady's head upon his writing-paper, and touching it at intervals, 'the opportunity then of earning so much money, you see.'
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'The T'other Governor hits the nail, Lawyer Lightwood! It was that as turned me. I had many times and again struggled to relieve myself of the trouble on my mind, but I couldn't get it off. I had once very nigh got it off to Miss Abbey Potterson which keeps the Six Jolly Fellowships--there is the 'ouse, it won't run away,--there lives the lady, she ain't likely to be struck dead afore you get there--ask her!--but I couldn't do it. At last, out comes the new bill with your own lawful name, Lawyer Lightwood, printed to it,
and then I asks the question of my own intellects, Am I to have this trouble on my mind for ever? Am I never to throw it off ? Am I
always to think more of Gaffer than of my own self ? If he's got a daughter, ain't I got a daughter?'
'And echo answered--?' Eugene suggested.
'"You have,"' said Mr Riderhood, in a firm tone.
'Incidentally mentioning, at the same time, her age?' inquired Eugene.
'Yes, governor. Two-and-twenty last October. And then I put it to myself, "Regarding the money. It is a pot of money." For it IS a pot,' said Mr Riderhood, with candour, 'and why deny it?'
'Hear!' from Eugene as he touched his drawing.
'"It is a pot of money; but is it a sin for a labouring man that moistens every crust of bread he earns, with his tears--or if not with them, with the colds he catches in his head--is it a sin for that man to earn it? Say there is anything again earning it." This I put to myself strong, as in duty bound; "how can it be said without blaming Lawyer Lightwood for offering it to be earned?" And was it for ME to blame Lawyer Lightwood? No.'
'No,' said Eugene.
'Certainly not, Governor,' Mr Riderhood acquiesced. 'So I made up my mind to get my trouble off my mind, and to earn by the
sweat of my brow what was held out to me. And what's more, he added, suddenly turning bloodthirsty, 'I mean to have it! And now I tell you, once and away, Lawyer Lightwood, that Jesse Hexam, commonly called Gaffer, his hand and no other, done the deed, on his own confession to me. And I give him up to you, and I want him took. This night!'
After another silence, broken only by the fall of the ashes in the grate, which attracted the informer's attention as if it were the
chinking of money, Mortimer Lightwood leaned over his friend, and said in a whisper:
'I suppose I must go with this fellow to our imperturbable friend at the police-station.'
'I suppose,' said Eugene, 'there is no help for it.'
'Do you believe him?'
'I believe him to be a thorough rascal. But he may tell the truth, for his own purpose, and for this occasion only.'
'It doesn't look like it.'
'HE doesn't,' said Eugene. 'But neither is his late partner, whom he denounces, a prepossessing person. The firm are cut-throat
Shepherds both, in appearance. I should like to ask him one thing.'
The subject of this conference sat leering at the ashes, trying with all his might to overhear what was said, but feigning abstraction as the 'Governors Both' glanced at him.
'You mentioned (twice, I think) a daughter of this Hexam's,' said Eugene, aloud. 'You don't mean to imply that she had any guilty knowledge of the crime?'
The honest man, after considering--perhaps considering how his answer might affect the fruits of the sweat of his brow--replied, unreservedly, 'No, I don't.'
'And you implicate no other person?'
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'It ain't what I implicate, it's what Gaffer implicated,' was the dogged and determined answer. 'I don't pretend to know more than that his words to me was, "I done it." Those was his words.'
'I must see this out, Mortimer,' whispered Eugene, rising. 'How shall we go?'
'Let us walk,' whispered Lightwood, 'and give this fellow time to think of it.'
Having exchanged the question and answer, they prepared themselves for going out, and Mr Riderhood rose. While extinguishing the candles, Lightwood, quite as a matter of course took up the glass from which that honest gentleman had drunk, and coolly tossed it under the grate, where it fell shivering into fragments.
'Now, if you will take the lead,' said Lightwood, 'Mr Wrayburn and I will follow. You know where to go, I suppose?'
'I suppose I do, Lawyer Lightwood.'
'Take the lead, then.'
The waterside character pulled his drowned cap over his ears with both hands, and making himself more round-shouldered than nature had made him, by the sullen and persistent slouch with which he went, went down the stairs, round by the Temple Church, across the Temple into Whitefriars, and so on by the waterside streets.
'Look at his hang-dog air,' said Lightwood, following.
'It strikes me rather as a hang-MAN air,' returned Eugene. 'He has undeniable intentions that way.'
They said little else as they followed. He went on before them as an ugly Fate might have done, and they kept him in view, and would have been glad enough to lose sight of him. But on he went before them, always at the same distance, and the same rate. Aslant against the hard implacable weather and the rough wind, he was no more to be driven back than hurried forward, but held on like an advancing Destiny. There came, when they were about midway on their journey, a heavy rush of hail, which in a few minutes pelted the streets clear, and whitened them. It made no difference to him. A man's life being to be taken and the price of it got, the hailstones to arrest the purpose must lie larger and deeper than those. He crashed through them, leaving marks in the fast-melting slush that were mere shapeless holes; one might have fancied, following, that the very fashion of humanity had departed from his feet.
The blast went by, and the moon contended with the fast-flying clouds, and the wild disorder reigning up there made the pitiful little tumults in the streets of no account. It was not that the wind swept all the brawlers into places of shelter, as it had swept the hail still lingering in heaps wherever there was refuge for it; but that it seemed as if the streets were absorbed by the sky, and the night were
all in the air.
'If he has had time to think of it,' said Eugene, he has not had time to think better of it--or differently of it, if that's better. There is
no sign of drawing back in him; and as I recollect this place, we must be close upon the corner where we alighted that night.'
In fact, a few abrupt turns brought them to the river side, where they had slipped about among the stones, and where they now slipped more; the wind coming against them in slants and flaws, across the tide and the windings of the river, in a furious way. With that habit of getting under the lee of any shelter which waterside characters acquire, the waterside character at present in question led the way to the leeside of the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters before he spoke.
'Look round here, Lawyer Lightwood, at them red curtains. It's the Fellowships, the 'ouse as I told you wouldn't run away. And has it run away?'
Not showing himself much impressed by this remarkable confirmation of the informer's evidence, Lightwood inquired what other
business they had there?
'I wished