A ray of light fell on my face; I turned and sat up on the edge of my cot as the key in the cell door gritted.
Full under the flare of a lanthorn stood a man in a military uniform of scarlet and green. Behind him appeared Warden Bishop, holding the lanthorn.
"This is the Weasel, sir," he said, "at least he goes by that name, although the Weasel I have chased these ten years was a different cut of a rogue. But it"s all one, captain; he was took with Jack Mount, and he"ll dance a rope-jig the 19th of April next."
"Why not sooner?" asked the officer, gravely.
I started, quivering in every limb.
"Why not hang him sooner?" inquired Walter Butler, moving back a step into the corridor. He limped as he walked and leaned on a cane. My mark was still upon him.
"Well, sir," said Bishop, scratching his ears, "we hung eight coast-sc.r.a.pers in November, and two sheep-thieves in December. We"ve got three pickpockets to swing this month, then Symonds, the wharf-robber, is to go in February. There"s no room in March either, because the Santa Cruz gang goes up the 13th--seven o" them in chains--and the gallows yonder ain"t dropped last year"s fruit yet, and the people hereabouts complains o" the stench of a hot day and a south wind--"
"Can"t he change places with some other rogue?" interrupted Butler, impatiently.
"Lord, no!" cried Bishop, horrified. "Leastways, not unless the court-martial directs it, sir. They don"t do no such things in Boston, sir."
"They do in Tryon County," observed Butler, eying me coolly. Presently a ghastly smile stretched his pallid face, but his yellow eyes glared unchanging.
"Well, well," he said, "so you are to sail to glory at a rope"s end, eh? You wouldn"t burn, you know. But the flames will come later, I fancy. Eh, Mr.--er--Mr. Weasel?"
"Are your broken bones mended?" I asked, quietly.
"Quite mended, thank you."
"Because," I said, "you will need them some day--"
"I need them now," he said, cheerfully; "I am to wed a bride ere long.
Give me joy, Weasel! I am to know the day this very night."
I could not utter a sound for the horror which froze my tongue. He saw it; fastened his eyes on my face, and watched me, silent as a snake with its fangs in its paralyzed prey.
"Would you care to see the famous Jack Mount, captain?" asked Bishop, swelling with pride. "I took him myself, sir. All the papers had it--I have the cuttings in my room; I can fetch them, sir--"
Butler did not appear to hear him.
"Yes," he continued, thoughtfully, "I ride this night to Lexington.
She"s a sweet little thing--a trifle skinny, perhaps. I think you have seen her--perhaps picked her pocket. When we are wed we shall come to Boston--on the 19th of April next."
I sprang at him; I had gone stone-blind with rage, and knew not what I did; the steel door crashed in my face; the locks rattled.
Outside the door I heard Butler"s cool voice, continuing: "But if she pleases me not, to-night, I may change my mind and take her for my mistress--as Sir William took your aunt--as my friend General Gage has taken your old sweetheart, Mrs. Hamilton. One wench is like another in silken petticoats. Sleep soundly, Master Weasel. If I find her too thin for my taste I"ll leave her for Dunmore."
All that night I lay on the stone floor of my cell, by turns inert, stupid, frantic.
When Bishop came to me in the morning he thought me ill and summoned the prison apothecary to cup me; but ere that individual appeared with his pills and leeches, I was quiet and self-possessed, ready to argue with the pill-roller and convince him I needed no nostrums. All that day I watched for Dulcima; twice I saw her go to Mount"s cell, but could hear nothing of what they whispered.
Now as I was standing, looking out of the grating, I chanced to glance down, and saw that the apothecary had left his case of herbs and drugs on a bench which stood just outside my cell door.
Idly I read the labels on the bottles and boxes: "Senna, Jalap, Brimstone, Es. Cammomile, Saffron Pills, Tinc. Opium--"
Opium? An easy death.
I gazed at the dark flask, scarcely a foot below me, but as safe from me as though under lock and key. Presently I turned around; my cell contained a cot, an iron table, a bowl for washing, and a towel.
After a moment"s thought I caught up the coa.r.s.e towel, drew from it some threads, twisted them, tied on more threads, and then, greasing the cord with a bit of soap, made a running noose at the end.
There was n.o.body in the corridor. I heard voices in Bishop"s room, whither the apothecary had gone to examine the baby at Mrs. Bishop"s summons. Very carefully I let down my thread, fishing for the bottle"s neck with my slip-noose; but the neck was so placed that I could not snare it, and I drew up another bottle instead, bearing the label: "_Ex. S. Nigrum_."
What _Ex. S. Nigrum_ might be I did not know, but hid the tiny flask under a loose fragment of stone in my flooring where a black beetle had his abode. Scooping out for it a little hole in the damp earth, I buried it, not harming my friend the beetle; then I returned to fish for my opium flask, but could not snare it. Finally I drew in my string just as the apothecary came out with Mrs. Bishop at his heels.
He stood a moment, talking, then picked up his cow-hide case, closed it, and took himself off.
That night, when the corridor was dusky and Bishop sprawled outside his door to smoke his evening pipe, I called to him and asked him for a jug of water. He fetched it and seemed disposed to linger and chat a bit, but I was uncommunicative, and presently he left me to my own devices, lighting the lanthorn in the corridor ere he retired to his room with his long pipe.
I now unearthed my flask containing the _Ex. S. Nigrum_, poured a single drop into my basin, filled it up with water, and then returned the flask to its hiding-place.
"We shall see," I muttered, "whether there be any virtue of poison in my _Nigrum_," and I caught the poor little black beetle who had come out to enjoy the lamplight.
Now as the drop of _Ex. S. Nigrum_ had been diluted many hundreds of times by the water in my bowl, I argued that, if this solution dealt death to the beetle, a few drops, pure, would put Jack Mount and me beyond the hangman"s hands.
Poor little beetle! how he struggled! I was loath to sacrifice him, but at last I dropped him into the bowl.
He did not swim; I watched him for a moment, and finally touched him.
The little thing was stone dead.
That I had a terrible and swift poison in my possession I now believed; and my belief became certainty when the apothecary came next day in a panic, crying out to Bishop that he had lost a flask of nightshade syrup, and feared lest the infant might find it and swallow the poison.
I watched Bishop and his wife rummaging their rooms in a spasm of panic, and finally saw them go off with the puling pill-roller to report the loss to the head warden.
Later that day a turnkey searched my cell, but did not see the cracked corner of the stone slab, which I covered with one foot.
When all was quiet, I called to Dulcima and bade her tell Jack Mount that I had the poison and would use it on us both if we could not find other means to escape the gallows.
The poor child took the message, and presently returned, wiping her tears, to say that Jack had every hope of liberty; that I must not despair or take the life which no longer was at my own disposal, and that she, Dulcima, had already communicated with Shemuel.
She handed me a steel awl, telling me to pick at the mortar which held the stones on my window-ledge, and to fill these holes with water every night, so that the water might freeze and crack the stones around the base of the steel bars.
I had never thought of such a thing! I had often seen the work of frost on stones, but to take advantage of nature in this manner never occurred to me.
Eagerly and cautiously I set to work with my little steel pick, to drill what holes I might before Bishop came. But it was heart-breaking labour, and so slow that at the end of a week I had not loosened a single bar.
The next week the weather was bitterly cold. I had drilled some few holes around the base of an iron stanchion, and now I filled them with water and plugged them with a paste of earth from beneath my flooring, threads from my towel, and some soap.
At dawn I was at my window, and to my delight found the stone cracked; but the iron bar was as firm as ever, so I set to drilling my holes deeper.
At the end of that week Dulcima let me know that Jack had loosened one bar of his window, and could take it from its socket whenever I was ready. So I worked like a madman at my bar, and by night was ready to charge the holes with water.