CHAPTER 9
A JUDGEMENT
Let them fight it out, friend. Things have gone too far,
God must judge the couple: leave them as they are--_Browning_
I made as if I would follow the others, not wishing to see what I must
see if I stayed behind, and knowing that I was powerless to bend Elzevir
from his purpose. But he called me back and bade me wait with him, for
that I might be useful by and by. So I waited, but was only able to make
a dreadful guess at how I might be of use, and feared the worst.
Maskew sat on the sward with his hands lashed tight behind his back, and
his feet tied in front. They had set him with his shoulders against a
great block of weather-worn stone that was half-buried and half-stuck up
out of the turf. There he sat keeping his eyes on the ground, and was
breathing less painfully than when he was first brought, but still very
pale. Elzevir stood with the lanthorn in his hand, looking at Maskew
with a fixed gaze, and we could hear the hoofs of the heavy-laden horses
beating up the path, till they turned a corner, and all was still.
The silence was broken by Maskew: 'Unloose me, villain, and let me go. I
am a magistrate of the county, and if you do not, I will have you
gibbeted on this cliff-top.'
They were brave words enough, yet seemed to me but bad play-acting; and
brought to my remembrance how, when I was a little fellow, Mr.
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