‘Go,’ the tutor answered viciously.  ‘And glad to be quit.’

Mr. Pomeroy sat down opposite him.  ‘No, you’ll not go,’ he said in a low voice; and drinking off half his wine, set down the glass and regarded the other over it.  ’Five and five are ten, Tommy.  You are no fool, and I am no fool.’

‘I am not such a fool as to put my neck in a noose,’ the tutor retorted.  ‘And there is no other way of coming at what you want, Mr. Pomeroy.’

‘There are twenty,’ Pomeroy returned coolly.  ’And, mark you, if I fail, you are spun, whether you help rue or no.  You are blown on, or I can blow on you!  You’ll get nothing for your cut on the head.’

‘And what shall I get if I stay?’

‘I have told you.’

‘The gallows.’

‘No, Tommy.  Eight hundred a year.’

Mr. Thomasson sneered incredulously, and having made it plain that he refused to think—­thought!  He had risked so much in this enterprise, gone through so much; and to lose it all!  He cursed the girl’s fickleness, her coyness, her obstinacy!  He hated her.  And do what he might for her now, he doubted if he could cozen her or get much from her.  Yet in that lay his only chance, apart from Mr. Pomeroy.  His eye was cunning and his tone sly when he spoke.

‘You forget one thing,’ he said.  ’I have only to open my lips after I leave.’

‘And I am nicked?’ Mr. Pomeroy answered.  ’True.  And you will get a hundred guineas, and have a worse than Dunborough at your heels.’

The tutor wiped his brow.  ‘What do you want?’ he whispered.

‘That old hag of a housekeeper has turned rusty,’ Pomeroy answered.  ’She has got it into her head something is going to be done to the girl.  I sounded her and I cannot trust her.  I could send her packing, but Jarvey is not much better, and talks when he is drunk.  The girl must be got from here.’

Mr. Thomasson raised his eyebrows scornfully.

‘You need not sneer, you fool!’ Pomeroy cried with a little spirt of rage.’  ‘Tis no harder than to get her here.’

‘Where will you take her?’

’To Tamplin’s farm by the river.  There, you are no wiser, but you may trust me.  I can hang the man, and the woman is no better.  They have done this sort of thing before.  Once get her there, and, sink me! she’ll be glad to see the parson!’

The tutor shuddered.  The water was growing very deep.  ’I’ll have no part in it!’ he said hoarsely.  ‘No part in it, so help me God!’

‘There’s no part for you!’ Mr. Pomeroy answered with grim patience.  ‘Your part is to thwart me.’

Mr. Thomasson, half risen from his chair, sat down again.  ’What do you mean?’ he muttered.

’You are her friend.  Your part is to help her to escape.  You’re to sneak to her room to-morrow, and tell her that you’ll steal the key when I’m drunk after dinner.  You’ll bid her be ready at eleven, and you’ll let her out, and have a chaise waiting at the end of the avenue.  The chaise will be there, you’ll put her in, you’ll go back to the house.  I suppose you see it now?’