“You!”

“Didn’t I tell you that the fugitive Darrell gave me a glove!  But we’ll speak of this hereafter.  You can purchase the information from me whenever you’re so disposed.  I shan’t drive a hard bargain.  To the point however.  I came back to say, that I’ve placed your nephew in a coach; and, if you’ll be at my lock in the Old Bailey an hour after midnight, you shall hear the last tidings of him.”

“I will be there,” answered Trenchard, gloomily.

“You’ll not forget the thousand, Sir Rowland—­short accounts, you know.”

“Fear nothing.  You shall have your reward.”

“Thank’ee,—­thank’ee.  My house is the next door to the Cooper’s Arms, in the Old Bailey, opposite Newgate.  You’ll find me at supper.”

So saying, he bowed and departed.

“That man should have been an Italian bravo,” murmured the knight, sinking into a chair:  “he has neither fear nor compunction.  Would I could purchase his apathy as easily as I can procure his assistance.”

Soon after this Mrs. Norris entered the room, followed by Father Spencer.  On approaching the couch, they found Sir Rowland senseless, and extended over the dead body of his unfortunate sister.

CHAPTER XI.

The Mohocks.

Jonathan Wild, meanwhile, had quitted the house.  He found a coach at the door, with the blinds carefully drawn up, and ascertained from a tall, ill-looking, though tawdrily-dressed fellow, who held his horse by the bridle, and whom he addressed as Quilt Arnold, that the two boys were safe inside, in the custody of Abraham Mendez, the dwarfish Jew.  As soon as he had delivered his instructions to Quilt, who, with Abraham, constituted his body-guard, or janizaries, as he termed them, Jonathan mounted his steed, and rode off at a gallop.  Quilt was not long in following his example.  Springing upon the box, he told the coachman to make the best of his way to Saint Giles’s.  Stimulated by the promise of something handsome to drink, the man acquitted himself to admiration in the management of his lazy cattle.  Crack went the whip, and away floundered the heavy vehicle through the deep ruts of the ill-kept road, or rather lane, (for it was little better,) which, then, led across Southampton Fields.  Skirting the noble gardens of Montague House, (now, we need scarcely say, the British Museum,) the party speedily reached Great Russell Street,—­a quarter described by Strype, in his edition of old Stow’s famous Survey, “as being graced with the best buildings in all Bloomsbury, and the best inhabited by the nobility and gentry, especially the north side, as having gardens behind the houses, and the prospect of the pleasant fields up to Hampstead and Highgate; insomuch that this place, by physicians, is esteemed the most healthful of any in London.”  Neither of the parties outside bestowed much attention upon these stately