The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 68: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE MYSTERIES OF THE COURT. mark, not so big as a sixpence. Well, I had just torn off a string from the child’s petticoat and was going to fasten it round his neck—for he was crying @ great deal and I wanted to put an end to the business at once—when all of a sudden I heard the voices of several men close by: but I could nut immediately see who they were, on account of the thickness of the foliage. Well, thought I to myself, there was a chase after the child, and if I was caught stripping it and with its clothes in my pocket too, I should swing for it! So dropping the brat ina jiffey, I started up and rushed away quite in a differ- ent direction from the one where I had heard the voices. Just as I got out of thé grove, however, I ran against a great tall hulking gipsy-man with a large stick in his hand. He cried out in a savage manner, asking what the deuce I meant b against him like that; and then he gave me & good tap with bis stick—in return for which I knocked him down with my bludgeon. But the next mo- ment I had,:our or five otacr gipsy-men at my heels, who came rushing out of the grove on hearing the disturbance. So, not choosing to stay and fight with such numbers, I cut off as fast as my legs would carry me. They did not pursue me far; and I got clear away. I then sat down and to reflect what I should do—whether I should go back and endeavour to regain possession of the child or not; for I now felt quite sure that the voices which bad alarmed me were those of the gipsy-men and not of any pereons in search of the bantling. But then I thought that if I returned into the grove the gipsies would either beat me to death for ‘having knocked down their comrade; or else out of re- venge, and perhaps with the hope of reward, go and hand me over to the constables of the nearest town for having stolen and stripped a child. Sol . was obliged to come to the resolution of leaving things to take their chance, and telling Ralph Fare- field the most plausible story I could invent to satisfy him. I accordingly made the beet of the way to Gainsborough, and joining my companions at the boozing-ken where they had put up, told them what had happened. We then took separate roads, and hastened back to London. There I told Mr. Farefield that I had killed the child, and left it in a place where it was very likely to be discovered. As a proof of the story I displayed the clothes stripped off the bantling, and which fortunately were marked with the name of the Hon. Edmund Farefield. 1 alzo told him about the strawberry- mark—and altogether he was satisfied.” Here the Cannibal again paused to refresh him- self with more brandy-and-water; and having re- filled his glass ready for farther use, he went on thus :-— “A month passed away after the adventure down m Lincolnshire, and as it seemed that nothing was heard about the child, and it did not turn up, I felt pretty sure that either the gipsies had taken it away with them without stopping in the neighbourhood to ascertain whoee child was lost, or else that they had left it to its fate in the grove. Or again, it like- Wise occurred to me that they might not have seen it af all. However, certain sure it was that the child continued missing, as I learnt from Ralph Farefield, who came to question me more particularly about | pretty tho business. It was a little more than a month after the adventure, when I one day saw in a news- paper that old Lord Saxondale was lying at the point of death down at the castle in Lincolnshire: so I went off to Mr. Farefield’s lodgings to let him know: bat I found he had gone down into Lincoln- shire the day before. Then it struck me that if the old lord should not happen to die of that bout, it might answer Ralph Farefield’s purposes if me and my pals were to get into the castle and knock his venerable lordship on the head in the middle of the night. Away we went therefore into Lincolnshire to offer our services to Ralph in that respect: but on arriving in the neighbourhood we heard that the old lord was dead, that Lady Saxondale had ree covered her child, and that Ralph Farefield had gone away suddenly in the middle of the very same night of his arrival Well, I was not over much surprised at hearing that her ladyship had gut back the child, knowing what I did about its original loss. I was however terribly put out to think that it was all up with Mr. Ralph: so me and my pals consulted what we should do rather than go back empty-handed to London. In short, we determined upon a crack in the castle, and accordingly broke in at night. An alarm was raised—we found our way to some vaults underneath the chapel—and there what do you think we discovered? You would never guess. The dead body of Ralph Farefield, floating about in the water that had flooded the vaults !” “Had he been murdered, then P’’ asked Madvge Somers, who listened with a deep interest to the narrative. “There was no appearance of it,” responded Chiffin; “and indeed from what a surgeon after- wards said, there was every reason to believe the contrary—-I mean to say, that it was an accident by which he was drowned. But how he came into the vault, heaven only knows! Me and my pals took from about his person all he had in money and jewellery, and left the body lying on the steps leading down into the vault. We then got out of the castle as best we could, and betook ourselves to Gainsborough, where we put up at the boozing- ken that I mentioned just now, and which was kept by a fellow of the right sort. You recollect I told you that when me and my pals were first down in Lincolnshire about Farefield’s business, I sent them to Gainsborough while I tried my hand alone at car- rying off the child. On that occasion they put up at the boozing-ken I am speaking about; and there they happened to fall in with a reaurrectionist chap, whom they had known in London and who had been doing a stroke of business at his trade—body- lifting, 1 mean—down in Lincolnshire. It was to try and find this fellow again that we betook our- selves to the boozing-ken after our adventure inside Saxondale Castle: because at that time stiff’uns were very scarce in the market and fetched a deuced good price. The laws were very severe then agamst resurrection-men ; and enterprising surgeons who wanted a subject, didn’t mind giving twenty, thirty, or even forty guineas. Now you begin to under- stand why me and my pals stopped at Gamsborough to find out Bob Shakerly the body-anatcher. Well, we did succeed in meeting with him, and told him that we knew of where there was a pice stiff’un, fresh, and we thought might be had with a little trouble. So he then told us that there was a young doctor from London stopping in Gainsborough Tee lDOOKKS COMM com