Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 315: what you’re looking at

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

298 REYNOLDS’ WORKS trivance could not exist here without the knowledge of the vile wretches who keep the place. They must be given up to justice.” ‘Silence, Mr. Gunthorpe, I command you!” said Madge Somers, planting her right foot foremost and assuming an attitude that was alike one of dominant command and stern menace. “I have saved your lives. You acknowledged but a few moments back how much you were indebted to me. The least you can do to testify your gratitude is to follow my counsel. I say, therefore, that there must be secrecy upon this subject; not a single syllable respecting the transaction of this night must pass the lips of either of you. I have saved your lives, I repeat; would you endanger mine? And what would my life be worth, if you blazoned all this forth to the world? Patch and his wife might go to the gallows, but would the law do nothing to me? Though Chiffin was a villain, a robber, a murderer, — ay, you may start; he was a murderer, and he would have been a murderer again to-night if it had not been for me. But though he was all this, yet I had no right to murder him, which I have done to save you both. The law might not hang me, con- sidering the circumstances, but it would transport me, and a sentence of transportation would be death, because I would commit suicide. Even if I were pardoned, my life would not be worth a month’s purchase. Chiffin has friends, the Patches have friends, and I should be waylaid, I should be assassinated by the sharp knife of vengeance. -Now do you understand me, Mr. Gunthorpe? Do you understand me, William Deveril? In a word, I have saved your lives; do you wish to take mine? ”’ Both the Marquis of Eagledean and our young hero recognized the stern truth of all the arguments which Madge Somers advanced, and though they experienced an indescribable repugnance to throw the veil of darkness over this terrible proceeding, yet on the other hand they dared not perpetrate such monstrous ingratitude as to endanger the life of the woman who had saved theirs. “You will follow my counsel?” repeated Madge Somers, her naturally harsh and forbidding countenance looking terrible in the present resoluteness of its expression; indeed there appeared to be an iron firmness about this woman, — an even more than masculine decision of purpose, which had (Coy payicelevevey <S (Eo)