Page:Doctor Syn - A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh.djvu/117

 to spare in the yard behind the coffin shop. Yes, if any man could supply him with a gibbet Mipps could; and there he was talking in the bar ready to hand, and here were the silver crowns in Jerk's pocket. But to buy the gibbet and then to have to keep his mouth shut about the schoolmaster was no good. Mipps would never do the job for one crown, but for two Jerk thought he might. Well, he would see about that, and if he were unsuccessful, he must find a way of raising the money, and then, as soon as the apparatus was ready, he would get Rash condemned, and offer the authorities the loan of a brand-new gibbet. Oh, to watch the murderer swinging from the top of Lookout Mountain, right away on the lonely, windswept Marsh! That, indeed, was a glorious thought. Yes, he must come to terms with the undertaker at once—an undertaker now with a vengeance—Rash's undertaker. But the little gentleman in question was talking to Mrs. Waggetts, so Jerry had to wait in honour bound, for he was staunch to his benefactress, and would not have interrupted for the world. The conversation going forward in the bar was carried on in earnest tones but low, and Jerk began to think that Mrs. Waggetts was at last drawing the sexton into a proposal of marriage, and his interest in this one-sided love affair made him crouch by the bar door in hopes of gathering up some scraps of the honeyed words. But the few disjointed words he did catch were more akin to passion than to love.