Page:Doctor Syn - A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh.djvu/34

22 laughed again, which brought Jerry Jerk with a bound over the bar.

"See here, Mister Cobtree," he hissed, coming close to him; "I likes you; you're the only one in the village I does like. Oh, I'm not wanting anything from you; I'm just speaking the truth—you're the only one in the village I haven't hanged in my mind, and, what's more to the point, you won't blab if I tell you (but there, I know you won't), you're the only one in the village I couldn't get hanged!"

"What on earth do you mean?" said the squire's son.

"What I've said," replied the urchin, "just what I've said, and not another word do you get from me but this: listen! Do you hear that sexton in there a-mumbling? Well, what's he mumbling about? Ah, you don't know, and I don't know (leastways not exactly), but there's one who does. Come over here," and he led Denis to the back window and pointed out over Romney Marsh. "She knows, that there Marsh. She knows everything about this place, and every place upon her. Why, I'd give up everything I've got or shall get in this world, everything—except that schoolmaster's neck—to know all she knows, 'cos she knows everything, Mister Cobtree, everything, she does. In every house there's murmurings and mumblings a-going on, and in every dyke out there there's the same ones, the very same ones a-going. You can hear 'em yourself, Mister Cobtree, if