Page:Hugh Pendexter--Tiberius Smith.djvu/163

 "‘Odds tomatoes!' I whispered to Tib, 'but we must leave here in very sooth.'

"Then what was becoming an extremely unlovely situation, with the busy hammers clanging away on the gibbet and the tall Jasper at the window trying to make eyelets in our legs with his pike, was given a new direction by a lusty shout at the front door and the sound of a voice crying: 'Hooray! A Monmouth! A Monmouth!' And then the portal was cast down and my Lord Ezra Somebody bawled forth: 'Hello, folkses. Where be ye?'

"‘And come ye in peace here, or come ye in war?' demanded Tib, while the drummer shuddered and protested that our visitors were as welcome as burglars.

"‘We're friendly. Hooray for Monmouth!' cried the rabble.

"‘Let the portcullis fall, and enter,' invited Tib. Then to me: 'Don't you see, we're rescued. When the leading fay hypnotized this weak-minded chorus into viewing him as his Majesty King James, he necessarily supplied the whole suggestion; that is, the suggestion of a Monmouth, eke our reception. The last implied a handful of supporters, and now we'll leave this dungeon, raise the west, and the insane equation is completed. James has created a Frankenstein that will devour him.'

"‘Say, I knew a feller once named Fleckenstein.