Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/49

 "What the devil!" he exclaimed, starting up as I could tell by the brisk rustling of his straw.

"No, child, not the devil," I says, "a person handsomer by far. But hush! lad, hush! I am here to save your neck."

He strangled a natural cry at this injunction, though an emotion of surprise caused him to strain unconsciously against his bonds. The rattle of the manger ring to which the unhappy creature was secured cut me keenly to the quick. They prate of the cruelty of us women, but I wish some of these men would consider their own gifts in this direction, ere they tax us for our drawing-room barbarities. Now Captain Grantley, in his haste to take me from the window on the occasion of my visit earlier in the night, had forgotten to reshutter it, and his omission was now a friend we could not well have done without. It let a lively flood of moonlight in, which had the cunning to show me not only my precise locality, but how one was affected to the other, the work that was before me, and the fairest means by which it could be done.

At first the poor prisoner dare not accept the testimony of his eyes, nor could he trust his ears.

"I—I cannot understand," he said.

"Men never can," I whispered. "But if we are silent, speedy, and ingenious I think I can save you from Tyburn, sir."

For these words he invoked God's blessing on me, which was quite a new experience, as the invocations of his sex are much the other way in my