r.
Fly to her assistance, I will accompany you--assist you--it is your only
chance."

"_My_ only chance--_your_ only chance. Do you take me for a greenhorn?
This is a poor subterfuge; could you not have vamped up something
better? Get back to your own room, or I shall make no more of shooting
you than I would of snuffing that candle."

"Be advised, sir," continued Luke. "There are three of them--give me a
pistol, and fear nothing."

"Give _you_ a pistol! Ha, ha!--to be its mark myself. You are an amusing
rascal, I will say."

"Sir, I tell you not a moment is to be lost. Is life nothing? Lady
Rookwood may be murdered."

"I tell _you_, once for all, it won't do. Go back to your room, or take
the consequences."

"By the powers! but it shall do, anyhow," exclaimed Titus, flinging
himself upon the attorney, and holding both his arms; "you've bullied me
long enough. I'm sure the lad's in the right."

Luke snatched the pistols from the hands of Coates.

"Very well, Mr. Tyrconnel; very well, sir," cried the attorney, boiling
with wrath, and spluttering out his words. "Extremely well, sir. You are
not perhaps aware, sir, what you have done; but you will repent this,
sir--repent, I say--repent was my word, Mr. Tyrconnel."

"Poh!--poh!" replied Titus. "I shall never repent a good-natured
action."

"Follow me," cried Luke; "settle your disputes hereafter. Quick, or we
shall be too late."

Coates bustled after him, and Titus, putting the neck of the forbidden
whisky bottle to his lips, and gulping down a hasty mouthful, snatched
up a rusty poker, and followed the party with more alacrity than might
have been expected from so portly a personage.

_CHAPTER VI_

_THE APPARITION_

_Gibbet._ Well, gentlemen, 'tis a fine night for our enterprise.

_Hounslow._ Dark as hell.

_Bagshot._ And blows like the devil.

_Boniface._ You'll have no creature to deal with but the ladies.

_Gibbet._ And I can assure you, friend, there's a great deal of
address, and good manners, in robbing a lady. I am the most of a
gentleman, that way, that ever travelled the road.

_Beaux Stratagem._

Accompanied by her son, Lady Rookwood, on quitting the chamber of the
dead, returned to her own room. She then renewed all her arguments; had
recourse to passionate supplications--to violent threats, but without
effect. Ranulph maintained profound silence.