you harmless of the consequences with him. You will act upon my
responsibility. I pledge my honor for your safety. Use all despatch,
and calculate upon due requital from

"MAUD ROOKWOOD.

"Haste, and God speed you!"

"God speed you!" echoed Dick, in his own voice, contemptuously. "The
devil drive you! would have been a fitter postscript. And it was upon
this precious errand you came, Mr. Coates?"

"Precisely," replied the attorney; "but I find the premises preoccupied.
Fast as I have ridden, you are here before me."

"And what do you now propose to do?" asked Turpin.

"Bargain with you for the body," replied Coates, in an insinuating tone.

"With _me_!" said Dick; "do you take me for a resurrection cove; for a
dealer in dead stock, eh! sirrah?"

"I take you for one sufficiently _alive_, in a general way, to his own
interests," returned Coates. "These gentlemen may not, perhaps, be quite
so scrupulous, when they hear my proposals."

"Be silent, sir," interrupted Turpin. "Hist! I hear the tramp of horses'
hoofs without. Hark! that shout."

"Make your own terms before they come," said Coates. "Leave all to me.
I'll put 'em on a wrong scent."

"To the devil with your terms," cried Turpin; "the signal!" And he
pulled the trigger of one of Coates's pistols, the shot of which rang in
the ears of the astounded attorney as it whizzed past him. "Drag him
into the mouth of the vault," thundered Turpin: "he will be a capital
cover in case of attack. Look to your sticks, and be on the
alert;--away!"

Vainly did the unfortunate attorney kick and struggle, swear and scream;
his hat was pushed over his eyes; his bob-wig thrust into his mouth; and
his legs tripped from under him. Thus blind, dumb, and half-suffocated,
he was hurried into the entrance of the cell.

Dick, meanwhile, dashed to the arched outlet of the ruin. He there drew
in the rein, and Black Bess stood motionless as a statue.

_CHAPTER XIV_

_DICK TURPIN_

Many a fine fellow with a genius extensive enough to have effected
universal reformation has been doomed to perish by the halter. But
does not such a man's renown extend through centuries and tens of
centuries, while many a prince would be overlooked in history were
it not the historian's interest to increase the number of his pages?
Nay, when the traveller sees a gibbet, does he not exclaim, "That
fellow