iberal as I can, but you should have a conscience.'

'Now strafe mich der deyfel! this provokes me more than all the rest! You
rob and you murder, and you want me to rob and murder, and play the
silver-cooper, or kidnapper, as you call it, a dozen times over, and
then, hagel and windsturm! you speak to me of conscience! Can you think
of no fairer way of getting rid of this unlucky lad?'

'No, mein Herr; but as I commit him to your charge-'

'To my charge! to the charge of steel and gunpowder! and--well, if it
must be, it must; but you have a tolerably good guess what's like to come
of it.'

'O, my dear friend, I trust no degree of severity will be necessary,'
replied Glossin.

'Severity!' said the fellow, with a kind of groan, 'I wish you had had my
dreams when I first came to this dog-hole, and tried to sleep among the
dry seaweed. First, there was that d-d fellow there, with his broken
back, sprawling as he did when I hurled the rock over a-top on him, ha,
ha! You would have sworn he was lying on the floor where you stand,
wriggling like a crushed frog, and then--'

'Nay, my friend,' said Glossin, interrupting him, 'what signifies going
over this nonsense? If you are turned chicken-hearted, why, the game's
up, that's all; the game's up with us both.'

'Chicken-hearted? no. I have not lived so long upon the account to start
at last, neither for devil nor Dutchman.'

'Well, then, take another schnaps; the cold's at your heart still. And
now tell me, are any of your old crew with you?'

'Nein; all dead, shot, hanged, drowned, and damned. Brown was the last.
All dead but Gipsy Gab, and he would go off the country for a spill of
money; or he'll be quiet for his own sake; or old Meg, his aunt, will
keep him quiet for hers.'

'Which Meg?'

'Meg Merrilies, the old devil's limb of a gipsy witch.'

'Is she still alive?'

'Yaw.'

'And in this country?'

'And in this country. She was at the Kaim of Derncleugh, at Vanbeest
Brown's last wake, as they call it, the other night, with two of my
people, and some of her own blasted gipsies.'

'That's another breaker ahead, Captain! Will she not squeak, think ye?'

'Not she! she won't start; she swore by the salmon, [Footnote: The great
and invoidable oath of the strolling tribes.] if we did the kinchin no
harm, she would never tell how the gauger got it. Why, man, though I gave
her a wipe with my hanger in the heat of the matter, and cut her arm, and
though she was