"Yes!" exclaimed Humphrey, eagerly, as he stretched out his hand. "No!" he cried, letting it fall. "It is impossible, sir. I have my duty to do to my king and those I've left at home. I am your prisoner; do with me as you please, for, as a gentleman, I tell you that what you ask is impossible. We are enemies, and I must escape. When I do escape my task begins again--to root out your nest of hornets. So for heaven's sake, for the sake of what is past, the day I escape provide for your own safety; for my duty I must do!" "Then you refuse me your friendship?" "Yes. I am your enemy, sworn to do a certain duty; but I shall escape when the time has come, I can say no more." CHAPTER THIRTY. DINNY'S HISTORY. "No, sor," said Dinny, one morning, "the captain thought that as two of 'em had got their doses there ought to be no more killing. Faix, he behaved like a lion when he came up that day. There was Black Mazzard and five-and-twenty more of 'em as had been over-persuaded by him, all shut up with plenty of firearms in the powder magazine. `Don't go nigh 'em--it's madness,' says the captain; but he goes into his place and comes out again with a couple of pishtles shtuck in his belt, and his best sword on--the one wid an edge as you could show to your beard and it would all come off at wanst, knowing as it was no use to make a foight of it again' such a blade, as a strong beard will against a bad rashier. And then he sings out: `Now, my lads, who's for me?'" "And they all rushed to his aid!" said Humphrey. "Well, you see, sor," said Dinny, "it wasn't quite a rush. Lads don't go rushing into a powdher-magazine when there's an ugly black divil aside as swears if annybody comes anigh, he'll blow the whole place up into smithereens." "They never let him go alone?" cried Humphrey. "Well, no, sor," said Dinny; "it wasn't exackly alone, bekase old Bart run up, and then two more walked up, and another one wint up to him in a slow crawl that made me want to take him by the scruff o' the neck and the sate of his breeches, and pitch him down into that great hole yander, where that blagguard was drowned. `Oh, ye cowardly cur!' I says to him, quite red-hot like, sor--`Oh, ye cowardly cur! I says, you as was always boasting and bragging about and playing at Hector an' Archillus, and bouncing as if ye were a big ancient foighting man, and ye goo crawling up to yer captain that way!' And then he whispers to me confidential-like, he does: `Och, Dinny, owld lad!' he says, `it isn't the foighting I mind; but I'm thinking of my poor mother,' he says. `Ah, get out, ye coward!' I says; `ye're thinking of yerself.' `Divil a bit!' he says; `it's the powdher I'm thinking of. I'd foight anny man, or anny two men in the camp; but I can't fale to care about an encounter wid tin tons o' divil's dust!' Oh, I did give it him, sor!" "You had better have gone yourself than stood preaching to another," said Humphrey, indignantly.