"Mercy, mercy, my lord! indeed it was unpremeditated! It was done in the heat of passion. She had driven me mad with jealousy!" "Bosh! what do you suppose I care whether you committed the crime in hot blood or cold blood? whether it was the result of a momentary burst of frenzy or of a long premeditated and carefully arranged plan? It is enough for me to know that I saw you do the deed. You murdered that girl, and if the coroner's jury had not been just about the stupidest lot of donkeys that ever undertook to sit on a case, you would be now in jail waiting your trial for murder before the next assizes." "Mercy, mercy, my lord! I am in your power!" "Hold your tongue and get up off your knees and listen to me, you cowardly knave. Don't you know that if I had wished to hang you I could have done so by lodging information against you? Nonsense! I don't want to hang you. I think, with the Quaker, that hanging is the worst use you can put a man to. Now, I don't want to put you to that use. I have other uses for you. Get up, you precious knave!" "Oh, my lord! put me to any use your lordship wishes, and no matter what it is, I will serve you faithfully in it!" said the wretch, rising from his knees and standing in a cowed and deprecating manner before his master. "It is perfectly clear to me, Frisbie, that you settled that girl to silence a troublesome claimant of whom you could not rid yourself in any other way." "Your lordship knows everything. It was so, my lord. She was all the time bothering me about broken promises and all that." "And so you settled all her claims by one blow. Well, you have got rid of the woman that troubled you; and now I mean that you shall help me to get rid of one who troubles me." "In--in--in the same manner, my lord?" gasped the man, in an accession of deadly terror. "No, you insupportable fool! I am not a master butcher, to give you such an order as that. Noblemen are not cut-throats, you knave! You shall rid me of my troublesome woman in a safer way than that. And you shall do it as the price of my silence as to your own little affair." "I am your lordship's obedient, humble servant. Your lordship will do what you please with me. I am absolutely and unreservedly at your lordship's disposal," whined the criminal. "Well, I should think you were, when I hold one end of a rope of which the other end is around your neck. Come closer and stoop down until you bring your ear to a level with my lips, for I must speak low," said his lordship. The man obeyed.