"You slut!" he roared, his eyes squinting, his face livid with fury. "Your tongue shall be slit. To your garret, vixen." But the others, as was not unnatural, saw the matter in a different light. "By ----, the wench is right!" cried Cassel; and Keyes saying the same, and another backing him, there was a general chorus of "Ay, the girl is right! The girl is right!" At that the man who had brought the rope, threw it down. "There's for me!" he said, gloomily, and with an ugly gleam in his eyes. "Let the old devil take it up. It is his job, not mine, and if I swing, he shall swing too." "Fair!" cried all. "That is fair!" And, "That is fair, Mr. Ferguson," said Charnock. "Do you put the rope round his neck." "I?" Ferguson spluttered; glaring from under his wig. "Yes, you!" the man who had brought the rope retorted with violence. "You! And why not, I'd like to know, my gentleman?" "I am no hangman!" cried the plotter, with a miserable assumption of dignity. But the words and the evasion only inflamed the general rage. "And are we?" Cassel roared, with a volley of oaths. "You covenanting, psalm-singing, tub-thumping old quill-driver!" he continued. "Do you think that we are here to do your dirty work, and squeeze throats at your bidding? _Peste!_ For a gill of Hollands I would split your tongue for you. That and your pen have done too much harm already!" "Peace!" Charnock said. "Go softly, man. And do you, Mr. Ferguson, take up the rope and do your part. Otherwise we shall have strange thoughts of you. There have been things said before, and it were well you gave no colour to them." I cannot believe that even I, writhing as a few minutes before I had writhed in their hands, and screaming and begging for life, could have presented a more pitiable spectacle than Ferguson exhibited, thus brought to book. All the base and craven instincts of a low and cowardly nature, brought to the surface by the challenge thus flung in his face, he quailed and cowered before the men; and shifting his feet and breathing hard glanced askance, first at one and then at another, as if to see who would support him, or who could most easily be persuaded. But he found scant encouragement anywhere; the men, savage and ill-disposed, to begin, and driven to the wall, to boot, had now conceived suspicions, and in proportion as delay and his conduct diverted their rage from me, turned it on him with growing ferocity. "Here is the cock of the pit!" cried Keyes, who seemed to be a trooper and a man of no education, lacking even the occasional French word or accent that betrayed the others' sojourn with King Louis. "D---- him! He would have us hang the man, but won't lay a finger on him himself! He is no Ketch, isn't he? Well, I hang no man either, unless I put a hand on _him_." And he pointed full at the plotter. A murmur of assent, stern and full of meaning, echoed his words.