Smith turned to me, and the refusal died on my lips. The struggle with the woman had roused the man's passions; and I read in his eyes such a glare of ferocity as chilled my blood and unstrung my knees. Nor was that all; for when I went, trembling, to take the cloak, "One moment," he said grimly, "not so fast, my friend. Let us understand one another before we start. Mr. Price or Mr. Taylor or whatever your name is, take note, do you hear me, of three things? One, that the business we are on is life or death. Do you grasp that?" I muttered a shuddering assent. "Secondly," he continued, with the same gruesome civility, "my hand will never be more than six inches from the butt of a pistol, until I see this home again. Do you grasp that?" I nodded. "Thirdly, at the least sign of treachery or disobedience on your part, I blow out your brains first, and my own afterwards, if that be necessary. Do you grasp that?" I nodded. "That is especially well," he said. "Because the last item is important to you. On the other hand, Mr. Price, play honest John with me, and in forty-eight hours you shall be back in your master's house, free and safe; and I shall trouble you no more. Do you understand that?" I said I did; my teeth chattering, and my eyes seeking to evade his. "Then, now, yon may get into those things," he said. "And do you ride when I bid you, and halt when I bid you, and speak when I say speak, and be silent when I say be silent--do those four things, I say, and you will die in your bed. They are all I ask." I stooped, shaking all over, to take up the boots. "Heart up, pretty!" cried the woman, with an odd laugh that broke off short with a sort of quaver. "It is clear that you are not born to be hanged. And for the rest----" "Peace, peace, wench," said Smith impatiently. "And dress him." CHAPTER XXXVI It wanted two hours of midnight on a fine night when we two rode over London Bridge, and through a gap in the houses saw the river flowing below, a ripple of silver framed in blackness, and so cold to the eye that involuntarily I shivered; feeling a return of all the vague fears and apprehensions which, originally awakened by the prospect of the journey, had been set at rest for the time by the awe in which I held my companion. I began to recall a dozen stories of footpads and highwaymen, outrage and robbery, which I had read, and found but cold comfort in the reflection that the Kent Road, from the amount of traffic that used it, was accounted one of the safest in England. It was not wonderful, that with nerves so disordered, I went in front of danger; or that when--opposite the Marshalsea, where the chain crosses the road, near the entrance to White Horse Yard--a man came suddenly out of a passage and caught hold of my companion's rein, I cried out, and all but turned my horse to fly.