Part 11 (1/2)

He lowered his voice; but I could still hear him.

”Promise you will marry me,” he said, ”and I will go before the magistrate to-morrow, and show him that I am a living man.”

”Suppose I refuse?”

”In that case you will lose me again, and none of you will find me till Ambrose is hanged.”

”Are you villain enough, John Jago, to mean what you say?” asked the girl, raising her voice.

”If you attempt to give the alarm,” he answered, ”as true as G.o.d's above us, you will feel my hand on your throat! It's my turn now, miss; and I am not to be trifled with. Will you have me for your husband--yes or no?”

”No!” she answered, loudly and firmly.

I burst open the door, and seized him as he lifted his hand on her. He had not suffered from the nervous derangement which had weakened me, and he was the stronger man of the two. Naomi saved my life. She struck up his pistol as he pulled it out of his pocket with his free hand and presented it at my head. The bullet was fired into the air. I tripped up his heels at the same moment. The report of the pistol had alarmed the house. We two together kept him on the ground until help arrived.

CHAPTER XII.

THE END OF IT.

JOHN JAGO was brought before the magistrate, and John Jago was identified the next day.

The lives of Ambrose and Silas were, of course, no longer in peril, so far as human justice was concerned. But there were legal delays to be encountered, and legal formalities to be observed, before the brothers could be released from prison in the characters of innocent men.

During the interval which thus elapsed, certain events happened which may be briefly mentioned here before I close my narrative.

Mr. Meadowcroft the elder, broken by the suffering which he had gone through, died suddenly of a rheumatic affection of the heart. A codicil attached to his will abundantly justified what Naomi had told me of Miss Meadowcroft's influence over her father, and of the end she had in view in exercising it. A life income only was left to Mr. Meadowcroft's sons. The freehold of the farm was bequeathed to his daughter, with the testator's recommendation added, that she should marry his ”best and dearest friend, Mr. John Jago.”