foregoing narrative which had long been mysteries to all the world; and it gave me what I had tried in vain to fathom all these years, some explanation, or rather history, of the young Lancastrian’s complicity with Joaquin Santos in the foul enterprise of the Lady Jermyn. And these passages I shall reproduce word for word; partly because of their intrinsic interest; partly for such new light as they day throw on this or that phase of the foregoing narrative; and, lastly, out of fairness to (I hope)
I stood by for an instant, glorying in the thought that he could not hear me; the next, I saw what it was he was reaching up for - a bell-mouthed blunderbuss - and I knew the little devil for the impostor that he was.
“You touch it,” said I, “and you’ll drop dead on that hearth.”
He pretended not