The boy Ripper at length came forth. With a shuddering avoidance of the
water he came tearing along as one running from a ghost, and was darting
past the trees, when he found himself detained by an arm of great
strength. Mr. Pike clapped his other hand upon the boy's mouth, stifling
a howl of terror.
"Do you see this, Rip?" cried he.
Rip did see it. It was a pistol held rather inconveniently close to the
boy's breast. Rip dearly loved his life; but it nearly went out of him
then with fear.
"Now," said Pike, "I've come up to know about this business of Lord
Hartledon's, and I will know it, or leave you as dead as he is. And I'll
have you took up for murder, into the bargain," he rather illogically
continued, "as an accessory to the fact."
David Ripper was in a state of horror; all idea of concealment gone out
of him. "I couldn't help it," he gasped. "I couldn't get out to him; I
was locked up in the mill. Don't shoot me."
"I'll spare you on one condition," decided Pike. "Disclose the whole of
this from first to last, and then we may part friends. But try to palm
off one lie upon me, and I'll riddle you through. To begin with: what
brought you locked up in the mill?"
It was a wicked tale of a wicked young jail-bird, as Mr. Pike (probably
the worse jail-bird by far of the two) phrased it. Master Ripper had
purposely caused himself to be locked in the mill, his object being to
supply himself with as much corn as he could carry about him for the
benefit of his rabbits and pigeons and other live stock at home.
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