“Did you not know the world,” answered Lambourne, “it were my duty to say ay, without further circumstance, and to swear to it with life and honour, and so forth. But as it seems to me that your worship is one who desires rather honest truth than politic falsehood—I reply to you, that I can be faithful to the gallows’ foot, ay, to the loop that dangles from it, if I am well used and well recompensed;—not otherwise.”
“To thy other virtues thou canst add, no doubt,” said Varney, in a jeering tone, “the knack of seeming serious and religious, when the moment demands it?”
“It would cost me nothing,” said Lambourne, “to say yes—but, to speak on the square, I must needs say no. If you want a hypocrite, you may take Anthony Foster, who, from his childhood, had some sort of phantom haunting him, which he called religion, though it was that sort of godliness which always ended in being great gain. But I have no such knack of it.”
“Well,” replied Varney, “if thou hast no hypocrisy, hast thou not a nag here in the stable?”
“Ay, sir,” said Lambourne, “that shall take hedge and ditch with my Lord Duke’s best hunters. When I made a little mistake on Shooter’s Hill, and stopped an ancient grazier whose pouches were better lined than his brain-pan, the bonny bay nag carried me sheer off, in spite of the whole hue and cry.”
“Saddle him then, instantly, and attend me,” said Varney. “Leave thy clothes and baggage
