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Updated: June 27, 2025
You were right, my pretty, to pay me, my pretty right. And some day, to-day, to-morrow, whenever I ask you, you will remember Mother Tontaine." The Countess listened with dismay. What had she done? Put herself into the power of this greedy and unscrupulous old beldame? "And this, my princess? What have we here, aha?"
You surely do not mean to hold the Golden Horn in midstream with her cargo undischarged until the day of doom, lest yon old beldame offer up her fair granddaughter on the altar of her loyalty, with me and my hearties for kindling, to say naught of yourself and a few of the best gentlemen of Virginia.
The beldame leered upon me for a moment, then, nodding her head thrice, with a knowing look, said, ‘Who knows better than yourself, my tawny?’ Now, I knew nothing about the matter; but I saw that these strange people had conceived a very high opinion of the abilities of their visitor, which I was nothing loth to encourage. I therefore answered boldly, ‘Ah! who indeed!’
The two electresses thus bluffed came down the street and told their grievance to Mr Oscar Lawyer, for the nonce head of the Opposition League, and at ordinary seasons a father of his people, to whom all the town made in times of necessity, whether it was an old beldame requiring assistance from the Benevolent Society or a lad seeking a situation and requiring a testimonial of character.
So soon as, by his conjecture, the robbers were at a sufficient distance from the house, he rose from his lurking-place, moved softly towards the bed, and, rummaging the pockets of the deceased, found a purse well stored with ducats, of which, together with a silver watch and a diamond ring, he immediately possessed himself without scruple; then, descending with great care and circumspection into the lower apartment, stood before the old beldame, before she had the least intimation of his approach.
Still, even to-day, a reader, with his taste jaded by trashy novels, will be conscious of Smollett's power, and of several thrills, likewise, as he reads about Fathom's experience in the loft in which the beldame locks him to pass the night. This situation is melodramatic rather than romantic, as the word is used technically in application to eighteenth and nineteenth-century literature.
The old beldame, who I had perceived by the violence of her manner, had a dislike to Marie, immediately mentioned her as one to whom severe penance would be of especial benefit. I conversed with her for another half-hour; then, wishing her good-night, prepared for bed, and requested that Marie might be summoned to attend.
And it will be as well here to observe, that at this time there was much bad money in circulation in the neighbourhood, generally supposed to be fabricated by the prisoners, so that this false coin and straw plait formed the standard subjects of conversation at Norman Cross. 'I'll strangle thee, said the beldame, dashing at me. 'Bad money, is it?
The old beldame gave our men a hard job, for she tried to make off to the forest, and called aloud: "Hind Hind!" which was the young wench's name, with outlandish words which doubtless were to warn her to flee; but the serving men gained their end and made the wild hag fast.
As for me, my temper had flared up like the burning of a loose charge of powder, and by instinct my right hand sought the handle of the mate's hanger. The beldame saw the motion. "An' hae ye murder't MacMuir, John Paul, an' gien's claw to a Buckskin gowk?" The knot stirred with an angry murmur: in truth they meant violence, nothing less.
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