Ah, man! there are few--very few,
either of fools or of wise men, ken how to guide a woman."
"Why, did I not serve her at the risk of my freedom, and very nigh at
the risk of my neck? Did she not--no, it was not her neither, but that
accursed beldam whom she caused to work upon me--persuade me like a
fool to turn myself into a waterman to help my lord, and a plague to
him, down to Scotland? and instead of going peaceably down to the ship
at Gravesend, did not he rant and bully, and show his pistols, and
make me land him at Greenwich, where he played some swaggering pranks,
that helped both him and me into the Tower?"
"Aha!" said Richie, throwing more than his usual wisdom into his
looks, "so you were the green-jacketed waterman that rowed Lord
Glenvarloch down the river?"
"The more fool I, that did not souse him in the Thames," said Jenkin;
"and I was the lad who would not confess one word of who and what I
was, though they threatened to make me hug the Duke of Exeter's
daughter."[Footnote: A particular species of rack, used at the Tower
of London, was so called.]
"Wha is she, man?" said Richie; "she must be an ill-fashioned piece,
if you're so much afraid of her, and she come of such high kin."
"I mean the rack--the rack, man," said Jenkin. "Where were you bred
that never heard of the Duke of Exeter's daughter? But all the dukes
and duchesses in England could have got nothing out of me--so the
truth came out some other way, and I was set free.
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