"You see, if he pops off, they’d hang me," he explained eagerly.
"Grandfather, I implore you not to talk so," I sobbed, quite giving way.
"But I want ’em to. Nothing better could happen. The next two years won’t be much of a catch from my point of view; and if I’m executed, of course, the New Scheme must be upset. I shall have to go somewhere then; I shan’t become extinct anyway."
His hopes in this direction were doomed to disappointment, however. The detective recovered, and we were unmolested. We had, in fact, thrown the Scotland Yard people completely off the trail. But grandpapa still longed to be hanged. He even discussed the feasibility of a capital crime at Margate, and, as it was all one to him in the matter of a victim, he generously offered to put anybody I liked out of the way. He even bought a revolver.
"To be executed it is necessary to take a life," he explained. "The question is, whose life? If you’ve got an enemy, Martha, now’s your time to name him or her. If you’ve no fancy, then I shall pip a prominent member of the Government."
But two months passed by, and my grandfather’s horrid ambition gradually faded. When he was eighteen, and after we left Margate for Ramsgate, which step was taken about this period, he acquired a passing passion for sea-fishing, bought a rod and line, and angled uneventfully for days together off the pier-head or out of an open boat. From Ramsgate we proceeded to Deal, then lurked a week or two at Dover, and continued our tour of the south-coast watering-places, secreting our sorrows in turn at Folkestone, Hastings, St. Leonard’s-on-Sea, Eastbourne, Brighton, and Bognor. I thought we might winter in the Isle of Wight, but grandfather was for Cornwall and conger-fishing, so we pushed onwards to Fowey, and arrived there shortly after Christmas, when my grandparent was about fifteen.