Title: The Tavern Knight
Author: Sabatini, Rafael
Language: English
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THE TAVERN KNIGHT


By Rafael Sabatini



CONTENTS

     I.  ON THE MARCH

     II.  ARCADES AMBO

     III.  THE LETTER

     IV.  AT THE SIGN OF THE MITRE

     V.  AFTER WORCESTER FIELD

     VI.  COMPANIONS IN MISFORTUNE

     VII.  THE TAVERN KNIGHT’S STORY

     VIII.  THE TWISTED BAR

     IX.  THE BARGAIN

     X.  THE ESCAPE

     XI.  THE ASHBURNS

     XII.  THE HOUSE THAT WAS ROLAND MARLEIGH’S

     XIII.  THE METAMORPHOSIS OF KENNETH

     XIV.  THE HEART OF CYNTHIA ASHBURN

     XV.  JOSEPH’S RETURN

     XVI.  THE RECKONING

     XVII.  JOSEPH DRIVES A BARGAIN

     XVIII.  COUNTER-PLOT

     XIX.  THE INTERRUPTED JOURNEY

     XX.  THE CONVERTED HOGAN

     XXI.  THE MESSAGE KENNETH BORE

     XXII.  SIR CRISPIN’S UNDERTAKING

     XXIII.  GREGORY’S ATTRITION

     XXIV.  THE WOOING OF CYNTHIA

     XXV.  CYNTHIA’S FLIGHT

     XXVI.  TO FRANCE

     XXVII.  THE AUBERGINE DU SOLEIL



THE TAVERN KNIGHT



CHAPTER I. ON THE MARCH

He whom they called the Tavern Knight laughed an evil laugh--such a
laugh as might fall from the lips of Satan in a sardonic moment.

He sat within the halo of yellow light shed by two tallow candles, whose
sconces were two empty bottles, and contemptuously he eyed the youth
in black, standing with white face and quivering lip in a corner of
the mean chamber. Then he laughed again, and in a hoarse voice, sorely
suggestive of the bottle, he broke into song. He lay back in his chair,
his long, spare legs outstretched, his spurs jingling to the lilt of his
ditty whose burden ran:

          On the lip so red of the wench that’s sped
          His passionate kiss burns, still-O!
          For ‘tis April time, and of love and wine
          Youth’s way is to take its fill-O!
          Down, down, derry-do!

          So his cup he drains and he shakes his reins,
          And rides his rake-helly way-O!
          She was sweet to woo and most comely, too,
          But that was all yesterday-O!
          Down, down, derry-do!

The lad started forward with something akin to a shiver.

“Have done,” he cried, in a voice of loathing, “or, if croak you must,
choose a ditty less foul!”

“Eh?” The ruffler shook back the matted hair from his lean, harsh
face, and a pair of eyes that of a sudden seemed ablaze glared at his
companion; then the lids drooped until those eyes became two narrow
slits--catlike and cunning--and again he laughed.

“Gad’s life, Master Stewart, you have a temerity that should save
you from grey hairs! What is’t to you what ditty my fancy seizes on?
‘Swounds, man, for three weary months have I curbed my moods, and worn
my throat dry in praising the Lord; for three months have I been a
living monument of Covenanting zeal and godliness; and now that at last
I have shaken the dust of your beggarly Scotland from my heels, you--the
veriest milksop that ever ran tottering from its mother’s lap would
chide me because, yon bottle being done, I sing to keep me from waxing
sad in the contemplation of its emptiness!”

There was scorn unutterable on the lad’s face as he turned aside.

“When I joined Middleton’s horse and accepted service under you, I held
you to be at least a gentleman,” was his daring rejoinder.

For an instant that dangerous light gleamed again from his companion’s
eye. Then, as before, the lids drooped, and, as before, he laughed.

“Gentleman!” he mocked. “On my soul, that’s good! And what may you know
of gentlemen, Sir Scot? Think you a gentleman is a Jack Presbyter, or a
droning member of your kirk committee, strutting it like a crow in
the gutter? Gadswounds, boy, when I was your age, and George Villiers
lived--”

“Oh, have done!” broke in the youth impetuously. “Suffer me to leave
you, Sir Crispin, to your bottle, your croaking, and your memories.”

“Aye, go your ways, sir; you’d be sorry company for a dead man--the
sorriest ever my evil star led me into. The door is yonder, and should
you chance to break your saintly neck on the stairs, it is like to be
well for both of us.”

And with that Sir Crispin Galliard lay back in his chair once more, and
took up the thread of his interrupted song

          But, heigh-o! she cried, at the Christmas-tide,
          That dead she would rather be-O!
          Pale and wan she crept out of sight, and wept

          ‘Tis a sorry--

A loud knock that echoed ominously through the mean chamber, fell in
that instant upon the door. And with it came a panting cry of--

“Open, Cris! Open, for the love of God!”

Sir Crispin’s ballad broke off short, whilst the lad paused in the act
of quitting the room, and turned to look to him for direction.

“Well, my master,” quoth Galliard, “for what do you wait?”

“To learn your wishes, sir,” was the answer sullenly delivered.

“My wishes! Rat me, there’s one without whose wishes brook less waiting!
Open, fool!”

Thus rudely enjoined, the lad lifted the latch and set wide the door,
which opened immediately upon the street. Into the apartment stumbled a
roughly clad man of huge frame. He was breathing hard, and fear was writ
large upon his rugged face. An instant he paused to close the door after
him, then turning to Galliard, who had risen and who stood eyeing him in
astonishment--

“Hide me somewhere, Cris,” he panted--his accent proclaiming his Irish
origin. “My God, hide me, or I’m a dead man this night!”

“‘Slife, Hogan! What is toward? Has Cromwell overtaken us?”

“Cromwell, quotha? Would to Heaven ‘twere no worse! I’ve killed a man!”

“If he’s dead, why run?”

The Irishman made an impatient gesture.

“A party of Montgomery’s foot is on my heels. They’ve raised the whole
of Penrith over the affair, and if I’m taken, soul of my body, ‘twill be
a short shrift they’ll give me. The King will serve me as poor Wrycraft
was served two days ago at Kendal. Mother of Mercy!” he broke off,
as his ear caught the clatter of feet and the murmur of voices from
without. “Have you a hole I can creep into?”

“Up those stairs and into my room with you!” said Crispin shortly. “I
will try to head them off. Come, man, stir yourself; they are here.”

Then, as with nimble alacrity Hogan obeyed him and slipped from the
room, he turned to the lad, who had been a silent spectator of what
had passed. From the pocket of his threadbare doublet he drew a pack of
greasy playing cards.

“To table,” he said laconically.

But the boy, comprehending what was required of him, drew back at sight
of those cards as one might shrink from a thing unclean.

“Never!” he began. “I’ll not defile--”

“To table, fool!” thundered Crispin, with a vehemence few men could have
withstood. “Is this a time for Presbyterian scruples? To table, and help
a me play this game, or, by the living God, I’ll--” Without completing
his threat he leaned forward until Kenneth felt his hot, wine-laden
breath upon his cheek. Cowed by his words, his gesture, and above all,
his glance, the lad drew up a chair, mumbling in explanation--intended
as an excuse to himself for his weakness--that he submitted since a
man’s life was at stake.

Opposite him Galliard resumed his seat with a mocking smile that made
him wince. Taking up the cards, he flung a portion of them to the boy,
whilst those he retained he spread fanwise in his hand as if about to
play. Silently Kenneth copied his actions.

Nearer and louder grew the sounds of the approach, lights flashed before
the window, and the two men, feigning to play, sat on and waited.

“Have a care, Master Stewart,” growled Crispin sourly, then in a louder
voice--for his quick eye had caught a glimpse of a face that watched
them from the window--“I play the King of Spades!” he cried, with
meaning look.

A blow was struck upon the door, and with it came the command to “Open
in the King’s name!” Softly Sir Crispin rapped out an oath. Then he
rose, and with a last look of warning to Kenneth, he went to open.
And as he had greeted Hogan he now greeted the crowd mainly of
soldiers--that surged about the threshold.

“Sirs, why this ado? Hath the Sultan Oliver descended upon us?”

In one hand he still held his cards, the other he rested upon the edge
of the open door. It was a young ensign who stood forward to answer him.

“One of Lord Middleton’s officers hath done a man to death not half an
hour agone; he is an Irishman Captain Hogan by name.”

“Hogan--Hogan?” repeated Crispin, after the manner of one who fumbles in
his memory. “Ah, yes--an Irishman with a grey head and a hot temper. And
he is dead, you say?”

“Nay, he has done the killing.”

“That I can better understand. ‘Tis not the first time, I’ll be sworn.”

“But it will be the last, Sir Crispin.”

“Like enough. The King is severe since we crossed the Border.” Then in
a brisker tone: “I thank you for bringing me this news,” said he, “and I
regret that in my poor house there be naught I can offer you wherein to
drink His Majesty’s health ere you proceed upon your search. Give you
good night, sir.” And by drawing back a pace he signified his wish to
close the door and be quit of them.

“We thought,” faltered the young officer, “that--that perchance you
would assist us by--”

“Assist you!” roared Crispin, with a fine assumption of anger. “Assist
you take a man? Sink me, sir, I would have you know I am a soldier, not
a tipstaff!”

The ensign’s cheeks grew crimson under the sting of that veiled insult.

“There are some, Sir Crispin, that have yet another name for you.”

“Like enough--when I am not by,” sneered Crispin. “The world is full of
foul tongues in craven heads. But, sirs, the night air is chill and you
are come inopportunely, for, as you’ll perceive, I was at play. Haply
you’ll suffer me to close the door.”

“A moment, Sir Crispin. We must search this house. He is believed to
have come this way.”

Crispin yawned. “I will spare you the trouble. You may take it from me
that he could not be here without my knowledge. I have been in this room
these two hours past.”

“Twill not suffice,” returned the officer doggedly. “We must satisfy
ourselves.”

“Satisfy yourselves?” echoed the other, in tones of deep amazement.
“What better satisfaction can I afford you than my word? ‘Swounds, sir
jackanapes,” he added, in a roar that sent the lieutenant back a pace
as though he had been struck, “am I to take it that your errand is a
trumped-up business to affront me? First you invite me to turn tipstaff,
then you add your cursed innuendoes of what people say of me, and now
you end by doubting me! You must satisfy yourself!” he thundered, waxing
fiercer at every word. “Linger another moment on that threshold, and
d----n me, sir, I’ll give you satisfaction of another flavour! Be off!”

Before that hurricane of passion the ensign recoiled, despite himself.

“I will appeal to General Montgomery,” he threatened.

“Appeal to the devil! Had you come hither with your errand in a seemly
fashion you had found my door thrown wide in welcome, and I had received
you courteously. As it is, sir, the cause for complaint is on my side,
and complain I will. We shall see whether the King permits an old
soldier who has followed the fortunes of his family these eighteen years
to be flouted by a malapert bantam of yesterday’s brood!”

The subaltern paused in dismay. Some demur there was in the gathered
crowd. Then the officer fell back a pace, and consulted an elderly
trooper at his elbow. The trooper was of opinion that the fugitive must
have gone farther. Moreover, he could not think, from what Sir Crispin
had said, that it would have been possible for Hogan to have entered the
house. With this, and realizing that much trouble and possible loss of
time must result from Sir Crispin’s obstinacy, did they attempt to force
a way into the house, and bethinking himself, also, maybe, how well this
rascally ruffler stood with Lord Middleton, the ensign determined to
withdraw, and to seek elsewhere.

And so he took his leave with a venomous glance, and a parting threat
to bring the matter to the King’s ears, upon which Galliard slammed the
door before he had finished.

There was a curious smile on Crispin’s face as he walked slowly to the
table, and resumed his seat.

“Master Stewart,” he whispered, as he spread his cards anew, “the comedy
is not yet played out. There is a face glued to the window at this
moment, and I make little doubt that for the next hour or so we shall be
spied upon. That pretty fellow was born to be a thief-taker.”

The boy turned a glance of sour reproof upon his companion. He had not
stirred from his chair while Crispin had been at the door.

“You lied to them,” he said at last.

“Sh! Not so loud, sweet youth,” was the answer that lost nothing of
menace by being subdued. “Tomorrow, if you please, I will account to
you for offending your delicate soul by suggesting a falsehood in your
presence. To-night we have a man’s life to save, and that, I think, is
work enough. Come, Master Stewart, we are being watched. Let us resume
our game.”

His eye, fixed in cold command upon the boy, compelled obedience.
And the lad, more out of awe of that glance than out of any desire to
contribute to the saving of Hogan, mutely consented to keep up this
pretence. But in his soul he rebelled. He had been reared in an
atmosphere of honourable and religious bigotry. Hogan was to him a
coarse ruffler; an evil man of the sword; such a man as he abhorred and
accounted a disgrace to any army--particularly to an army launched upon
England under the auspices of the Solemn League and Covenant.

Hogan had been guilty of an act of brutality; he had killed a man; and
Kenneth deemed himself little better, since he assisted in harbouring
instead of discovering him, as he held to be his duty. But ‘neath the
suasion of Galliard’s inexorable eye he sat limp and docile, vowing
to himself that on the morrow he would lay the matter before Lord
Middleton, and thus not only endeavour to make amends for his present
guilty silence, but rid himself also of the companionship of this
ruffianly Sir Crispin, to whom no doubt a hempen justice would be meted.

Meanwhile, he sat on and left his companion’s occasional sallies
unanswered. In the street men stirred and lanthorns gleamed fitfully,
whilst ever and anon a face surmounted by a morion would be pressed
against the leaded panes of the window.

Thus an hour wore itself out during which poor Hogan sat above, alone
with his anxiety and unsavoury thoughts.



CHAPTER II. ARCADES AMBO


Towards midnight at last Sir Crispin flung down his cards and rose. It
was close upon an hour and a half since Hogan’s advent. In the streets
the sounds had gradually died down, and peace seemed to reign again
in Penrith. Yet was Sir Crispin cautious--for to be cautious and
mistrustful of appearances was the lesson life had taught him.

“Master Stewart,” said he, “it grows late, and I doubt me you would be
abed. Give you good night!”

The lad rose. A moment he paused, hesitating, then--

“To-morrow, Sir Crispin--” he began. But Crispin cut him short.

“Leave to-morrow till it dawn, my friend. Give you good night. Take one
of those noisome tapers with you, and go.”

In sullen silence the boy took up one of the candle-bearing bottles and
passed out through the door leading to the stairs.

For a moment Crispin remained standing by the table, and in that moment
the expression of his face was softened. A momentary regret of his
treatment of the boy stirred in him. Master Stewart might be a milksop,
but Crispin accounted him leastways honest, and had a kindness for
him in spite of all. He crossed to the window, and throwing it wide he
leaned out, as if to breathe the cool night air, what time he hummed the
refrain of `Rub-a-dub-dub’ for the edification of any chance listeners.

For a half-hour he lingered there, and for all that he used the occasion
to let his mind stray over many a theme, his eyes were alert for the
least movement among the shadows of the street. Reassured at last that
the house was no longer being watched, he drew back, and closed the
lattice.

Upstairs he found the Irishman seated in dejection upon his bed,
awaiting him.

“Soul of my body!” cried Hogan ruefully, “I was never nearer being
afraid in my life.”

Crispin laughed softly for answer, and besought of him the tale of what
had passed.

“Tis simple enough, faith,” said Hogan coolly. “The landlord of The
Angel hath a daughter maybe ‘twas after her he named his inn--who owns
a pair of the most seductive eyes that ever a man saw perdition in. She
hath, moreover, a taste for dalliance, and my brave looks and martial
trappings did for her what her bold eyes had done for me. We were
becoming the sweetest friends, when, like an incarnate fiend, that
loutish clown, her lover, sweeps down upon us, and, with more jealousy
than wit, struck me--struck me, Harry Hogan! Soul of my body, think of
it, Cris!” And he grew red with anger at the recollection. “I took
him by the collar of his mean smock and flung him into the kennel--the
fittest bed he ever lay in. Had he remained there it had been well
for him; but the fool, accounting himself affronted, came up to demand
satisfaction. I gave it him, and plague on it--he’s dead!”

“An ugly tale,” was Crispin’s sour comment.

“Ugly, maybe,” returned Hogan, spreading out his palms, “but what choice
had I? The fool came at me, bilbo in hand, and I was forced to draw.’

“But not to slay, Hogan!”

“Twas an accident. Sink me, it was! I sought his sword-arm; but the
light was bad, and my point went through his chest instead.”

For a moment Crispin stood frowning, then his brow cleared, as though he
had put the matter from him.

“Well, well--since he’s dead, there’s an end to it.”

“Heaven rest his soul!” muttered the Irishman, crossing himself piously.
And with that he dismissed the subject of the great wrong that through
folly he had wrought--the wanton destruction of a man’s life, and the
poisoning of a woman’s with a remorse that might be everlasting.

“It will tax our wits to get you out of Penrith,” said Crispin. Then,
turning and looking into the Irishman’s great, good-humoured face--“I am
sorry you leave us, Hogan,” he added.

“Not so am I,” quoth Hogan with a shrug. “Such a march as this is little
to my taste. Bah! Charles Stuart or Oliver Cromwell, ‘tis all one to me.
What care I whether King or Commonwealth prevail? Shall Harry Hogan be
the better or the richer under one than under the other? Oddslife, Cris,
I have trailed a pike or handled a sword in well-nigh every army in
Europe. I know more of the great art of war than all the King’s generals
rolled into one. Think you, then, I can rest content with a miserable
company of horse when plunder is forbidden, and even our beggarly pay
doubtful? Whilst, should things go ill--as well they may, faith, with
an army ruled by parsons--the wage will be a swift death on field or
gallows, or a lingering one in the plantations, as fell to the lot of
those poor wretches Noll drove into England after Dunbar. Soul of my
body, it is not thus that I had looked to fare when I took service at
Perth. I had looked for plunder, rich and plentiful plunder, according
to the usages of warfare, as a fitting reward for a toilsome march and
the perils gone through.

“Thus I know war, and for this have I followed the trade these twenty
years. Instead, we have thirty thousand men, marching to battle as prim
and orderly as a parcel of acolytes in a Corpus-Christi procession.
‘Twas not so bad in Scotland haply because the country holds naught
a man may profitably plunder--but since we have crossed the Border,
‘slife, they’ll hang you if you steal so much as a kiss from a wench in
passing.”

“Why, true,” laughed Crispin, “the Second Charles hath an over-tender
stomach. He will not allow that we are marching through an enemy’s
country; he insists that England is his kingdom, forgetting that he has
yet to conquer it, and--”

“Was it not also his father’s kingdom?” broke in the impetuous Hogan.
“Yet times are sorely changed since we followed the fortunes of the
Martyr. In those days you might help yourself to a capon, a horse,
a wench, or any other trifle of the enemy’s, without ever a word of
censure or a question asked. Why, man, it is but two days since His
Majesty had a poor devil hanged at Kendal for laying violent hands upon
a pullet. Pox on it, Cris, my gorge rises at the thought! When I
saw that wretch strung up, I swore to fall behind at the earliest
opportunity, and to-night’s affair makes this imperative.”

“And what may your plans be?” asked Crispin.

“War is my trade, not a diversion, as it is with Wilmot and Buckingham
and the other pretty gentlemen of our train. And since the King’s army
is like to yield me no profit, faith, I’ll turn me to the Parliament’s.
If I get out of Penrith with my life, I’ll shave my beard and cut my
hair to a comely and godly length; don a cuckoldy steeple hat and a
black coat, and carry my sword to Cromwell with a line of text.”

Sir Crispin fell to pondering. Noting this, and imagining that he
guessed aright the reason:

“I take it, Cris,” he put in, keenly glancing at the other, “that you
are much of my mind?”

“Maybe I am,” replied Crispin carelessly.

“Why, then,” cried Hogan, “need we part company?”

There was a sudden eagerness in his tone, born of the admiration in
which this rough soldier of fortune held one whom he accounted his
better in that same harsh trade. But Galliard answered coldly:

“You forget, Harry.”

“Not so! Surely on Cromwell’s side your object--”

“T’sh! I have well considered. My fortunes are bound up with the King’s.
In his victory alone lies profit for me; not the profit of pillage,
Hogan, but the profit of those broad lands that for nigh upon twenty
years have been in usurping hands. The profit I look for, Hogan, is my
restoration to Castle Marleigh, and of this my only hope lies in the
restoration of King Charles. If the King doth not prevail--which God
forfend!--why, then, I can but die. I shall have naught left to hope for
from life. So you see, good Hogan,” he ended with a regretful smile, “my
going with you is not to be dreamed of.”

Still the Irishman urged him, and a good half-hour did he devote to it,
but in vain. Realizing at last the futility of his endeavours, he sighed
and moved uneasily in his chair, whilst the broad, tanned face was
clouded with regret. Crispin saw this, and approaching him, he laid a
hand upon his shoulder.

“I had counted upon your help to clear the Ashburns from Castle Marleigh
and to aid me in my grim work when the time is ripe. But if you go--”

“Faith, I may aid you yet. Who shall say?” Then of a sudden there crept
into the voice of this hardened pike-trader a note of soft concern.
“Think you there be danger to yourself in remaining?” he inquired.

“Danger? To me?” echoed Crispin.

“Aye--for having harboured me. That whelp of Montgomery’s Foot suspects
you.”

“Suspects? Am I a man of straw to be overset by a breath of suspicion?”

“There is your lieutenant, Kenneth Stewart.”

“Who has been a party to your escape, and whose only course is therefore
silence, lest he set a noose about his own neck. Come, Harry,” he added,
briskly, changing his manner, “the night wears on, and we have your
safety to think of.”

Hogan rose with a sigh.

“Give me a horse,” said he, “and by God’s grace tomorrow shall find me
in Cromwell’s camp. Heaven prosper and reward you, Cris.”

“We must find you clothes more fitting than these--a coat more staid and
better attuned to the Puritan part you are to play.”

“Where have you such a coat?”

“My lieutenant has. He affects the godly black, from a habit taken in
that Presbyterian Scotland of his.”

“But I am twice his bulk!”

“Better a tight coat to your back than a tight rope to your neck, Harry.
Wait.”

Taking a taper, he left the room, to return a moment later with the coat
that Kenneth had worn that day, and which he had abstracted from the
sleeping lad’s chamber.

“Off with your doublet,” he commanded, and as he spoke he set himself to
empty the pocket of Kenneth’s garment; a handkerchief and a few papers
he found in them, and these he tossed carelessly on the bed. Next he
assisted the Irishman to struggle into the stolen coat.

“May the Lord forgive my sins,” groaned Hogan, as he felt the cloth
straining upon his back and cramping his limbs. “May He forgive me, and
see me safely out of Penrith and into Cromwell’s camp, and never again
will I resent the resentment of a clown whose sweetheart I have made too
free with.”

“Pluck that feather from your hat,” said Crispin.

Hogan obeyed him with a sigh.

“Truly it is written in Scripture that man in his time plays many parts.
Who would have thought to see Harry Hogan playing the Puritan?”

“Unless you improve your acquaintance with Scripture you are not like to
play it long,” laughed Crispin, as he surveyed him. “There, man, you’ll
do well enough. Your coat is somewhat tight in the back, somewhat short
in the skirt; but neither so tight nor so short but that it may be
preferred to a winding-sheet, and that is the alternative, Harry.”

Hogan replied by roundly cursing the coat and his own lucklessness. That
done--and in no measured terms--he pronounced himself ready to set out,
whereupon Crispin led the way below once more, and out into a hut that
did service as a stable.

By the light of a lanthorn he saddled one of the two nags that stood
there, and led it into the yard. Opening the door that abutted on to
a field beyond, he bade Hogan mount. He held his stirrup for him, and
cutting short the Irishman’s voluble expressions of gratitude, he gave
him “God speed,” and urged him to use all dispatch in setting as great a
distance as possible betwixt himself and Penrith before the dawn.



CHAPTER III. THE LETTER


It was with a countenance sadly dejected that Crispin returned to his
chamber and sate himself wearily upon the bed. With elbows on his knees
and chin in his palms he stared straight before him, the usual steely
brightness of his grey eyes dulled by the despondency that sat upon his
face and drew deep furrows down his fine brow.

With a sigh he rose at last and idly fingered the papers he had taken
from the pocket of Kenneth’s coat. As he did so his glance was arrested
by the signature at the foot of one. “Gregory Ashburn” was the name he
read.

Ashen grew his cheeks as his eyes fastened upon that name, whilst the
hand, to which no peril ever brought a tremor, shook now like an aspen.
Feverishly he spread the letter on his knee, and with a glance, from
dull that it had been, grown of a sudden fierce and cruel, he read the
contents.



DEAR KENNETH,

Again I write in the hope that I may prevail upon you to quit Scotland
and your attachment to a king, whose fortunes prosper not, nor can
prosper. Cynthia is pining, and if you tarry longer from Castle Marleigh
she must perforce think you but a laggard lover. Than this I have no
more powerful argument wherewith to draw you from Perth to Sheringham,
but this I think should prevail where others have failed me. We await
you then, and whilst we wait we daily drink your health. Cynthia
commends herself to your memory as doth my brother, and soon we hope to
welcome you at Castle Marleigh. Believe, my dear Kenneth, that whilst I
am, I am yours in affection.

                                             GREGORY ASHBURN

Twice Crispin read the letter through. Then with set teeth and straining
eyes he sat lost in thought.

Here indeed was a strange chance! This boy whom he had met at Perth,
and enrolled in his company, was a friend of Ashburn’s--the lover of
Cynthia. Who might this Cynthia be?

Long and deep were his ponderings upon the unfathomable ways of
Fate--for Fate he now believed was here at work to help him, revealing
herself by means of this sign even at the very moment when he decried
his luck. In memory he reviewed his meeting with the lad in the yard
of Perth Castle a fortnight ago. Something in the boy’s bearing, in his
air, had caught Crispin’s eye. He had looked him over, then approached,
and bluntly asked his name and on what business he was come there. The
youth had answered him civilly enough that he was Kenneth Stewart
of Bailienochy, and that he was come to offer his sword to the King.
Thereupon he had interested himself in the lad’s behalf and had gained
him a lieutenancy in his own company. Why he was attracted to a youth
on whom never before had he set eyes was a matter that puzzled him not
a little. Now he held, he thought, the explanation of it. It was the way
of Fate.

This boy was sent into his life by a Heaven that at last showed
compassion for the deep wrongs he had suffered; sent him as a key
wherewith, should the need occur, to open him the gates of Castle
Marleigh.

In long strides he paced the chamber, turning the matter over in his
mind. Aye, he would use the lad should the need arise. Why scruple? Had
he ever received aught but disdain and scorn at the hands of Kenneth.

Day was breaking ere he sought his bed, and already the sun was up when
at length he fell into a troubled sleep, vowing that he would mend his
wild ways and seek to gain the boy’s favour against the time when he
might have need of him.

When later he restored the papers to Kenneth, explaining to what use he
had put the coat, he refrained from questioning him concerning Gregory
Ashburn. The docility of his mood on that occasion came as a surprise to
Kenneth, who set it down to Sir Crispin’s desire to conciliate him into
silence touching the harbouring of Hogan. In that same connexion Crispin
showed him calmly and clearly that he could not now inform without
involving himself to an equally dangerous extent. And partly through
the fear of this, partly won over by Crispin’s persuasions, the lad
determined to hold his peace.

Nor had he cause to regret it thereafter, for throughout that tedious
march he found his roystering companion singularly meek and kindly.
Indeed he seemed a different man. His old swagger and roaring bluster
disappeared; he drank less, diced less, blasphemed less, and stormed
less than in the old days before the halt at Penrith; but rode, a
silent, thoughtful figure, so self-contained and of so godly a mien as
would have rejoiced the heart of the sourest Puritan. The wild tantivy
boy had vanished, and the sobriquet of “Tavern Knight” was fast becoming
a misnomer.

Kenneth felt drawn more towards him, deeming him a penitent that had
seen at last the error of his ways. And thus things prevailed until the
almost triumphal entry into the city of Worcester on the twenty-third of
August.



CHAPTER IV. AT THE SIGN OF THE MITRE


For a week after the coming of the King to Worcester, Crispin’s
relations with Kenneth steadily improved. By an evil chance, however,
there befell on the eve of the battle that which renewed with heightened
intensity the enmity which the lad had fostered for him, but which
lately he had almost overcome.

The scene of this happening--leastways of that which led to it--was The
Mitre Inn, in the High Street of Worcester.

In the common-room one day sat as merry a company of carousers as ever
gladdened the soul of an old tantivy boy. Youthful ensigns of
Lesley’s Scottish horse--caring never a fig for the Solemn League and
Covenant--rubbed shoulders with beribboned Cavaliers of Lord Talbot’s
company; gay young lairds of Pitscottie’s Highlanders, unmindful of the
Kirk’s harsh commandments of sobriety, sat cheek by jowl with rakehelly
officers of Dalzell’s Brigade, and pledged the King in many a stoup of
canary and many a can of stout March ale.

On every hand spirits ran high and laughter filled the chamber, the
mirth of some having its source in a neighbour’s quip, that of others
having no source at all save in the wine they had taken.

At one table sat a gentleman of the name of Faversham, who had ridden on
the previous night in that ill-fated camisado that should have
resulted in the capture of Cromwell at Spetchley, but which, owing to a
betrayal--when was a Stuart not betrayed and sold?--miscarried. He was
relating to the group about him the details of that disaster.

“Oddslife, gentlemen,” he was exclaiming, “I tell you that, but for that
roaring dog, Sir Crispin Galliard, the whole of Middleton’s regiment had
been cut to pieces. There we stood on Red Hill, trapped as ever fish
in a net, with the whole of Lilburne’s men rising out of the ground to
enclose and destroy us. A living wall of steel it was, and on every hand
the call to surrender. There was dismay in my heart, as I’ll swear there
was dismay in the heart of every man of us, and I make little doubt,
gentlemen, that with but scant pressing we had thrown down our arms, so
disheartened were we by that ambush. Then of a sudden there arose above
the clatter of steel and Puritan cries, a loud, clear, defiant shout of
‘Hey for Cavaliers!’”

“I turned, and there in his stirrups stood that madman Galliard, waving
his sword and holding his company together with the power of his will,
his courage, and his voice. The sight of him was like wine to our blood.
‘Into them, gentlemen; follow me!’ he roared. And then, with a hurricane
of oaths, he hurled his company against the pike-men. The blow was
irresistible, and above the din of it came that voice of his again: ‘Up,
Cavaliers! Slash the cuckolds to ribbons, gentlemen!’ The cropears gave
way, and like a river that has burst its dam, we poured through the
opening in their ranks and headed back for Worcester.”

There was a roar of voices as Faversham ended, and around that table
“The Tavern Knight” was for some minutes the only toast.

Meanwhile half a dozen merry-makers at a table hard by, having drunk
themselves out of all sense of fitness, were occupied in baiting a
pale-faced lad, sombrely attired, who seemed sadly out of place in that
wild company--indeed, he had been better advised to have avoided it.

The matter had been set afoot by a pleasantry of Ensign Tyler’s, of
Massey’s dragoons, with a playful allusion to a letter in a feminine
hand which Kenneth had let fall, and which Tyler had restored to him.
Quip had followed quip until in their jests they transcended all bounds.
Livid with passion and unable to endure more, Kenneth had sprung up.

“Damnation!” he blazed, bringing his clenched hand down upon the table.
“One more of your foul jests and he that utters it shall answer to me!”

The suddenness of his action and the fierceness of his tone and
gesture--a fierceness so grotesquely ill-attuned to his slender frame
and clerkly attire left the company for a moment speechless with
amazement. Then a mighty burst of laughter greeted him, above which
sounded the shrill voice of Tyler, who held his sides, and down whose
crimson cheeks two tears of mirth were trickling.

“Oh, fie, fie, good Master Stewart!” he gasped. “What think you would
the reverend elders say to this bellicose attitude and this profane
tongue of yours?”

“And what think you would the King say to this drunken poltroonery of
yours?” was the hot unguarded answer. “Poltroonery, I say,” he repeated,
embracing the whole company in his glance.

The laughter died down as Kenneth’s insult penetrated their befuddled
minds. An instant’s lull there was, like the lull in nature that
precedes a clap of thunder. Then, as with one accord, a dozen of them
bore down upon him.

It was a vile thing they did, perhaps; but then they had drunk deep, and
Kenneth Stewart counted no friend amongst them. In an instant they had
him, kicking and biting, on the floor; his doublet was torn rudely open,
and from his breast Tyler plucked the letter whose existence had led to
this shameless scene.

But ere he could so much as unfold it, a voice rang harsh and
imperative:

“Hold!”

Pausing, they turned to confront a tall, gaunt man in a leather jerkin
and a broad hat decked by goose-quill, who came slowly forward.

“The Tavern Knight,” cried one, and the shout of “A rouse for the hero
of Red Hill!” was taken up on every hand. For despite his sour visage
and ungracious ways there was not a roysterer in the Royal army to whom
he was not dear.

But as he now advanced, the coldness of his bearing and the forbidding
set of his face froze them into silence.

“Give me that letter,” he demanded sternly of Tyler.

Taken aback, Tyler hesitated for a second, whilst Crispin waited with
hand outstretched. Vainly did he look round for sign or word of help or
counsel. None was afforded him by his fellow-revellers, who one and all
hung back in silence.

Seeing himself thus unsupported, and far from wishing to try conclusions
with Galliard, Tyler with an ill grace surrendered the paper; and, with
a pleasant bow and a word of thanks, delivered with never so slight
a saturnine smile, Crispin turned on his heel and left the tavern as
abruptly as he had entered it.

The din it was that had attracted him as he passed by on his way to the
Episcopal Palace where a part of his company was on guard duty. Thither
he now pursued his way, bearing with him the letter which so opportunely
he had become possessed of, and which he hoped might throw further light
upon Kenneth’s relations with the Ashburns.

But as he reached the palace there was a quick step behind him, and a
hand fell upon his arm. He turned.

“Ah, ‘tis you, Kenneth,” he muttered, and would have passed on, but the
boy’s hand took him by the sleeve.

“Sir Crispin,” said he, “I came to thank you.”

“I have done nothing to deserve your thanks. Give you good evening.” And
he made shift to mount the steps when again Kenneth detained him.

“You are forgetting the letter, Sir Crispin,” he ventured, and he held
out his hand to receive it.

Galliard saw the gesture, and for a moment it crossed his mind in
self-reproach that the part he chose to play was that of a bully. A
second he hesitated. Should he surrender the letter unread, and fight on
without the aid of the information it might bring him? Then the thought
of Ashburn and of his own deep wrongs that cried out for vengeance,
overcame and stifled the generous impulse. His manner grew yet more
frozen as he made answer:

“There has been too much ado about this letter to warrant my so lightly
parting with it. First I will satisfy myself that I have been no
unconscious abettor of treason. You shall have your letter tomorrow,
Master Stewart.”

“Treason!” echoed Kenneth. And before that cold rebuff of Crispin’s his
mood changed from conciliatory to resentful--resentful towards the fates
that made him this man’s debtor.

“I assure you, on my honour,” said he, mastering his feelings, “that
this is but a letter from the lady I hope to make my wife. Assuredly,
sir, you will not now insist upon reading it.”

“Assuredly I shall.”

“But, sir--”

“Master Stewart, I am resolved, and were you to talk from now till
doomsday, you would not turn me from my purpose. So good night to you.”

“Sir Crispin,” cried the boy, his voice quavering with passion, “while I
live you shall not read that letter!”

“Hoity-toity, sir! What words! What heroics! And yet you would have me
believe this paper innocent?”

“As innocent as the hand that penned it, and if I so oppose your reading
it, it is because thus much I owe her. Believe me, sir,” he added, his
accents returning to a beseeching key, “when again I swear that it is no
more than such a letter any maid may write her lover. I thought that you
had understood all this when you rescued me from those bullies at
The Mitre. I thought that what you did was a noble and generous deed.
Instead--” The lad paused.

“Continue, sir,” Galliard requested coldly. “Instead?”

“There can be no instead, Sir Crispin. You will not mar so good an
action now. You will give me my letter, will you not?”

Callous though he was, Crispin winced. The breeding of earlier days--so
sadly warped, alas!--cried out within him against the lie that he
was acting by pretending to suspect treason in that woman’s pothooks.
Instincts of gentility and generosity long dead took life again,
resuscitated by that call of conscience. He was conquered.

“There, take your letter, boy, and plague me no more,” he growled, as he
held it out to Kenneth. And without waiting for reply or acknowledgment,
he turned on his heel, and entered the palace. But he had yielded
overlate to leave a good impression and, as Kenneth turned away, it was
with a curse upon Galliard, for whom his detestation seemed to increase
at every step.



CHAPTER V. AFTER WORCESTER FIELD


The morn of the third of September--that date so propitious to Cromwell,
so disastrous to Charles--found Crispin the centre of a company of
gentlemen in battle-harness, assembled at The Mitre Inn. For a toast he
gave them “The damnation of all crop-ears.”

“Sirs,” quoth he, “a fair beginning to a fair day. God send the evening
find us as merry.”

It was not to be his good fortune, however, to be in the earlier work
of the day. Until afternoon he was kept within the walls of Worcester,
chafing to be where hard knocks were being dealt--with Montgomery at
Powick Bridge, or with Pittscottie on Bunn’s Hill. But he was forced to
hold his mood in curb, and wait until Charles and his advisers should
elect to make the general attack.

It came at last, and with it came the disastrous news that Montgomery
was routed, and Pittscottie in full retreat, whilst Dalzell had
surrendered, and Keith was taken. Then was it that the main body of the
Royal army formed up at the Sidbury Gate, and Crispin found himself in
the centre, which was commanded by the King in person. In the brilliant
charge that followed there was no more conspicuous figure, no voice
rang louder in encouragement to the men. For the first time that day
Cromwell’s Ironsides gave back before the Royalists, who in that fierce,
irresistible charge, swept all before them until they had reached
the battery on Perry Wood, and driven the Roundheads from it
hell-to-leather.

It was a glorious moment, a moment in which the fortunes of the day hung
in the balance; the turn of the tide it seemed to them at last.

Crispin was among the first to reach the guns, and with a great shout of
“Hurrah for Cavaliers!” he had cut down two gunners that yet lingered.
His cry lacked not an echo, and a deafening cheer broke upon the
clamorous air as the Royalists found themselves masters of the position.
Up the hill on either side pressed the Duke of Hamilton and the Earl of
Derby to support the King. It but remained for Lesley’s Scottish horse
to follow and complete the rout of the Parliamentarian forces. Had they
moved at that supreme moment who shall say what had been the issue of
Worcester field? But they never stirred, and the Royalists waiting on
Perry Wood cursed Lesley for a foul traitor who had sold his King.

With bitterness did they then realize that their great effort was to be
barren, their gallant charge in vain. Unsupported, their position grew
fast untenable.

And presently, when Cromwell had gathered his scattered Ironsides, that
gallant host was driven fighting, down the hill and back to the shelter
of Worcester. With the Roundheads pressing hotly upon them they gained
at last the Sidbury Gate, but only to find that an overset ammunition
wagon blocked the entrance. In this plight, and without attempting
to move it, they faced about to make a last stand against the Puritan
onslaught.

Charles had flung himself from his charger and climbed the obstruction,
and in this he was presently followed by others, amongst whom was
Crispin.

In the High Street Galliard came upon the King, mounted on a fresh
horse, addressing a Scottish regiment of foot. The soldiers had thrown
down their arms and stood sullenly before him, refusing to obey his
command to take them up again and help him attempt, even at that late
hour, to retrieve the fortunes of the day. Crispin looked on in scorn
and loathing. His passions awakened at the sight of Lesley’s inaction
needed but this last breath to fan it into a very blaze of wrath. And
what he said to them touching themselves, their country, and the Kirk
Committee that had made sheep of them, was so bitter and contemptuous
that none but men in the most parlous and pitiable of conditions could
have suffered it.

He was still hurling vituperations at them when Colonel Pride with
a troop of Parliamentarian horse--having completely overcome the
resistance at the Sidbury Gate--rode into the town. At the news of this,
Crispin made a last appeal to the infantry.

“Afoot, you Scottish curs!” he thundered. “Would you rather be cut to
pieces as you stand? Up, you dogs, and since you know not how to live,
die at least without shame!”

But in vain did he rail. In sullen quiet they remained, their weapons on
the ground before them. And then, as Crispin was turning away to see to
his own safety, the King rode up again, and again he sought to revive
the courage that was dead in those Scottish hearts. If they would not
stand by him, he cried at last, let them slay him there, sooner than
that he should be taken captive to perish on the scaffold.

While he was still urging them, Crispin unceremoniously seized his
bridle.

“Will you stand here until you are taken, sire?” he cried. “Leave them,
and look to your safety.”

Charles turned a wondering eye upon the resolute, battle-grimed face of
the man that thus addressed him. A faint, sad smile parted his lips.

“You are right, sir,” he made answer. “Attend me.” And turning about he
rode down a side street with Galliard following closely in his wake.

With the intention of doffing his armour and changing his apparel, he
made for the house in New Street where he had been residing. As they
drew up before the door, Crispin, chancing to look over his shoulder,
rapped out an oath.

“Hasten, sire,” he exclaimed, “here is a portion of Colonel’s Pride’s
troop.”

The King looked round, and at sight of the Parliamentarians, “It is
ended,” he muttered despairingly. But already Crispin had sprung from
his horse.

“Dismount, sire,” he roared, and he assisted him so vigorously as to
appear to drag him out of the saddle.

“Which way?” demanded Charles, looking helplessly from left to right.
“Which way?”

But Crispin’s quick mind had already shaped a plan. Seizing the royal
arm--for who in such straits would deal ceremoniously?--he thrust the
King across the threshold, and, following, closed the door and shot its
only bolt. But the shout set up by the Puritans announced to them that
their movement had been detected.

The King turned upon Sir Crispin, and in the half-light of the passage
wherein they stood Galliard made out the frown that bent the royal
brows.

“And now?” demanded Charles, a note almost of reproach in his voice.

“And now begone, sire,” returned the knight. “Begone ere they come.”

“Begone?” echoed Charles, in amazement. “But whither, sir? Whither and
how?”

His last words were almost drowned in the din without, as the Roundheads
pulled up before the house.

“By the back, sire,” was the impatient answer. “Through door or
window--as best you can. The back must overlook the Corn-Market; that is
your way. But hasten--in God’s name hasten!--ere they bethink them of it
and cut off your retreat.”

As he spoke a violent blow shook the door.

“Quick, Your Majesty,” he implored, in a frenzy.

Charles moved to depart, then paused. “But you, sir? Do you not come
with me?”

Crispin stamped his foot, and turned a face livid with impatience upon
his King. In that moment all distinction of rank lay forgotten.

“I must remain,” he answered, speaking quickly. “That crazy door will
not hold for a second once a stout man sets his shoulder to it. After
the door they will find me, and for your sake I trust I may prove of
stouter stuff. Fare you well, sire,” he ended in a softer tone. “God
guard Your Majesty and send you happier days.”

And, bending his knee, Crispin brushed the royal hand with his hot lips.

A shower of blows clattered upon the timbers of the door, and one of
its panels was splintered by a musket-shot. Charles saw it, and with a
muttered word that was not caught by Crispin, he obeyed the knight, and
fled.

Scarce had he disappeared down that narrow passage, when the door gave
way completely and with a mighty crash fell in. Over the ruins of it
sprang a young Puritan-scarce more than a boy--shouting: “The Lord of
Hosts!”

But ere he had taken three strides the point of Crispin’s tuck-sword
gave him pause.

“Halt! You cannot pass this way.”

“Back, son of Moab!” was the Roundhead’s retort. “Hinder me not, at your
peril.”

Behind him, in the doorway, pressed others, who cried out to him to cut
down the Amalekite that stood between them and the young man Charles
Stuart. But Crispin laughed grimly for answer, and kept the officer in
check with his point.

“Back, or I cut you down,” threatened the Roundhead. “I am seeking the
malignant Stuart.”

“If by those blasphemous words you mean his sacred Majesty, learn that
he is where you will never be--in God’s keeping.”

“Presumptuous hound,” stormed the lad, “giveway!”

Their swords met, and for a moment they ground one against the other;
then Crispin’s blade darted out, swift as a lightning flash, and took
his opponent in the throat.

“You would have it so, rash fool,” he deprecated.

The boy hurtled back into the arms of those behind, and as he fell he
dropped his rapier, which rolled almost to Crispin’s feet. The knight
stooped, and when again he stood erect, confronting the rebels in that
narrow passage, he held a sword in either hand.

There was a momentary pause in the onslaught, then to his dismay Crispin
saw the barrel of a musket pointed at him over the shoulder of one of
his foremost assailants. He set his teeth for what was to come, and
braced himself with the hope that the King might already have made good
his escape.

The end was at hand, he thought, and a fitting end, since his last hope
of redress was gone-destroyed by that fatal day’s defeat.

But of a sudden a cry rang out in a voice wherein rage and anguish
were blended fearfully, and simultaneously the musket barrel was dashed
aside.

“Take him alive!” was the cry of that voice. “Take him alive!” It was
Colonel Pride himself, who having pushed his way forward, now beheld the
bleeding body of the youth Crispin had slain. “Take him alive!” roared
the old man. Then his voice changing to one of exquisite agony--“My son,
my boy,” he moaned.

At a glance Crispin caught the situation; but the old Puritan’s grief
left him unmoved.

“You must have me alive?” he laughed grimly. “Gadslife, but the honour
is like to cost you dear. Well, sirs? Who will be next to court the
distinction of dying by the sword of a gentleman?” he mocked them. “Come
on, you sons of dogs!”

His answer was an angry growl, and straightway two men sprang forward.
More than two could not attack him at once by virtue of the narrowness
of the passage. Again steel clashed on steel. Crispin--lithe as a
panther crouched low, and took one of their swords on each of his.

A disengage and a double he foiled with ease, then by a turn of the
wrist he held for a second one opponent’s blade; and before the fellow
could disengage again, he had brought his right-hand sword across, and
stabbed him in the neck. Simultaneously his other opponent had rushed
in and thrust. It was a risk Crispin was forced to take, trusting to
his armour to protect him. It did him the service he hoped from it; the
trooper’s sword glanced harmlessly aside, whilst the fellow himself,
overbalanced by the fury of his onslaught, staggered helplessly forward.
Ere he could recover, Crispin had spitted him from side to side betwixt
the straps that held his back and breast together.

As the two men went down, one after the other, the watching troopers set
up a shout of rage, and pressed forward in a body. But the Tavern Knight
stood his ground, and his points danced dangerously before the eyes of
the two foremost. Alarmed, they shouted to those behind to give
them room to handle their swords; but too late. Crispin had seen the
advantage, and taken it. Twice he had thrust, and another two sank
bleeding to the ground.

At that there came a pause, and somewhere in the street a knot of them
expostulated with Colonel Pride, and begged to be allowed to pick off
that murderous malignant with their pistols. But the grief-stricken
father was obdurate. He would have the Amalekite alive that he might
cause him to die a hundred deaths in one.

And so two more were sent in to try conclusions with the indomitable
Galliard. They went to work more warily. He on the left parried
Crispin’s stroke, then knocking up the knight’s blade, he rushed in and
seized his wrist, shouting to those behind to follow up. But even as
he did so, Crispin sent back his other antagonist, howling and writhing
with the pain of a transfixed sword-arm, and turned his full attention
upon the foe that clung to him. Not a second did he waste in thought. To
have done so would have been fatal. Instinctively he knew that whilst
he shortened his blade, others would rush in; so, turning his wrist, he
caught the man a crushing blow full in the face with the pommel of his
disengaged sword.

Fulminated by that terrific stroke, the man reeled back into the arms of
another who advanced.

Again there fell a pause. Then silently a Roundhead charged Sir Crispin
with a pike. He leapt nimbly aside, and the murderous lunge shot past
him; as he did so he dropped his left-hand sword and caught at the
halberd. Exerting his whole strength in a mighty pull, he brought
the fellow that wielded it toppling forward, and received him on his
outstretched blade.

Covered with blood--the blood of others--Crispin stood before them now.
He was breathing hard and sweating at every pore, but still grim and
defiant. His strength, he realized, was ebbing fast. Yet he shook
himself, and asked them with a gibing laugh did they not think that they
had better shoot him.

The Roundheads paused again. The fight had lasted but a few moments,
and already five of them were stretched upon the ground, and a sixth
disabled. There was something in the Tavern Knight’s attitude and
terrific, blood-bespattered appearance that deterred them. From out
of his powder-blackened face his eyes flashed fiercely, and a mocking
diabolical smile played round the corners of his mouth. What manner
of man, they asked themselves, was this who could laugh in such an
extremity? Superstition quickened their alarm as they gazed upon
his undaunted front, and told themselves this was no man they fought
against, but the foul fiend himself.

“Well, sirs,” he mocked them presently. “How long am I to await your
pleasure?”

They snarled for answer, yet hung back until Colonel Pride’s voice
shook them into action. In a body they charged him now, so suddenly and
violently that he was forced to give way. Cunningly did he ply his sword
before them, but ineffectually. They had adopted fresh tactics, and
engaging his blade they acted cautiously and defensively, advancing
steadily, and compelling him to fall back.

Sir Crispin guessed their scheme at last, and vainly did he try to hold
his ground; his retreat slackened perhaps, but it was still a retreat,
and their defensive action gave him no opening. Vainly, yet by every
trick of fence he was master of, did he seek to lure the two foremost
into attacking him; stolidly they pursued the adopted plan, and steadily
they impelled him backward.

At last he reached the staircase, and he realized that did he allow
himself to go farther he was lost irretrievably. Yet farther was he
driven; despite the strenuous efforts he put forth, until on his right
there was room for a man to slip on to the stairs and take him in the
flank. Twice one of his opponents essayed it, and twice did Galliard’s
deadly point repel him. But at the third attempt the man got through,
another stepped into his place in front, and thus from two, Crispin’s
immediate assailants became increased to three.

He realized that the end was at hand, and wildly did he lay about him,
but to no purpose. And presently, he who had gained the stairs leaped
suddenly upon him sideways, and clung to his swordarm. Before he could
make a move to shake himself free, the two that faced him had caught at
his other arm.

Like one possessed he struggled then, for the sheer lust of striving;
but they that held him gripped effectively.

Thrice they bore him struggling to the ground, and thrice he rose again
and sought to shake them from him as a bull shakes off a pack of dogs.
But they held fast, and again they forced him down; others sprang to
their aid, and the Tavern Knight could rise no more.

“Disarm the dog!” cried Pride. “Disarm and truss him hand and foot.”

“Sirs, you need not,” he answered, gasping. “I yield me. Take my sword.
I’ll do your bidding.”

The fight was fought and lost, but it had been a great Homeric struggle,
and he rejoiced almost that upon so worthy a scene of his life was the
curtain to fall, and again to hope that, thanks to the stand he had
made, the King should have succeeded in effecting his escape.



CHAPTER VI. COMPANIONS IN MISFORTUNE


Through the streets of Worcester the Roundheads dragged Sir Crispin, and
for all that he was as hard and callous a man as any that ever buckled
on a cuirass, the horrors that in going he beheld caused him more than
once to shudder.

The place was become a shambles, and the very kennels ran with blood.
The Royalist defeat was by now complete, and Cromwell’s fanatic butchers
overran the town, vying to outdo one another in savage cruelty
and murder. Houses were being broken into and plundered, and their
inmates--resisting or unresisting; armed or unarmed; men, women and
children alike were pitilessly being put to the sword. Charged was the
air of Worcester with the din of that fierce massacre. The crashing of
shivered timbers, as doors were beaten in, mingled with the clatter and
grind of sword on sword, the crack of musket and pistol, the clank of
armour, and the stamping of men and horses in that troubled hour.

And above all rang out the fierce, raucous blasphemy of the slayers,
and the shrieks of agony, the groans, the prayers, and curses of their
victims.

All this Sir Crispin saw and heard, and in the misery of it all, he
for the while forgot his own sorry condition, and left unheeded the
pike-butt wherewith the Puritan at his heels was urging him along.

They paused at length in a quarter unknown to him before a tolerably
large house. Its doors hung wide, and across the threshold, in and out,
moved two continuous streams of officers and men.

A while Crispin and his captors stood in the spacious hall; then they
ushered him roughly into one of the abutting rooms. Here he was brought
face to face with a man of middle height, red and coarse of countenance
and large of nose, who stood fully armed in the centre of the chamber.
His head was uncovered, and on the table at his side stood the morion he
had doffed. He looked up as they entered, and for a few seconds rested
his glance sourly upon the lank, bold-eyed prisoner, who coldly returned
his stare.

“Whom have we here?” he inquired at length, his scrutiny having told him
nothing.

“One whose offence is too heinous to have earned him a soldier’s death,
my lord,” answered Pride.

“Therein you lie, you damned rebel!” cried Crispin. “If accuse you must,
announce the truth. Tell Master Cromwell”--for he had guessed the man’s
identity--“that single-handed I held my own against you and a score of
you curs, and that not until I had cut down seven of them was I taken.
Tell him that, master psalm-singer, and let him judge whether you lied
or not. Tell him, too, that you, who--”

“Have done!” cried Cromwell at length, stamping his foot. “Peace, or
I’ll have you gagged. Now, Colonel, let us hear your accusation.”

At great length, and with endless interlarding of proverbs did Pride
relate how this impious malignant had been the means of the young man,
Charles Stuart, making good his escape when otherwise he must have
fallen into their hands. He accused him also of the murder of his son
and of four other stout, God-fearing troopers, and urged Cromwell to let
him deal with the malignant as he deserved.

The Lord General’s answer took expression in a form that was little
puritanical. Then, checking himself:

“He is the second they have brought me within ten minutes charged with
the same offence,” said he. “The other one is a young fool who gave
Charles Stuart his horse at Saint Martin’s Gate. But for him again the
young man had been taken.”

“So he has escaped!” cried Crispin. “Now, God be praised!”

Cromwell stared at him blankly for a moment, then:

“You will do well, sir,” he muttered sourly, “to address the Lord on
your own behalf. As for that young man of Baal, your master, rejoice
not yet in his escape. By the same crowning mercy in which the Lord hath
vouchsafed us victory to-day shall He also deliver the malignant youth
into my hands. For your share in retarding his capture your life, sir,
shall pay forfeit. You shall hang at daybreak together with that other
malignant who assisted Charles at the Saint Martin’s Gate.”

“I shall at least hang in good company,” said Crispin pleasantly, “and
for that, sir, I give you thanks.”

“You will pass the night with that other fool,” Cromwell continued,
without heeding the interruption, “and I pray that you may spend it in
such meditation as shall fit you for your end. Take him away.”

“But, my lord,” exclaimed Pride, advancing.

“What now?”

Crispin caught not his answer, but his half-whispered words were earnest
and pleading. Cromwell shook his head.

“I cannot sanction it. Let it satisfy you that he dies. I condole with
you in your bereavement, but it is the fortune of war. Let the thought
that your son died in a godly cause be of comfort to you. Bear in mind,
Colonel Pride, that Abraham hesitated not to offer up his child to the
Lord. And so, fare you well.”

Colonel Pride’s face worked oddly, and his eyes rested for a second
upon the stern, unmoved figure of the Tavern Knight in malice and
vindictiveness. Then, shrugging his shoulders in token of unwilling
resignation, he withdrew, whilst Crispin was led out.

In the hall again they kept him waiting for some moments, until at
length an officer came up, and bidding him follow, led the way to the
guardroom. Here they stripped him of his back-and-breast, and when that
was done the officer again led the way, and Crispin followed between two
troopers. They made him mount three flights of stairs, and hurried him
along a passage to a door by which a soldier stood mounting guard. At
a word from the officer the sentry turned, and unfastening the heavy
bolts, he opened the door. Roughly the officer bade Sir Crispin enter,
and stood aside that he might pass.

Crispin obeyed him silently, and crossed the threshold to find himself
within a mean, gloomy chamber, and to hear the heavy door closed and
made fast again behind him. His stout heart sank a little as he realized
that that closed door shut out to him the world for ever; but once again
would he cross that threshold, and that would be the preface to the
crossing of the greater threshold of eternity.

Then something stirred in one of that room’s dark corners, and he
started, to see that he was not alone, remembering that Cromwell had
said he was to have a companion in his last hours.

“Who are you?” came a dull voice--a voice that was eloquent of misery.

“Master Stewart!” he exclaimed, recognizing his companion. “So it was
you gave the King your horse at the Saint Martin’s Gate! May Heaven
reward you. Gadswounds,” he added, “I had little thought to meet you
again this side the grave.”

“Would to Heaven you had not!” was the doleful answer. “What make you
here?”

“By your good leave and with your help I’ll make as merry as a man may
whose sands are all but run. The Lord General--whom the devil roast in
his time will make a pendulum of me at daybreak, and gives me the night
in which to prepare.”

The lad came forward into the light, and eyed Sir Crispin sorrowfully.

“We are companions in misfortune, then.”

“Were we ever companions in aught else? Come, sir, be of better cheer.
Since it is to be our last night in this poor world, let us spend it as
pleasantly as may be.”

“Pleasantly?”

“Twill clearly be difficult,” answered Crispin, with a laugh. “Were we
in Christian hands they’d not deny us a black jack over which to relish
our last jest, and to warm us against the night air, which must be
chill in this garret. But these crop-ears...” He paused to peer into the
pitcher on the table. “Water! Pah! A scurvy lot, these psalm-mongers!”

“Merciful Heaven! Have you no thought for your end?”

“Every thought, good youth, every thought, and I would fain prepare me
for the morning’s dance in a more jovial and hearty fashion than Old
Noll will afford me--damn him!”

Kenneth drew back in horror. His old dislike for Crispin was all aroused
by this indecent flippancy at such a time. Just then the thought of
spending the night in his company almost effaced the horror of the
gallows whereof he had been a prey.

Noting the movement, Crispin laughed disdainfully, and walked towards
the window. It was a small opening, by which two iron bars, set
crosswise, defied escape. Moreover, as Crispin looked out, he realized
that a more effective barrier lay in the height of the window itself.
The house overlooked the river on that side; it was built upon an
embankment some thirty feet high; around this, at the base of the
edifice, and some forty feet below the window, ran a narrow pathway
protected by an iron railing. But so narrow was it, that had a man
sprung from the casement of Crispin’s prison, it was odds he would have
fallen into the river some seventy feet below. Crispin turned away with
a sigh. He had approached the window almost in hope; he quitted it in
absolute despair.

“Ah, well,” said he, “we will hang, and there’s the end of it.”

Kenneth had resumed his seat in the corner, and, wrapped in his cloak,
he sat steeped in meditation, his comely young face seared with lines of
pain. As Crispin looked upon him then, his heart softened and went
out to the lad--went out as it had done on the night when first he had
beheld him in the courtyard of Perth Castle.

He recalled the details of that meeting; he remembered the sympathy
that had drawn him to the boy, and how Kenneth had at first appeared to
reciprocate that feeling, until he came to know him for the rakehelly,
godless ruffler that he was. He thought of the gulf that gradually had
opened up between them. The lad was righteous and God-fearing, truthful
and sober, filled with stern ideals by which he sought to shape
his life. He had taxed Crispin with his dissoluteness, and Crispin,
despising him for a milksop, had returned to his disgust with mockery,
and had found a fiendish pleasure in arousing that disgust at every
turn.

To-night, as Crispin eyed the youth, and remembered that at dawn he was
to die in his company, he realized that he had used him ill, that his
behaviour towards him had been that of the dissolute ruffler he was
become, rather than of the gentleman he had once accounted himself.

“Kenneth,” he said at length, and his voice bore so unusually mild a
ring that the lad looked up in surprise. “I have heard tell that it
is no uncommon thing for men upon the threshold of eternity to seek to
repair some of the evil they may have done in life.”

Kenneth shuddered. Crispin’s words reminded him again of his approaching
end. The ruffler paused a moment, as if awaiting a reply or a word of
encouragement. Then, as none came, he continued:

“I am not one of your repentant sinners, Kenneth. I have lived my
life--God, what a life!--and as I have lived I shall die, unflinching
and unchanged. Dare one to presume that a few hours spent in whining
prayers shall atone for years of reckless dissoluteness? ‘Tis a
doctrine of cravens, who, having lacked in life the strength to live as
conscience bade them, lack in death the courage to stand by that life’s
deeds. I am no such traitor to myself. If my life has been vile my
temptations have been sore, and the rest is in God’s hands. But in my
course I have sinned against many men; many a tall fellow’s life have
I wantonly wrecked; some, indeed, I have even taken in wantonness or
anger. They are not by, nor, were they, could I now make amends. But you
at least are here, and what little reparation may lie in asking pardon
I can make. When I first saw you at Perth it was my wish to make you my
friend--a feeling I have not had these twenty years towards any man.
I failed. How else could it have been? The dove may not nest with the
carrion bird.”

“Say no more, sir,” cried Kenneth, genuinely moved, and still more
amazed by this curious humility in one whom he had never known other
than arrogant and mocking. “I beseech you, say no more. For what
trifling wrongs you may have done me I forgive you as freely as I would
be forgiven. Is it not written that it shall be so?” And he held out his
hand.

“A little more I must say, Kenneth,” answered the other, leaving the
outstretched hand unheeded. “The feeling that was born in me towards you
at Perth Castle is on me again. I seek not to account for it. Perchance
it springs from my recognition of the difference betwixt us; perchance I
see in you a reflection of what once I was myself--honourable and true.
But let that be. The sun is setting over yonder, and you and I will
behold it no more. That to me is a small thing. I am weary. Hope is
dead; and when that is dead what does it signify that the body die also?
Yet in these last hours that we shall spend together I would at least
have your esteem. I would have you forget my past harshness and the
wrongs that I may have done you down to that miserable affair of your
sweetheart’s letter, yesterday. I would have you realize that if I am
vile, I am but such as a vile world hath made me. And tomorrow when we
go forth together, I would have you see in me at least a man in whose
company you are not ashamed to die.”

Again the lad shuddered.

“Shall I tell you my story, Kenneth? I have a strong desire to go
over this poor life of mine again in memory, and by giving my thoughts
utterance it may be that they will take more vivid shape. For the rest
my tale may wile away a little of the time that’s left, and when you
have heard me you shall judge me, Kenneth. What say you?”

Despite the parlous condition whereunto the fear of the morrow had
reduced him, this new tone of Galliard’s so wrought upon him then that
he was almost eager in his request that Sir Crispin should unfold his
story. And this the Tavern Knight then set himself to do.



CHAPTER VII. THE TAVERN KNIGHT’S STORY


Sir Crispin walked from the window by which he had been standing, to the
rough bed, and flung himself full length upon it. The only chair that
dismal room contained was occupied by Kenneth. Galliard heaved a sigh of
physical satisfaction.

“Fore George, I knew not I was so tired,” he murmured. And with that he
lapsed for some moments into silence, his brows contracted in the frown
of one who collects his thoughts. At length he began, speaking in
calm, unemotional tones that held perchance deeper pathos than a more
passionate utterance could have endowed them with:

“Long ago--twenty years ago--I was, as I have said, an honourable lad,
to whom the world was a fair garden, a place of rosebuds, fragrant
with hope. Those, Kenneth, were my illusions. They are the illusions of
youth; they are youth itself, for when our illusions are gone we are
no longer young no matter what years we count. Keep your illusions,
Kenneth; treasure them, hoard them jealously for as long as you may.”

“I dare swear, sir,” answered the lad, with bitter humour, “that such
illusions as I have I shall treasure all my life. You forget, Sir
Crispin.”

“‘Slife, I had indeed forgotten. For the moment I had gone back twenty
years, and to-morrow was none so near.” He laughed softly, as though his
lapse of memory amused him. Then he resumed:

“I was the only son, Kenneth, of the noblest gentleman that ever
lived--the heir to an ancient, honoured name, and to a castle as proud
and lands as fair and broad as any in England.

“They lie who say that from the dawn we may foretell the day. Never was
there a brighter dawn than that of my life; never a day so wasted; never
an evening so dark. But let that be.

“Our lands were touched upon the northern side by those of a house with
which we had been at feud for two hundred years and more. Puritans they
were, stern and haughty in their ungodly righteousness. They held us
dissolute because we enjoyed the life that God had given us, and there I
am told the hatred first began.

“When I was a lad of your years, Kenneth, the hall--ours was the castle,
theirs the hall--was occupied by two young sparks who made little shift
to keep up the pious reputation of their house. They dwelt there with
their mother--a woman too weak to check their ways, and holding, mayhap,
herself, views not altogether puritanical. They discarded the sober
black their forbears had worn for generations, and donned gay Cavalier
garments. They let their love-locks grow; set plumes in their castors
and jewels in their ears; they drank deep, ruffled it with the boldest
and decked their utterance with great oaths--for to none doth blasphemy
come more readily than to lips that in youth have been overmuch shaped
in unwilling prayer.

“Me they avoided as they would a plague, and when at times we met, our
salutations were grave as those of, men on the point of crossing swords.
I despised them for their coarse, ruffling apostasy more than ever
my father had despised their father for a bigot, and they guessing or
knowing by instinct what was in my mind held me in deeper rancour even
than their ancestors had done mine. And more galling still and yet a
sharper spur to their hatred did those whelps find in the realization
that all the countryside held, as it had held for ages, us to be their
betters. A hard blow to their pride was that, but their revenge was not
long in coming.

“It chanced they had a cousin--a maid as sweet and fair and pure as they
were hideous and foul. We met in the meads--she and I. Spring was the
time--God! It seems but yesterday!--and each in our bearing towards the
other forgot the traditions of the names we bore. And as at first we had
met by chance, so did we meet later by contrivance, not once or twice,
but many times. God, how sweet she was! How sweet was all the world! How
sweet it was to live and to be young! We loved. How else could it
have been? What to us were traditions, what to us the hatred that for
centuries had held our families asunder? In us it lay to set aside all
that.

“And so I sought my father. He cursed me at first for an unnatural son
who left unheeded the dictates of our blood. But anon, when on my
knees I had urged my cause with all the eloquent fervour that is but
of youth--youth that loves--my father cursed no more. His thoughts went
back maybe to the days of his own youth, and he bade me rise and go
a-wooing as I listed. Nay, more than that he did. The first of our name
was he out of ten generations to set foot across the threshold of the
hall; he went on my behalf to sue for their cousin’s hand.

“Then was their hour. To them that had been taught the humiliating
lesson that we were their betters, one of us came suing. They from whom
the countryside looked for silence when one of us spoke, had it in their
hands at length to say us nay. And they said it. What answer my father
made them, Kenneth, I know not, but very white was his face when I met
him on the castle steps on his return. In burning words he told me of
the insult they had put upon him, then silently he pointed to the Toledo
that two years before he had brought me out of Spain, and left me. But
I had understood. Softly I unsheathed that virgin blade and read the
Spanish inscription, that through my tears of rage and shame seemed
blurred; a proud inscription was it, instinct with the punctilio
of proud Spain--‘Draw me not without motive, sheathe me not without
honour.’ Motive there was and to spare; honour I swore there should be;
and with that oath, and that brave sword girt to me, I set out to my
first combat.”

Sir Crispin paused and a sigh escaped him, followed by a laugh of
bitterness.

“I lost that sword years ago,” said he musingly. “The sword and I have
been close friends in life, but my companion has been a blade of coarser
make, carrying no inscriptions to prick at a man’s conscience and make a
craven of him.”

He laughed again, and again he fell a-musing, till Kenneth’s voice
aroused him.

“Your story, sir.”

Twilight shadows were gathering in their garret, and as he turned his
face towards the youth, he was unable to make out his features; but
his tone had been eager, and Crispin noted that he sat with head bent
forward and that his eyes shone feverishly.

“It interests you, eh? Ah, well--hot foot I went to the hall, and with
burning words I called upon those dogs to render satisfaction for the
dishonour they had put upon my house. Will you believe, Kenneth, that
they denied me? They sheltered their craven lives behind a shield of
mock valour. They would not fight a boy, they said, and bade me get my
beard grown when haply they would give ear to my grievance.

“And so, a shame and rage a hundredfold more bitter than that which I
had borne thither did I carry thence. My father bade me treasure up the
memory of it against the time when my riper years should compel them to
attend me, and this, by my every hope of heaven, I swore to do. He bade
me further efface for ever from my mind all thought or hope of union
with their cousin, and though I made him no answer at the time, yet in
my heart I promised to obey him in that, too. But I was young--scarce
twenty. A week without sight of my mistress and I grew sick with
despair. Then at length I came upon her, pale and tearful, one evening,
and in an agony of passion and hopelessness I flung myself at her feet,
and implored her to keep true to me and wait, and she, poor maid, to her
undoing swore that she would. You are yourself a lover, Kenneth, and you
may guess something of the impatience that anon beset me. How could I
wait? I asked her this.

“Some fifty miles from the castle there was a little farm, in the very
heart of the country, which had been left me by a sister of my mother’s.
Thither I now implored her to repair with me. I would find a priest to
wed us, and there we should live a while in happiness, in solitude, and
in love. An alluring picture did I draw with all a lover’s cunning, and
to the charms of it she fell a victim. We fled three days later.

“We were wed in the village that pays allegiance to the castle,
and thereafter we travelled swiftly and undisturbed to that little
homestead. There in solitude, with but two servants--a man and a maid
whom I could trust--we lived and loved, and for a season, brief as all
happiness is doomed to be, we were happy. Her cousins had no knowledge
of that farm of mine, and though they searched the country for many
a mile around, they searched in vain. My father knew--as I learned
afterwards--but deeming that what was done might not be undone, he held
his peace. In the following spring a babe was born to us, and our bliss
made heaven of that cottage.

“Twas a month or so after the birth of our child that the blow
descended. I was away, enjoying alone the pleasures of the chase; my man
was gone a journey to the nearest town, whence he would not return until
the morrow. Oft have I cursed the folly that led me to take my gun and
go forth into the woods, leaving no protector for my wife but one weak
woman.

“I returned earlier than I had thought to do, led mayhap by some angel
that sought to have me back in time. But I came too late. At my gate
I found two freshly ridden horses tethered, and it was with a dull
foreboding in my heart that I sprang through the open door. Within--O
God, the anguish of it!--stretched on the floor I beheld my love, a
gaping sword-wound in her side, and the ground all bloody about her.
For a moment I stood dumb in the spell of that horror, then a movement
beyond, against the wall, aroused me, and I beheld her murderers
cowering there, one with a naked sword in his hand.

“In that fell hour, Kenneth, my whole nature changed, and one who had
ever been gentle was transformed into the violent, passionate man that
you have known. As my eye encountered then her cousins, my blood seemed
on the instant curdled in my veins; my teeth were set hard; my nerves
and sinews knotted; my hands instinctively shifted to the barrel of my
fowling-piece and clutched it with the fierceness that was in me--the
fierceness of the beast about to spring upon those that have brought it
to bay.

“For a moment I stood swaying there, my eyes upon them, and holding
their craven glances fascinated. Then with a roar I leapt forward, the
stock of my fowling-piece swung high above my head. And, as God lives,
Kenneth, I had sent them straight to hell ere they could have raised a
hand or made a cry to stay me. But as I sprang my foot slipped in the
blood of my beloved, and in my fall I came close to her where she lay.
The fowling-piece had escaped my grasp and crashed against the wall.

“I scarce knew what I did, but as I lay beside her it came to me that I
did not wish to rise again--that already I had lived overlong. It came
to me that, seeing me fallen, haply those cowards would seize the chance
to make an end of me as I lay. I wished it so in that moment’s frenzy,
for I made no attempt to rise or to defend myself; instead I set my arms
about my poor murdered love, and against her cold cheek I set my face
that was well-nigh as cold.

“And thus I lay, nor did they keep me long. A sword was passed through
me from back to breast, whilst he who did it cursed me with a foul
oath. The room grew dim; methought it swayed and that the walls were
tottering; there was a buzz of sound in my ears, then a piercing cry in
a baby voice. At the sound of it I vaguely wished for the strength to
rise. As in the distance, I heard one of those butchers cry, “Haste,
man; slit me that squalling bastard’s throat!” And then I must have
swooned.”

Kenneth shuddered.

“My God, how horrible!” he cried. “But you were avenged, Sir Crispin,”
 he added eagerly; “you were avenged?”

“When I regained consciousness,” Crispin continued, as if he had not
heard Kenneth’s exclamation, “the cottage was in flames, set alight by
them to burn the evidence of their foul deed. What I did I know not. I
have tried to urge my memory along from the point of my awakening, but
in vain. By what miracle I crawled forth, I cannot tell; but in the
morning I was found by my man lying prone in the garden, half a dozen
paces from the blackened ruins of the cottage, as near death as man may
go and live.

“God willed that I should not die, but it was close upon a year before
I was restored to any semblance of my former self, and then I was so
changed that I was hardly to be recognized as that same joyous, vigorous
lad, who had set out, fowling-piece on shoulder, one fine morning a year
agone. There was grey in my hair, as much as there is now, though I was
but twenty-one; my face was seared and marked as that of a man who had
lived twice my years. It was to my faithful servant that I owed my life,
though I ask myself to-night whether I have cause for gratitude towards
him on that score.

“So soon as I had regained sufficient strength, I went secretly home,
wishing that men might continue to believe me dead. My father I found
much aged by grief, but he was kind and tender with me beyond all words.
From him I had it that our enemies were gone to France; it would seem
they had thought it better to remain absent for a while. He had learnt
that they were in Paris, and hither I determined forthwith to follow
them. Vainly did my father remonstrate with me; vainly did he urge me
rather: to bear my story to the King at Whitehall and seek for justice.
I had been well advised had I obeyed this counsel, but I burned to take
my vengeance with my own hands, and with this purpose I repaired to
France.

“Two nights after my arrival in Paris it was my ill-fortune to be
embroiled in a rough-and-tumble in the streets, and by an ill-chance I
killed a man--the first was he of several that I have sent whither I
am going to-morrow. The affair was like to have cost me my life, but by
another of those miracles which have prolonged it, I was sent instead
to the galleys on the Mediterranean. It was only wanting that, after all
that already I had endured, I should become a galley-slave!

“For twelve long years I toiled at an oar, and waited. If I lived I
would return to England; and if I returned, woe unto those that had
wrecked my life--my body and my soul. I did live, and I did return. The
Civil War had broken out, and I came to throw my sword into the balance
on the King’s side: I came, too, to be avenged, but that would wait.

“Meanwhile, the score had grown heavier. I went home to find the castle
in usurping hands--in the hands of my enemies. My father was dead; he
died a few months after I had gone to France; and those murderers had
advanced a claim that through my marriage with their cousin, since dead,
and through my own death, there being no next of kin, they were
the heirs-at-law. The Parliament allowed their claim, and they were
installed. But when I came they were away, following the fortunes of the
Parliament that had served them so well. And so I determined to let my
vengeance wait until the war were ended and the Parliament destroyed. In
a hundred engagements did I distinguish myself by my recklessness even
as at other seasons I distinguished myself by my debaucheries.

“Ah, Kenneth, you have been hard upon me for my vices, for my abuses of
the cup, and all the rest. But can you be hard upon me still, knowing
what I had suffered, and what a weight of misery I bore with me? I,
whose life was wrecked beyond salvation; who only lived that I might
slit the throats of those that had so irreparably wronged me. Think you
still that it was so vicious a thing, so unpardonable an offence to seek
the blessed nepenthe of the wine-cup, the heavenly forgetfulness that
its abuses brought me? Is it strange that I became known as the wildest
tantivy boy that rode with the King? What else had I?”

“In all truth your trials were sore,” said the lad in a voice that
contained a note of sympathy. And yet there was a certain restraint that
caught the Tavern Knight’s ear. He turned his head and bent his eyes in
the lad’s direction, but it was quite dark by now, and he failed to make
out his companion’s face.

“My tale is told, Kenneth. The rest you can guess. The King did not
prevail and I was forced to fly from England with those others who
escaped from the butchers that had made a martyr of Charles. I took
service in France under the great Conde, and I saw some mighty battles.
At length came the council of Breda and the invitation to Charles the
Second to receive the crown of Scotland. I set out again to follow his
fortunes as I had followed his father’s, realizing that by so doing I
followed my own, and that did he prevail I should have the redress and
vengeance so long awaited. To-day has dashed my last hope; to-morrow
at this hour it will not signify. And yet much would I give to have my
fingers on the throats of those two hounds before the hangman’s close
around my own.”

There was a spell of silence as the two men sat, both breathing heavily
in the gloom that enveloped them. At length:

“You have heard my story, Kenneth,” said Crispin.

“I have heard, Sir Crispin, and God knows I pity you.”

That was all, and Galliard felt that it was not enough. He had lacerated
his soul with those grim memories to earn a yet kinder word. He had
looked even to hear the lad suing for pardon for the harsh opinions
wherein he had held him. Strange was this yearning of his for the boy’s
sympathy. He who for twenty years had gone unloving and unloved, sought
now in his extremity affection from a fellow-man.

And so in the gloom he waited for a kinder word that came not; then--so
urgent was his need--he set himself to beg it.

“Can you not understand now, Kenneth, how I came to fall so low? Can you
not understand this dissoluteness of mine, which led them to dub me the
Tavern Knight after the King conferred upon me the honour of knighthood
for that stand of mine in Fifeshire? You must understand, Kenneth,”
 he insisted almost piteously, “and knowing all, you must judge me more
mercifully than hitherto.”

“It is not mine to judge, Sir Crispin. I pity you with all my heart,”
 the lad replied, not ungently.

Still the knight was dissatisfied. “Yours it is to judge as every man
may judge his fellowman. You mean it is not yours to sentence. But if
yours it were, Kenneth, what then?”

The lad paused a moment ere he answered. His bigoted Presbyterian
training was strong within him, and although, as he said, he pitied
Galliard, yet to him whose mind was stuffed with life’s precepts, and
who knew naught of the trials it brings to some and the temptations to
which they were not human did they not succumb--it seemed that vice was
not to be excused by misfortune. Out of mercy then he paused, and for
a moment he had it even in his mind to cheer his fellow-captive with a
lie. Then, remembering that he was to die upon the morrow, and that
at such a time it was not well to risk the perdition of his soul by an
untruth, however merciful, he answered slowly:

“Were I to judge you, since you ask me, sir, I should be merciful
because of your misfortunes. And yet, Sir Crispin, your profligacy and
the evil you have wrought in life must weigh heavily against you.” Had
this immaculate bigot, this churlish milksop been as candid with himself
as he was with Crispin, he must have recognized that it was mainly
Crispin’s offences towards himself that his mind now dwelt on in deeper
rancour than became one so well acquainted with the Lord’s Prayer.

“You had not cause enough,” he added impressively, “to defile your soul
and risk its eternal damnation because the evil of others had wrecked
your life.”

Crispin drew breath with the sharp hiss of one in pain, and for a moment
after all was still. Then a bitter laugh broke from him.

“Bravely answered, reverend sir,” he cried with biting scorn. “I marvel
only that you left your pulpit to gird on a sword; that you doffed your
cassock to don a cuirass. Here is a text for you who deal in texts, my
brave Jack Presbyter--‘Judge you your neighbour as you would yourself
be judged; be merciful as you would hope for mercy.’ Chew you the cud of
that until the hangman’s coming in the morning. Good night to you.”

And throwing himself back upon the bed, Crispin sought comfort in sleep.
His limbs were heavy and his heart was sick.

“You misapprehend me, Sir Crispin,” cried the lad, stung almost to shame
by Galliard’s reproach, and also mayhap into some fear that hereafter
he should find little mercy for his own lack of it towards a poor
fellow-sinner. “I spoke not as I would judge, but as the Church
teaches.”

“If the Church teaches no better I rejoice that I was no churchman,”
 grunted Crispin.

“For myself,” the lad pursued, heeding not the irreverent interruption,
“as I have said, I pity you with all my heart. More than that, so deeply
do I feel, so great a loathing and indignation has your story sown in
my heart, that were our liberty now restored us I would willingly join
hands with you in wreaking vengeance on these evildoers.”

Sir Crispin laughed. He judged the tone rather than the words, and it
rang hollow.

“Where are your wits, O casuist?” he cried mockingly. “Where are your
doctrines? ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord!’ Pah!”

And with that final ejaculation, pregnant with contempt and bitterness,
he composed himself to sleep.

He was accursed he told himself. He must die alone, as he had lived.



CHAPTER VIII. THE TWISTED BAR


Nature asserted herself, and, despite his condition, Crispin slept.
Kenneth sat huddled on his chair, and in awe and amazement he listened
to his companion’s regular breathing. He had not Galliard’s nerves nor
Galliard’s indifference to death, so that neither could he follow his
example, nor yet so much as realize how one should slumber upon the very
brink of eternity.

For a moment his wonder stood perilously near to admiration; then his
religious training swayed him, and his righteousness almost drew from
him a contempt of this man’s apathy. There was much of the Pharisee’s
attitude towards the publican in his mood.

Anon that regular breathing grew irritating to him; it drew so marked a
contrast ‘twixt Crispin’s frame of mind and his own. Whilst Crispin had
related his story, the interest it awakened had served to banish the
spectre of fear which the thought of the morrow conjured up. Now that
Crispin was silent and asleep, that spectre returned, and the lad grew
numb and sick with the horror of his position.

Thought followed thought as he sat huddled there with sunken head and
hands clasped tight between his knees, and they were mostly of his dull
uneventful days in Scotland, and ever and anon of Cynthia, his beloved.
Would she hear of his end? Would she weep for him?--as though it
mattered! And every train of thought that he embarked upon brought him
to the same issue--to-morrow! Shuddering he would clench his hands still
tighter, and the perspiration would stand’ out in beads upon his callow
brow.

At length he flung himself upon his knees to address not so much
a prayer as a maudlin grievance to his Creator. He felt himself a
craven--doubly so by virtue of the peaceful breathing of that sinner he
despised--and he told himself that it was not in fear a gentleman should
meet his end.

“But I shall be brave to-morrow. I shall be brave,” he muttered, and
knew not that it was vanity begat the thought, and vanity that might
uphold him on the morrow when there were others by, however broken might
be his spirit now.

Meanwhile Crispin slept. When he awakened the light of a lanthorn was on
his face, and holding it stood beside him a tall black figure in a cloak
and a slouched hat whose broad brim left the features unrevealed.

Still half asleep, and blinking like an owl, he sat up.

“I have always held burnt sack to be well enough, but--”

He stopped short, fully awake at last, and, suddenly remembering his
condition and thinking they were come for him, he drew a sharp breath
and in a voice as indifferent as he could make it:

“What’s o’clock?” he asked.

“Past midnight, miserable wretch,” was the answer delivered in a deep
droning voice. “Hast entered upon thy last day of life--a day whose sun
thou’lt never see. But five hours more are left thee.”

“And it is to tell me this that you have awakened me?” demanded Galliard
in such a voice that he of the cloak recoiled a step, as if he thought
a blow must follow. “Out on you for an unmannerly cur to break upon a
gentleman’s repose.”

“I come,” returned the other in his droning voice, “to call upon thee to
repent.”

“Plague me not,” answered Crispin, with a yawn. “I would sleep.”

“Soundly enough shalt thou sleep in a few hours’ time. Bethink thee,
miserable sinner, of thy soul.”

“Sir,” cried the Tavern Knight, “I am a man of marvellous short
endurance. But mark you this your ways to heaven are not my ways.
Indeed, if heaven be peopled by such croaking things as you, I shall be
thankful to escape it. So go, my friend, ere I become discourteous.”

The minister stood in silence for a moment; then setting his lanthorn
upon the table, he raised his hands and eyes towards the low ceiling of
the chamber.

“Vouchsafe, O Lord,” he prayed, “to touch yet the callous heart of this
obdurate, incorrigible sinner, this wicked, perjured and blasphemous
malignant, whose--”

He got no further. Crispin was upon his feet, his harsh countenance
thrust into the very face of the minister; his eyes ablaze.

“Out!” he thundered, pointing to the door. “Out! Begone! I would not
be guilty at the end of my life of striking a man in petticoats. But go
whilst I can bethink me of it! Go--take your prayers to hell.”

The minister fell back before that blaze of passion. For a second he
appeared to hesitate, then he turned towards Kenneth, who stood behind
in silence. But the lad’s Presbyterian rearing had taught him to hate a
sectarian as he would a papist or as he would the devil, and he did no
more than echo Galliard’s words--though in a gentler key.

“I pray you go,” he said. “But if you would perform an act of charity,
leave your lanthorn. It will be dark enough hereafter.”

The minister looked keenly at the boy, and won over by the humility
of his tone, he set the lanthorn on the table. Then moving towards the
door, he stopped and addressed himself to Crispin.

“I go since you oppose with violence my ministrations. But I shall pray
for you, and I will return anon, when perchance your heart shall be
softened by the near imminence of your end.”

“Sir,” quoth Crispin wearily, “you would outtalk a woman.”

“I’ve done, I’ve done,” he cried in trepidation, making shift to depart.
On the threshold he paused again. “I leave you the lanthorn,” he
said. “May it light you to a godlier frame of mind. I shall return at
daybreak.” And with that he went.

Crispin yawned noisily when he was gone, and stretched himself. Then
pointing to the pallet:

“Come, lad, ‘tis your turn,” said he.

Kenneth shivered. “I could not sleep,” he cried. “I could not.”

“As you will.” And shrugging his shoulders, Crispin sat down on the edge
of the bed.

“For cold comforters commend me to these cropeared cuckolds,” he
grumbled. “They are all thought for a man’s soul, but for his body they
care nothing. Here am I who for the last ten hours have had neither meat
nor drink. Not that I mind the meat so much, but, ‘slife, my throat is
dry as one of their sermons, and I would cheerfully give four of my
five hours of life for a posset of sack. A paltry lot are they, Kenneth,
holding that because a man must die at dawn he need not sup to-night.
Heigho! Some liar hath said that he who sleeps dines, and if I sleep
perchance I shall forget my thirst.”

He stretched himself upon the bed, and presently he slept again.

It was Kenneth who next awakened him. He opened his eyes to find the lad
shivering as with an ague. His face was ashen.

“Now, what’s amiss? Oddslife, what ails you?” he cried.

“Is there no way, Sir Crispin? Is there naught you can do?” wailed the
youth.

Instantly Galliard sat up.

“Poor lad, does the thought of the rope affright you?”

Kenneth bowed his head in silence.

“Tis a scurvy death, I own. Look you, Kenneth, there is a dagger in my
boot. If you would rather have cold steel, ‘tis done. It is the last
service I may render you, and I’ll be as gentle as a mistress. Just
there, over the heart, and you’ll know no more until you are in
Paradise.”

Turning down the leather of his right boot, he thrust his hand down the
side of his leg. But Kenneth sprang back with a cry.

“No, no,” he cried, covering his face with his hands. “Not that!
You don’t understand. It is death itself I would cheat. What odds to
exchange one form for another? Is there no way out of this? Is there no
way, Sir Crispin?” he demanded with clenched hands.

“The approach of death makes you maudlin, sir,” quoth the other, in whom
this pitiful show of fear produced a profound disgust. “Is there no way;
say you? There is the window, but ‘tis seventy feet above the river; and
there is the door, but it is locked, and there is a sentry on the other
side.”

“I might have known it. I might have known that you would mock me. What
is death to you, to whom life offers nothing? For you the prospect of it
has no terrors. But for me--bethink you, sir, I am scarce eighteen years
of age,” he added brokenly, “and life was full of promise for me. O God,
pity me!”

“True, lad, true,” the knight returned in softened tones. “I had
forgotten that death is not to you the blessed release that it is to me.
And yet, and yet,” he mused, “do I not die leaving a task unfulfilled--a
task of vengeance? And by my soul, I know no greater spur to make a man
cling to life. Ah,” he sighed wistfully, “if indeed I could find a way.”

“Think, Sir Crispin, think,” cried the boy feverishly.

“To what purpose? There is the window. But even if the bars were moved,
which I see no manner of accomplishing, the drop to the river is seventy
feet at least. I measured it with my eyes when first we entered here. We
have no rope. Your cloak rent in two and the pieces tied together would
scarce yield us ten feet. Would you care to jump the remaining sixty?”

At the very thought of it the lad trembled, noting which Sir Crispin
laughed softly.

“There. And yet, boy, it would be taking a risk which if successful
would mean life--if otherwise, a speedier end than even the rope will
afford you. Oddslife,” he cried, suddenly springing to his feet, and
seizing the lanthorn. “Let us look at these bars.”

He stepped across to the window, and held the light so that its rays
fell full upon the base of the vertical iron that barred the square.

“It is much worn by rust, Kenneth,” he muttered. “The removal of this
single piece of iron,” and he touched the lower arm of the cross,
“should afford us passage. Who knows? Hum!”

He walked back to the table and set the lanthorn down. In a tremble,
Kenneth watched his every movement, but spoke no word.

“He who throws a main,” said Galliard, “must set a stake upon the board.
I set my life--a stake that is already forfeit--and I throw for liberty.
If I win, I win all; if I lose, I lose naught. ‘Slife, I have thrown
many a main with Fate, but never one wherein the odds were more
generous. Come, Kenneth, it is the only way, and we will attempt it if
we can but move the bar.”

“You mean to leap?” gasped the lad.

“Into the river. It is the only way.”

“O God, I dare not. It is a fearsome drop.”

“Longer, I confess, than they’ll give you in an hour’s time, if you
remain; but it may lead elsewhere.”

The boy’s mouth was parched. His eyes burned in their sockets, and yet
his limbs shook with cold--but not the cold of that September night.

“I’ll try it,” he muttered with a gulp. Then suddenly clutching
Galliard’s arm, he pointed to the window.

“What ails you now?” quoth Crispin testily.

“The dawn, Sir Crispin. The dawn.”

Crispin looked, and there, like a gash in the blackness of the heavens,
he beheld a streak of grey.

“Quick, Sir Crispin; there is no time to lose. The minister said he
would return at daybreak.”

“Let him come,” answered Galliard grimly, as he moved towards the
casement.

He gripped the lower bar with his lean, sinewy hands, and setting his
knee against the masonry beneath it, he exerted the whole of his huge
strength--that awful strength acquired during those years of toil as a
galley-slave, which even his debaucheries had not undermined. He felt
his sinews straining until it seemed that they must crack; the sweat
stood out upon his brow; his breathing grew stertorous.

“It gives,” he panted at last. “It gives.”

He paused in his efforts, and withdrew his hands.

“I must breathe a while. One other effort such as that, and it is done.
‘Fore George,” he laughed, “it is the first time water has stood my
friend, for the rains have sadly rusted that iron.”

Without, their sentry was pacing before the door; his steps came nearer,
passed, and receded; turned, came nigh again, and again passed on.
As once more they grew faint, Crispin seized the bar and renewed his
attempt. This time it was easier. Gradually it ceded to the strain
Galliard set upon it.

Nearer came the sentry’s footsteps, but they went unheeded by him who
toiled, and by him who watched with bated breath and beating heart. He
felt it giving--giving--giving. Crack!

With a report that rang through the room like a pistol shot, it broke
off in its socket. Both men caught their breath, and stood for a second
crouching, with straining ears. The sentry had stopped at their door.

Galliard was a man of quick action, swift to think, and as swift to
execute the thought. To thrust Kenneth into a corner, to extinguish the
light, and to fling himself upon the bed was all the work of an instant.

The key grated in the lock, and Crispin answered it with a resounding
snore. The door opened, and on the threshold stood the Roundhead
trooper, holding aloft a lanthorn whose rays were flashed back by his
polished cuirass. He beheld Crispin on the bed with closed eyes and open
mouth, and he heard his reassuring and melodious snore. He saw Kenneth
seated peacefully upon the floor, with his back against the wall, and
for a moment he was puzzled.

“Heard you aught?” he asked.

“Aye,” answered Kenneth, in a strangled voice, “I heard something like a
shot out there.”

The gesture with which he accompanied the words was fatal. Instinctively
he had jerked his thumb towards the window, thereby drawing the
soldier’s eyes in that direction. The fellow’s glance fell upon the
twisted bar, and a sharp exclamation of surprise escaped him.

Had he been aught but a fool he must have guessed at once how it came
so, and having guessed it, he must have thought twice ere he
ventured within reach of a man who could so handle iron. But he was a
slow-reasoning clod, and so far, thought had not yet taken the place of
surprise. He stepped into, the chamber and across to the window, that he
might more closely view that broken bar.

With eyes that were full of terror and despair, Kenneth watched him;
their last hope had failed them. Then, as he looked, it seemed to him
that in one great leap from his recumbent position on the bed, Crispin
had fallen upon the soldier.

The lanthorn was dashed from the fellow’s hand, and rolled to Kenneth’s
feet. The fellow had begun’ a cry, which broke off suddenly into a
gurgle as Galliard’s fingers closed about his windpipe. He was a big
fellow, and in his mad struggles he carried: Crispin hither and thither
about the room. Together: they hurtled against the table, which would
have: gone crashing over had not Kenneth caught it and drawn it softly
to the wall.

Both men were now upon the bed. Crispin had guessed the soldier’s intent
to fling himself upon the ground so that the ring of his armour might
be heard, and perchance bring others to his aid. To avoid this, Galliard
had swung him towards the bed, and hurled him on to it. There he pinned
him with his knee, and with his fingers he gripped the Roundhead’s
throat, pressing the apple inwards with his thumb.

“The door, Kenneth!” he commanded, in a whisper. “Close the door!”

Vain were the trooper’s struggles to free himself from that throttling
grip. Already his efforts grew his face was purple; his veins stood out
in ropes upon his brow till they seemed upon the point of bursting; his
eyes protruded like a lobster’s and there was a horrible grin upon his
mouth; still his heels beat the bed, and still he struggled. With his
fingers he plucked madly at the throttling hands on his neck, and
tore at them with his nails until the blood streamed from them. Still
Galliard held him firmly, and with a smile--a diabolical smile it seemed
to the poor, half-strangled wretch--he gazed upon his choking victim.

“Someone comes!” gasped Kenneth suddenly. “Someone comes, Sir Crispin!”
 he repeated, shaking his hands in a frenzy.

Galliard listened. Steps were approaching. The soldier heard them also,
and renewed his efforts. Then Crispin spoke.

“Why stand you there like a fool?” he growled. “Quench the light--stay,
we may want it! Cast your cloak over it! Quick, man, quick!”

The steps came nearer. The lad had obeyed him, and they were in
darkness.

“Stand by the door,” whispered Crispin. “Fall upon him as he enters,
and see that no cry escapes him. Take him by the throat, and as you love
your life, do not let him get away.”

The footsteps halted. Kenneth crawled softly to his post. The soldier’s
struggles grew of a sudden still, and Crispin released his throat at
last. Then calmly drawing the fellow’s dagger, he felt for the straps
of his cuirass, and these he proceeded to cut. As he did so the door was
opened.

By the light of the lamp burning in the passage they beheld silhouetted
upon the threshold a black figure crowned by a steeple hat. Then the
droning voice of the Puritan minister greeted them.

“Your hour is at hand!” he announced.

“Is it time?” asked Galliard from the bed. And as he put the question he
softly thrust aside the trooper’s breastplate, and set his hand to the
fellow’s heart. It still beat faintly.

“In another hour they will come for you,” answered the minister. And
Crispin marvelled anxiously what Kenneth was about. “Repent then,
miserable sinners, whilst yet--”

He broke off abruptly, awaking out of his religious zeal to a sense
of strangeness at the darkness and the absence of the sentry, which
hitherto he had not remarked.

“What hath--” he began. Then Galliard heard a gasp, followed by the
noise of a fall, and two struggling men came rolling across the chamber
floor.

“Bravely done, boy!” he cried, almost mirthfully. “Cling to him,
Kenneth; cling to him a second yet!”

He leapt from the bed, and guided by the faint light coming through the
door, he sprang across the intervening space and softly closed it.
Then he groped his way along the wall to the spot where he had seen the
lanthorn stand when Kenneth had flung his cloak over it. As he went, the
two striving men came up against him.

“Hold fast, lad,” he cried, encouraging Kenneth, “hold him yet a moment,
and I will relieve you!”

He reached the lanthorn at last, and pulling aside the cloak, he lifted
the light and set it upon the table.



CHAPTER IX. THE BARGAIN


By the lanthorn’s yellow glare Crispin beheld the two men-a mass of
writhing bodies and a bunch of waving legs--upon the ground. Kenneth,
who was uppermost, clung purposefully to the parson’s throat. The
faces of both were alike distorted, but whilst the lad’s breath came in
gasping hisses, the other’s came not at all.

Going over to the bed, Crispin drew the unconscious trooper’s
tuck-sword. He paused for a moment to bend over the man’s face; his
breath came faintly, and Crispin knew that ere many moments were sped
he would regain consciousness. He smiled grimly to see how well he had
performed his work of suffocation without yet utterly destroying life.

Sword in hand, he returned to Kenneth and the parson. The Puritan’s
struggles were already becoming mere spasmodic twitchings; his face was
as ghastly as the trooper’s had been a while ago.

“Release him, Kenneth,” said Crispin shortly.

“He struggles still.”

“Release him, I say,” Galliard repeated, and stooping he caught the
lad’s wrist and compelled him to abandon his hold.

“He will cry out,” exclaimed Kenneth, in apprehension.

“Not he,” laughed Crispin. “Leastways, not yet awhile. Observe the
wretch.”

With mouth wide agape, the minister lay gasping like a fish newly
taken from the water. Even now that his throat was free he appeared to
struggle for a moment before he could draw breath. Then he took it in
panting gulps until it seemed that he must choke in his gluttony of air.

“Fore George,” quoth Crispin, “I was no more than in time. Another
second, and we should have had him, too, unconscious. There, he is
recovering.”

The blood was receding from the swollen veins of the parson’s head, and
his cheeks were paling to their normal hue. Anon they went yet paler
than their wont, as Galliard rested the point of his sword against the
fellow’s neck.

“Make sound or movement,” said Crispin coldly, “and I’ll pin you to the
floor like a beetle. Obey me, and no harm shall come to you.”

“I will obey you,” the fellow answered, in a wheezing whisper. “I swear
I will. But of your charity, good sir, I beseech you remove your sword.
Your hand might slip, sir,” he whined, a wild terror in his eyes.

Where now was the deep bass of his whilom accents? Where now the
grotesque majesty of his bearing, and the impressive gestures that
erstwhile had accompanied his words of denunciation?

“Your hand might slip, sir,” he whined again.

“It might--and, by Gad, it shall if I hear more from you. So that you
are discreet and obedient, have no fear of my hand.” Then, still keeping
his eye upon the fellow: “Kenneth,” he said, “attend to the crop-ear
yonder, he will be recovering. Truss him with the bedclothes, and gag
him with his scarf. See to it, Kenneth, and do it well, but leave his
nostrils free that he may breathe.”

Kenneth carried out Galliard’s orders swiftly and effectively, what time
Crispin remained standing over the recumbent minister. At length, when
Kenneth announced that it was done, he bade the Puritan rise.

“But have a care,” he added, “or you shall taste the joys of the
Paradise you preach of. Come, sir parson; afoot!”

A prey to a fear that compelled unquestioning obedience, the fellow rose
with alacrity.

“Stand there, sir. So,” commanded Crispin, his point within an inch of
the man’s Geneva bands. “Take your kerchief, Kenneth, and pinion his
wrists behind him.”

That done, Crispin bade the lad unbuckle and remove the parson’s belt.
Next he ordered that man of texts to be seated upon their only chair,
and with that same belt he commanded Kenneth to strap him to it. When
at length the Puritan was safely bound, Crispin lowered his rapier, and
seated himself upon the table edge beside him.

“Now, sir parson,” quoth he, “let us talk a while. At your first outcry
I shall hurry you into that future world whither it is your mission to
guide the souls of others. Maybe you’ll find it a better world to preach
of than to inhabit, and so, for your own sake, I make no doubt you
will obey me. To your honour, to your good sense and a parson’s natural
horror of a lie, I look for truth in answer to what questions I may
set you. Should I find you deceiving me, sir, I shall see that your
falsehood overtakes you.” And eloquently raising his blade, he intimated
the exact course he would adopt. “Now, sir, attend to me. How soon are
our friends likely to discover this topsy-turvydom?”

“When they come for you,” answered the parson meekly.

“And how soon, O prophet, will they come?”

“In an hour’s time, or thereabout,” replied the Puritan, glancing
towards the window as he spoke. Galliard followed his glance, and
observed that the light was growing perceptibly stronger.

“Aye,” he commented, “in an hour’s time there should be light enough to
hang us by. Is there no chance of anyone coming sooner?”

“None that I can imagine. The only other occupants of the house are a
party of half a dozen troopers in the guardroom below.”

“Where is the Lord General?”

“Away--I know not where. But he will be here at sunrise.”

“And the sentry that was at our door--is he not to a changed ‘twixt this
and hanging-time?”

“I cannot say for sure, but I think not. The guard was relieved just
before I came.”

“And the men in the guardroom--answer me truthfully, O Elijah--what
manner of watch are they keeping?”

“Alas, sir, they have drunk enough this night to put a rakehelly
Cavalier to shame. I was but exhorting them.”

When Kenneth had removed the Puritan’s girdle, a small Bible--such as
men of his calling were wont to carry--had dropped out. This Kenneth had
placed upon the table. Galliard now took it up, and, holding it before
the Puritan’s eyes, he watched him narrowly the while.

“Will you swear by this book that you have answered nothing but the
truth?”

Without a moment’s hesitation the parson pledged his oath, that, to the
best of his belief, he had answered accurately.

“That is well, sir. And now, though it grieve me to cause you some
slight discomfort, I must ensure your silence, my friend.”

And, placing his sword upon the table, he passed behind the Puritan, and
taking the man’s own scarf, he effectively gagged him with it.

“Now, Kenneth,” said he, turning to the lad. Then he stopped abruptly as
if smitten by a sudden thought. Presently--“Kenneth,” he continued in a
different tone, “a while ago I mind me you said that were your liberty
restored you, you would join hands with me in punishing the evildoers
who wrecked my life.”

“I did, Sir Crispin.”

For a moment the knight paused. It was a vile thing that he was about to
do, he told himself, and as he realized how vile, his impulse was to say
no more; to abandon the suddenly formed project and to trust to his own
unaided wits and hands. But as again he thought of the vast use this lad
would be to him--this lad who was the betrothed of Cynthia Ashburn--he
saw that the matter was not one hastily to be judged and dismissed.
Carefully he weighed it in the balance of his mind. On the one hand was
the knowledge that did they succeed in making good their escape,
Kenneth would naturally fly for shelter to his friends the Ashburns--the
usurpers of Castle Marleigh. What then more natural than his taking with
him the man who had helped him to escape, and who shared his own danger
of recapture? And with so plausible a motive for admission to Castle
Marleigh, how easy would not his vengeance become? He might at first
wean himself into their good graces, and afterwards--

Before his mental eyes there unfolded itself the vista of a great
revenge; one that should be worthy of him, and commensurate with the
foul deed that called for it.

In the other scale the treacherous flavour of this method weighed
heavily. He proposed to bind the lad to a promise, the shape of whose
fulfilment he would withhold--a promise the lad would readily give, and
yet, one that he must sooner die than enter into, did he but know what
manner of fulfilment would be exacted. It amounted to betraying the lad
into a betrayal of his friends--the people of his future wife. Whatever
the issue for Crispin, ‘twas odds Kenneth’s prospect of wedding this
Cynthia would be blighted for all time by the action into which Galliard
proposed to thrust him all unconscious.

So stood the case in Galliard’s mind, and the scales fell now on one
side, now on the other. But against his scruples rose the memory of the
treatment which the lad had meted out to him that night; the harshness
of the boy’s judgment; the irrevocable contempt wherein he had clearly
seen that he was held by this fatuous milksop. All this aroused his
rancour now, and steeled his heart against the voice of honour. What
was this boy to him, he asked himself, that he should forego for him the
accomplishing of his designs? How had this lad earned any consideration
from him? What did he owe him? Naught! Still, he would not decide in
haste.

It was characteristic of the man whom Kenneth held to be destitute of
all honourable principles, to stand thus in the midst of perils, when
every second that sped lessened their chances of escape, turning over
in his mind calmly and collectedly a point of conduct. It was in his
passions only that Crispin was ungovernable, in violence only that he
was swift--in all things else was he deliberate.

Of this Kenneth had now a proof that set him quaking with impatient
fear. Anxiously, his hands clenched and his face pale, he watched his
companion, who stood with brows knit in thought, and his grey
eyes staring at the ground. At length he could brook that, to him,
incomprehensible and mad delay no longer.

“Sir Crispin,” he whispered, plucking at his sleeve; “Sir Crispin.”

The knight flashed him a glance that was almost of anger. Then the fire
died out of his eyes; he sighed and spoke. In that second’s glance
he had seen the lad’s face; the fear and impatience written on it had
disgusted him, and caused the scales to fall suddenly and definitely
against the boy.

“I was thinking how it might be accomplished,” he said.

“There is but one way,” cried the lad.

“On the contrary, there are two, and I wish to choose carefully.”

“If you delay your choice much longer, none will be left you,” cried
Kenneth impatiently.

Noting the lad’s growing fears, and resolved now upon his course,
Galliard set himself to play upon them until terror should render the
boy as wax in his hands.

“There speaks your callow inexperience,” said he, with a pitying smile.
“When you shall have lived as long as I have done, and endured as much;
when you shall have set your wits to the saving of your life as often
as have I--you will have learnt that haste is fatal to all enterprises.
Failure means the forfeiture of something; tonight it would mean the
forfeiture of our lives, and it were a pity to let such good efforts as
these”--and with a wave of the hand he indicated their two captors--“go
wasted.”

“Sir,” exclaimed Kenneth, well-nigh beside himself, “if you come not
with me, I go alone!”

“Whither?” asked Crispin dryly.

“Out of this.”

Galliard bowed slightly.

“Fare you well, sir. I’ll not detain you. Your way is clear, and it is
for you to choose between the door and the window.”

And with that Crispin turned his back upon his companion and crossed to
the bed, where the trooper lay glaring in mute anger. He stooped,
and unbuckling the soldier’s swordbelt--to which the scabbard was
attached--he girt himself with it. Without raising his eyes, and keeping
his back to Kenneth, who stood between him and the door, he went next to
the table, and, taking up the sword that he had left there, he restored
it to the sheath. As the hilt clicked against the mouth of the scabbard:

“Come, Sir Crispin!” cried the lad. “Are you ready?”

Galliard wheeled sharply round.

“How? Not gone yet?” said he sardonically.

“I dare not,” the lad confessed. “I dare not go alone.”

Galliard laughed softly; then suddenly waxed grave.

“Ere we go, Master Kenneth, I would again remind you of your assurance
that were we to regain our liberty you would aid me in the task of
vengeance that lies before me.”

“Once already have I answered you that it is so.”

“And pray, are you still of the same mind?”

“I am, I am! Anything, Sir Crispin; anything so that you come away!”

“Not so fast, Kenneth. The promise that I shall ask of you is not to
be so lightly given. If we escape I may fairly claim to have saved your
life, ‘twixt what I have done and what I may yet do. Is it not so?”

“Oh, I acknowledge it!”

“Then, sir, in payment I shall expect your aid hereafter to help me in
that which I must accomplish, that which the hope of accomplishing is
the only spur to my own escape.”

“You have my promise!” cried the lad.

“Do not give it lightly, Kenneth,” said Crispin gravely. “It may cause
you much discomfort, and may be fraught with danger even to your life.”

“I promise.”

Galliard bowed his head; then, turning, he took the Bible from the
table.

“With your hand upon this book, by your honour, your faith, and your
every hope of salvation, swear that if I bear you alive out of this
house you will devote yourself to me and to my task of vengeance until
it shall be accomplished or until I perish; swear that you will set
aside all personal matters and inclinations of your own, to serve me
when I shall call upon you. Swear that, and, in return, I will give
my life if need be to save yours to-night, in which case you will be
released from your oath without more ado.”

The lad paused a moment. Crispin was so impressive, the oath he imposed
so solemn, that for an instant the boy hesitated. His cautious, timid
nature whispered to him that perchance he should know more of this
matter ere he bound himself so irrevocably. But Crispin, noting the
hesitation, stifled it by appealing to the lad’s fears.

“Resolve yourself,” he exclaimed abruptly. “It grows light, and the time
for haste is come.”

“I swear!” answered Kenneth, overcome by his impatience. “I swear, by my
honour, my faith, and my every hope of heaven to lend you my aid, when
and how you may demand it, until your task be accomplished.”

Crispin took the Bible from the boy’s hands, and replaced it on the
table. His lips were pressed tight, and he avoided the lad’s eyes.

“You shall not find me wanting in my part of the bargain,” he muttered,
as he took up the soldier’s cloak and hat. “Come, take that parson’s
steeple hat and his cloak, and let us be going.”

He crossed to the door, and opening it he peered down the passage. A
moment he stood listening. All was still. Then he turned again. In the
chamber the steely light of the breaking day was rendering more yellow
still the lanthorn’s yellow flame.

“Fare you well, sir parson,” he said. “Forgive me the discomfort I have
been forced to put upon you, and pray for the success of our escape.
Commend me to Oliver of the ruby nose. Fare you well, sir. Come,
Kenneth.”

He held the door for the lad to pass out. As they stood in the dimly
lighted passage he closed it softly after them, and turned the key in
the lock.

“Come,” he said again, and led the way to the stairs, Kenneth tiptoeing
after him with wildly beating heart.



CHAPTER X. THE ESCAPE


Treading softly, and with ears straining for the slightest sound, the
two men descended to the first floor of the house. They heard nothing
to alarm them as they crept down, and not until they paused on the first
landing to reconnoitre did they even catch the murmur of voices issuing
from the guardroom below. So muffled was the sound that Crispin guessed
how matters stood even before he had looked over the balusters into
the hall beneath. The faint grey of the dawn was the only light that
penetrated the gloom of that pit.

“The Fates are kind, Kenneth,” he whispered. “Those fools sit with
closed doors. Come.”

But Kenneth laid his hand upon Galliard’s sleeve. “What if the door
should open as we pass?”

“Someone will die,” muttered Crispin back. “But pray God that it may
not. We must run the risk.”

“Is there no other way?”

“Why, yes,” returned Galliard sardonically, “we can linger here until we
are taken. But, oddslife, I’m not so minded. Come.”

And as he spoke he drew the lad along.

His foot was upon the topmost stair of the flight, when of a sudden the
stillness of the house was broken by a loud knock upon the street door.
Instantly--as though they had been awaiting it there was a stir of feet
below and the bang of an overturned chair; then a shaft of yellow light
fell athwart the darkness of the hall as the guardroom door was opened.

“Back!” growled Galliard. “Back, man!”

They were but in time. Peering over the balusters they saw two troopers
pass out of the guardroom, and cross the hall to the door. A bolt was
drawn and a chain rattled, then followed the creak of hinges, and on the
stone flags rang the footsteps and the jingling of spurs of those that
entered.

“Is all well?” came a voice, which Crispin recognized as Colonel
Pride’s, followed by an affirmative reply from one of the soldiers.

“Hath a minister visited the malignants?”

“Master Toneleigh is with them even now.”

In the hall Crispin could now make out the figures of Colonel Pride and
of three men who came with him. But he had scant leisure to survey them,
for the colonel was in haste.

“Come, sirs,” he heard him say, “light me to their garret. I would see
them--leastways, one of them, before he dies. They are to hang where
the Moabites hanged Gives yesterday. Had I my way... But, there lead on,
fellow.”

“Oh, God!” gasped Kenneth, as the soldier set foot upon the stairs.
Under his breath Crispin swore a terrific oath. For an instant it seemed
to him there was naught left but to stand there and await recapture.
Through his mind it flashed that they were five, and he but one; for his
companion was unarmed.

With that swiftness which thought alone can compass did he weigh the
odds, and judge his chances. He realized how desperate they were did he
remain, and even as he thought he glanced sharply round.

Dim indeed was the light, but his sight was keen, and quickened by the
imminence of danger. Partly his eyes and partly his instinct told
him that not six paces behind him there must be a door, and if Heaven
pleased it should be unlocked, behind it they must look for shelter.
It even crossed his mind in that second of crowding, galloping thought,
that perchance the room might be occupied. That was a risk he must
take--the lesser risk of the two, the choice of one of which was forced
upon him. He had determined all this ere the soldier’s foot was upon the
third step of the staircase, and before the colonel had commenced the
ascent. Kenneth stood palsied with fear, gazing like one fascinated at
the approaching peril.

Then upon his ear fell the fierce whisper: “Come with me, and tread
lightly as you love your life.”

In three long strides, and by steps that were softer than a cat’s,
Crispin crossed to the door which he had rather guessed than seen. He
ran his hand along until he caught the latch. Softly he tried it; it
gave, and the door opened. Kenneth was by then beside him. He paused to
look back.

On the opposite wall the light of the trooper’s lanthorn fell brightly.
Another moment and the fellow would have reached and turned the corner
of the stairs, and his light must reveal them to him. But ere that
instant was passed Crispin had drawn his companion through, and closed
the door as softly as he had opened it. The chamber was untenanted
and almost bare of furniture, at which discovery Crispin breathed more
freely.

They stood there, and heard the ascending footsteps, and the clank-clank
of a sword against the stair-rail. A bar of yellow light came under the
door that sheltered them. Stronger it grew and farther it crept along
the floor; then stopped and receded again, as he who bore the lanthorn
turned and began to climb to the second floor. An instant later and the
light had vanished, eclipsed by those who followed in the fellow’s wake.

“The window, Sir Crispin,” cried Kenneth, in an excited whisper--“the
window!”

“No,” answered Crispin calmly. “The drop is a long one, and we should
but light in the streets, and be little better than we are here. Wait.”

He listened. The footsteps had turned the corner leading to the floor
above. He opened the door, partly at first, then wide. For an instant
he stood listening again. The steps were well overhead by now; soon they
would mount the last flight, and then discovery must be swift to follow.

“Now,” was all Crispin said, and, drawing his sword he led the way
swiftly, yet cautiously, to the stairs once more. In passing he glanced
over the rails. The guardroom door stood ajar, and he caught the murmurs
of subdued conversation. But he did not pause. Had the door stood wide
he would not have paused then. There was not a second to be lost; to
wait was to increase the already overwhelming danger. Cautiously, and
leaning well upon the stout baluster, he began the descent. Kenneth
followed him mechanically, with white face and a feeling of suffocation
in his throat.

They gained the corner, and turning, they began what was truly the
perilous part of their journey. Not more than a dozen steps were there;
but at the bottom stood the guardroom door, and through the chink of
its opening a shaft of light fell upon the nethermost step. Once a stair
creaked, and to their quickened senses it sounded like a pistol-shot. As
loud to Crispin sounded the indrawn breath of apprehension from Kenneth
that followed it. He had almost paused to curse the lad when, thinking
him of how time pressed, he went on.

Within three steps of the bottom were they, and they could almost
distinguish what was being said in the room, when Crispin stopped, and
turning his head to attract Kenneth’s attention, he pointed straight
across the hall to a dimly visible door. It was that of the chamber
wherein he had been brought before Cromwell. Its position had occurred
to him some moments before, and he had determined then upon going that
way.

The lad followed the indication of his finger, and signified by a nod
that he understood. Another step Galliard descended; then from the
guardroom came a loud yawn, to send the boy cowering against the wall.
It was followed by the sound of someone rising; a chair grated upon the
floor, and there was a movement of feet within the chamber. Had Kenneth
been alone, of a certainty terror would have frozen him to the wall.

But the calm, unmovable Crispin proceeded as if naught had chanced; he
argued that even if he who had risen were coming towards the door, there
was nothing to be gained by standing still. Their only chance lay now in
passing before it might be opened.

They that walk through perils in a brave man’s company cannot but gain
confidence from the calm of his demeanour. So was it now with Kenneth.
The steady onward march of that tall, lank figure before him drew him
irresistibly after it despite his tremors. And well it was for him that
this was so. They gained the bottom of the staircase at length; they
stood beside the door of the guardroom, they passed it in safety. Then
slowly--painfully slowly--to avoid their steps from ringing upon the
stone floor, they crept across towards the door that meant safety to Sir
Crispin. Slowly, step by step, they moved, and with every stride Crispin
looked behind him, prepared to rush the moment he had sign they were
discovered. But it was not needed. In silence and in safety they were
permitted to reach the door. To Crispin’s joy it was unfastened. Quietly
he opened it, then with calm gallantry he motioned to his companion to
go first, holding it for him as he passed in, and keeping watch with eye
and ear the while.

Scarce had Kenneth entered the chamber when from above came the sound
of loud and excited voices, announcing to them that their flight was at
last discovered. It was responded to by a rush of feet in the guardroom,
and Crispin had but time to dart in after his companion and close the
door ere the troopers poured out into the hall and up the stairs, with
confused shouts that something must be amiss.

Within the room that sheltered him Crispin chuckled, as he ran his hand
along the edge of the door until he found the bolt, and softly shot it
home.

“‘Slife,” he muttered, “‘twas a close thing! Aye, shout, you cuckolds,”
 he went on. “Yell yourselves hoarse as the crows you are! You’ll hang us
where Gives are hanged, will you?”

Kenneth tugged at the skirts of his doublet. “What now?” he inquired.

“Now,” said Crispin, “we’ll leave by the window, if it please you.”

They crossed the room, and a moment or two later they had dropped on
to the narrow railed pathway overlooking the river, which Crispin had
observed from their prison window the evening before. He had observed,
too, that a small boat was moored at some steps about a hundred yards
farther down the stream, and towards that spot he now sped along
the footpath, followed closely by Kenneth. The path sloped in that
direction, so that by the time the spot was reached the water flowed not
more than six feet or so beneath them. Half a dozen steps took them
down this to the moorings of that boat, which fortunately had not been
removed.

“Get in, Kenneth,” Crispin commanded. “There, I’ll take the oars, and
I’ll keep under shelter of the bank lest those blunderers should bethink
them of looking out of our prison window. Oddswounds, Kenneth, I am
hungry as a wolf, and as dry--ough, as dry as Dives when he begged for a
sup of water. Heaven send we come upon some good malignant homestead ere
we go far, where a Christian may find a meal and a stoup of ale. ‘Tis a
miracle I had strength enough to crawl downstairs. Swounds, but an empty
stomach is a craven comrade in a desperate enterprise. Hey! Have a care,
boy. Now, sink me if this milksop hasn’t fainted!”



CHAPTER XI. THE ASHBURNS


Gregory Ashburn pushed back his chair and made shift to rise from the
table at which he and his brother had but dined.

He was a tall, heavily built man, with a coarse, florid countenance set
in a frame of reddish hair that hung straight and limp. In the colour of
their hair lay the only point of resemblance between the brothers.
For the rest Joseph was spare and of middle weight, pale of face,
thin-lipped, and owning a cunning expression that was rendered very evil
by virtue of the slight cast in his colourless eyes.

In earlier life Gregory had not been unhandsome; debauchery and sloth
had puffed and coarsened him. Joseph, on the other hand, had never been
aught but ill-favoured.

“Tis a week since Worcester field was fought,” grumbled Gregory, looking
lazily sideways at the mullioned windows as he spoke, “and never a word
from the lad.”

Joseph shrugged his narrow shoulders and sneered. It was Joseph’s habit
to sneer when he spoke, and his words were wont to fit the sneer.

“Doth the lack of news trouble you?” he asked, glancing across the table
at his brother.

Gregory rose without meeting that glance.

“Truth to tell it does trouble me,” he muttered.

“And yet,” quoth Joseph, “tis a natural thing enough. When battles are
fought it is not uncommon for men to die.”

Gregory crossed slowly to the window, and stared out at the trees of the
park which autumn was fast stripping.

“If he were among the fallen--if he were dead then indeed the matter
would be at an end.”

“Aye, and well ended.”

“You forget Cynthia,” Gregory reproved him.

“Forget her? Not I, man. Listen.” And he jerked his thumb in the
direction of the wainscot.

To the two men in that rich chamber of Castle Marleigh was borne the
sound--softened by distance of a girlish voice merrily singing.

Joseph laughed a cackle of contempt.

“Is that the song of a maid whose lover comes not back from the wars?”
 he asked.

“But bethink you, Joseph, the child suspects not the possibility of his
having fallen.”

“Gadswounds, sir, did your daughter give the fellow a thought she must
be anxious. A week yesterday since the battle, and no word from him.
I dare swear, Gregory, there’s little in that to warrant his mistress
singing.”

“Cynthia is young--a child. She reasons not as you and I, nor seeks to
account for his absence.”

“Troubles not to account for it,” Joseph amended.

“Be that as it may,” returned Gregory irritably, “I would I knew.”

“That which we do not know we may sometimes infer. I infer him to be
dead, and there’s the end of it.”

“What if he should not be?”

“Then, my good fool, he would be here.”

“It is unlike you, Joseph, to argue so loosely. What if he should be a
prisoner?”

“Why, then, the plantations will do that which the battle hath left
undone. So that, dead or captive, you see it is all one.”

And, lifting his glass to the light, he closed one eye, the better to
survey with the other the rich colour of the wine. Not that Joseph was
curious touching that colour, but he was a juggler in gestures, and at
that moment he could think of no other whereby he might so naturally
convey the utter indifference of his feelings in the matter.

“Joseph, you are wrong,” said Gregory, turning his back upon the window
and facing his brother. “It is not all one. What if he return some day?”

“Oh, what if--what if--what if!” cried Joseph testily. “Gregory, what a
casuist you might have been had not nature made you a villain! You
are as full of “what if s” as an egg of meat. Well what if some day he
should return? I fling your question back--what if?”

“God only knows.”

“Then leave it to Him,” was the flippant answer; and Joseph drained his
glass.

“Nay, brother, ‘twere too great a risk. I must and I will know whether
Kenneth were slain or not. If he is a prisoner, then we must exert
ourselves to win his freedom.”

“Plague take it,” Joseph burst out. “Why all this ado? Why did you ever
loose that graceless whelp from his Scottish moor?”

Gregory sighed with an air of resigned patience.

“I have more reasons than one,” he answered slowly. “If you need that
I recite them to you, I pity your wits. Look you, Joseph, you have more
influence with Cromwell; more--far more--than have I, and if you are
minded to do so, you can serve me in this.”

“I wait but to learn how.”

“Then go to Cromwell, at Windsor or wherever he may be, and seek to
learn from him if Kenneth is a prisoner. If he is not, then clearly he
is dead.”

Joseph made a gesture of impatience.

“Can you not leave Fate alone?”

“Think you I have no conscience, Joseph?” cried the other with sudden
vigour.

“Pish! you are womanish.”

“Nay, Joseph, I am old. I am in the autumn of my days, and I would see
these two wed before I die.”

“And are damned for a croaking, maudlin’ craven,” added Joseph. “Pah!
You make me sick.”

There was a moment’s silence, during which the brothers eyed each other,
Gregory with a sternness before which Joseph’s mocking eye was forced at
length to fall.

“Joseph, you shall go to the Lord General.”

“Well,” said Joseph weakly, “we will say that I go. But if Kenneth be a
prisoner, what then?”

“You must beg his liberty from Cromwell. He will not refuse you.”

“Will he not? I am none so confident.”

“But you can make the attempt, and leastways we shall have some definite
knowledge of what has befallen the boy.”

“The which definite knowledge seems to me none so necessary. Moreover,
Gregory, bethink you; there has been a change, and the wind carries an
edge that will arouse every devil of rheumatism in my bones. I am not a
lad, Gregory, and travelling at this season is no small matter for a man
of fifty.”

Gregory approached the table, and leaning his hand upon it:

“Will you go?” he asked, squarely eyeing his brother.

Joseph fell a-pondering. He knew Gregory to be a man of fixed ideas, and
he bethought him that were he now to refuse he would be hourly plagued
by Gregory’s speculations touching the boy’s fate and recriminations
touching his own selfishness. On the other hand, however, the journey
daunted him. He was not a man to sacrifice his creature comforts, and to
be asked to sacrifice them to a mere whim, a shadow, added weight to his
inclination to refuse the undertaking.

“Since you have the matter so much at heart,” said he at length, “does
it not occur to you that you could plead with greater fervour, and be
the likelier to succeed?”

“You know that Cromwell will lend a more willing ear to you than to
me--perchance because you know so well upon occasion how to weave your
stock of texts into your discourse,” he added with a sneer. “Will you
go, Joseph?”

“Bethink you that we know not where he is. I may have to wander for
weeks o’er the face of England.”

“Will you go?” Gregory repeated.

“Oh, a pox on it,” broke out Joseph, rising suddenly. “I’ll go since
naught else will quiet you. I’ll start to-morrow.”

“Joseph, I am grateful. I shall be more grateful yet if you will start
to-day.”

“No, sink me, no.”

“Yes, sink me, yes,” returned Gregory. “You must, Joseph.”

Joseph spoke of the wind again; the sky, he urged, was heavy with rain.
“What signifies a day?” he whined.

But Gregory stood his ground until almost out of self-protection the
other consented to do his bidding and set out as soon as he could make
ready.

This being determined, Joseph left his brother, and cursing Master
Stewart for the amount of discomfort which he was about to endure on his
behoof, he went to prepare for the journey.

Gregory lingered still in the chamber where they had dined, and sat
staring moodily before him at the table-linen. Anon, with a half-laugh
of contempt, he filled a glass of muscadine, and drained it. As he set
down the glass the door opened, and on the threshold stood a very dainty
girl, whose age could not be more than twenty. Gregory looked on the
fresh, oval face, with its wealth of brown hair crowning the low, broad
forehead, and told himself that in his daughter he had just cause for
pride. He looked again, and told himself that his brother was right;
she had not the air of a maid whose lover returns not from the wars.
Her lips were smiling, and the eyes--low-lidded and blue as the
heavens--were bright with mirth.

“Why sit you there so glum,” she cried, “whilst my uncle, they tell me,
is going on a journey?”

Gregory was minded to put her feelings to the test.

“Kenneth,” he replied with significant emphasis, watching her closely.

The mirth faded from her eyes, and they took on a grave expression that
added to their charm. But Gregory had looked for fear, leastways deep
concern, and in this he was disappointed.

“What of him, father?” she asked, approaching.

“Naught, and that’s the rub. It is time we had news, and as none comes,
your uncle goes to seek it.”

“Think you that ill can have befallen him?”

Gregory was silent a moment, weighing his answer. Then

“We hope not, sweetheart,” said he. “He may be a prisoner. We last had
news of him from Worcester, and ‘tis a week and more since the battle
was fought there. Should he be a captive, your uncle has sufficient
influence to obtain his enlargement.”

Cynthia sighed, and moved towards the window.

“Poor Kenneth,” she murmured gently. “He may be wounded.”

“We shall soon learn,” he answered. His disappointment grew keener;
where he had looked for grief he found no more than an expression of
pitying concern. Nor was his disappointment lessened when, after a spell
of thoughtful silence, she began to comment upon the condition of the
trees in the park below. Gregory had it in his mind to chide her for
this lack of interest in the fate of her intended husband, but he let
the impulse pass unheeded. After all, if Kenneth lived she should marry
him. Hitherto she had been docile and willing enough to be guided by
him; she had even displayed a kindness for Kenneth; no doubt she would
do so again when Joseph returned with him--unless he were among the
Worcester slain, in which case, perhaps, it would prove best that his
fate was not to cause her any prostration of grief.

“The sky is heavy, father,” said Cynthia from the window. “Poor uncle!
He will have rough weather for his journey.”

“I rejoice that someone wastes pity on poor uncle,” growled Joseph,
who re-entered, “this uncle whom your father drives out of doors in all
weathers to look for his daughter’s truant lover.”

Cynthia smiled upon him.

“It is heroic of you, uncle.”

“There, there,” he grumbled, “I shall do my best to find the laggard,
lest those pretty eyes should weep away their beauty.”

Gregory’s glance reproved this sneer of Joseph’s, whereupon Joseph drew
close to him:

“Broken-hearted, is she not?” he muttered, to which Gregory returned no
answer.

An hour later, as Joseph climbed into his saddle, he turned to his
brother again, and directing his eyes upon the girl, who stood patting
the glossy neck of his nag:

“Come, now,” said he, “you see that matters are as I said.”

“And yet,” replied Gregory sternly, “I hope to see you return with the
boy. It will be better so.”

Joseph shrugged his shoulders contemptuously. Then, taking leave of his
brother and his niece, he rode out with two grooms at his heels, and
took the road South.



CHAPTER XII. THE HOUSE THAT WAS ROLAND MARLEIGH’S


It was high noon next day, and Gregory Ashburn was taking the air upon
the noble terrace of Castle Marleigh, when the beat of hoofs, rapidly
approaching up the avenue, arrested his attention. He stopped in his
walk, and, turning, sought to discover who came. His first thought was
of his brother; his second, of Kenneth. Through the half-denuded trees
he made out two mounted figures, riding side by side; and from the fact
of there being two, he adduced that this could not be Joseph returning.

Even as he waited he was joined by Cynthia, who took her stand beside
him, and voiced the inquiry that was in his mind. But her father could
no more than answer that he hoped it might be Kenneth.

Then the horsemen passed from behind the screen of trees and came into
the clearing before the terrace, and unto the waiting glances of Ashburn
and his daughter was revealed a curiously bedraggled and ill-assorted
pair. The one riding slightly in advance looked like a Puritan of the
meaner sort, in his battered steeple-hat and cloak of rusty black. The
other was closely wrapped in a red mantle, uptilted behind by a sword of
prodigious length, and for all that his broad, grey hat was unadorned
by any feather, it was set at a rakish, ruffling, damn-me angle that
pronounced him no likely comrade for the piously clad youth beside him.

But beneath that brave red cloak--alack!--as was presently seen when
they dismounted, that gentleman was in a sorry plight. He wore a leather
jerkin, so cut and soiled that any groom might have disdained it; a pair
of green breeches, frayed to their utmost; and coarse boots of untanned
leather, adorned by rusty spurs.

On the terrace Gregory paused a moment to call his groom to attend
the new-comers, then he passed down the steps to greet Kenneth with
boisterous effusion. Behind him, slow and stately as a woman of twice
her years, came Cynthia. Calm was her greeting of her lover, contained
in courteous expressions of pleasure at beholding him safe, and
suffering him to kiss her hand.

In the background, his sable locks uncovered out of deference to the
lady, stood Sir Crispin, his face pale and haggard, his lips parted, and
his grey eyes burning as they fell again, after the lapse of years, upon
the stones of this his home--the castle to which he was now come, hat in
hand, to beg for shelter.

Gregory was speaking, his hands resting upon Kenneth’s shoulder.

“We have been much exercised concerning you, lad,” he was saying. “We
almost feared the worst, and yesterday Joseph left us to seek news of
you at Cromwell’s hands. Where have you tarried?”

“Anon, sir; you shall learn anon. The story is a long one.”

“True; you will be tired, and perchance you would first rest a while.
Cynthia will see to it. But what scarecrow have you there? What
tatterdemalion is this?” he cried, pointing to Galliard. He had imagined
him a servant, but the dull flush that overspread Sir Crispin’s face
told him of his error.

“I would have you know, sir,” Crispin began, with some heat, when
Kenneth interrupted him.

“Tis to this gentleman, sir, that I owe my presence here. He was my
fellow-prisoner, and but for his quick wit and stout arm I should be
stiff by now. Anon, sir, you shall hear the story of it, and I dare
swear it will divert you. This gentleman is Sir Crispin Galliard, lately
a captain of horse with whom I served in Middleton’s Brigade.”

Crispin bowed low, conscious of the keen scrutiny in which Gregory’s
eyes were bent upon him. In his heart there arose a fear that, haply
after all, the years that were sped had not wrought sufficient change in
him.

“Sir Crispin Galliard,” Ashburn was saying, after the manner of one who
is searching his memory. “Galliard, Galliard--not he whom they called
‘Rakehelly Galliard,’ and who gave us such trouble in the late King’s
time?”

Crispin breathed once more. Ashburn’s scrutiny was explained.

“The same, sir,” he answered, with a smile and a fresh bow. “Your
servant, sir; and yours, madam.”

Cynthia looked with interest at the lank, soldierly figure. She, too,
had heard--as who had not?--wild stories of this man’s achievements. But
of no feat of his had she been told that could rival that of his escape
from Worcester; and when, that same evening, Kenneth related it, as they
supped, her low-lidded eyes grew very wide, and as they fell on Crispin,
admiration had taken now the place of interest.

Romance swayed as great a portion of her heart as it does of most
women’s. She loved the poets and their songs of great deeds; and here
was one who, in the light of that which they related of him, was like an
incarnation of some hero out of a romancer’s ballad.

Kenneth she never yet had held in over high esteem; but of a sudden, in
the presence of this harsh-featured dog of war, this grim, fierce-eyed
ruffler, he seemed to fade, despite his comeliness of face and form,
into a poor and puny insignificance. And when, presently, he unwisely
related how, when in the boat he had fainted, the maiden laughed
outright for very scorn.

At this plain expression of contempt, her father shot her a quick,
uneasy glance. Kenneth stopped short, bringing his narrative abruptly to
a close. Reproachfully he looked at her, turning first red, then white,
as anger chased annoyance through his soul. Galliard looked on with
quiet relish; her laugh had contained that which for days he had carried
in his heart. He drained his bumper slowly, and made no attempt to
relieve the awkward silence that sat upon the company.

Truth to tell, there was emotion enough in the soul of him who was wont
to be the life of every board he sat at to hold him silent and even
moody.

Here, after eighteen years, was he again in his ancestral home of
Marleigh. But how was he returned? As one who came under a feigned name,
to seek from usurping hands a shelter ‘neath his own roof; a beggar of
that from others which it should have been his to grant or to deny
those others. As an avenger he came. For justice he came, and armed with
retribution; the flame of a hate unspeakable burning in his heart, and
demanding the lives--no less--of those that had destroyed him and his.
Yet was he forced to sit a mendicant almost at that board whose head was
his by every right; forced to sit and curb his mood, giving no outward
sign of the volcano that boiled and raged within his soul as his eye
fell upon the florid, smiling face and portly, well-fed frame of Gregory
Ashburn. For the time was not yet. He must wait; wait until Joseph’s
return, so that he might spend his vengeance upon both together.

Patient had he been for eighteen years, confident that ere he died, a
just and merciful God would give him this for which he lived and waited.
Yet now that the season was at hand; now upon the very eve of that for
which he had so long been patient, a frenzy of impatience fretted him.

He drank deep that night, and through deep drinking his manner
thawed--for in his cups it was not his to be churlish to friend or foe.
Anon Cynthia withdrew; next Kenneth, who went in quest of her. Still
Crispin sat on, and drank his host’s health above his breath, and his
perdition under it, till in the end Gregory, who never yet had found
his master at the bottle, grew numb and drowsy, and sat blinking at the
tapers.

Until midnight they remained at table, talking of this and that, and
each understanding little of what the other said. As the last hour of
night boomed out through the great hall, Gregory spoke of bed.

“Where do I lie to-night?” asked Crispin.

“In the northern wing,” answered Gregory with a hiccough.

“Nay, sir, I protest,” cried Galliard, struggling to his feet, and
swaying somewhat as he stood. “I’ll sleep in the King’s chamber, none
other.”

“The King’s chamber?” echoed Gregory, and his face showed the confused
struggles of his brain. “What know you of the King’s chamber?”

“That it faces the east and the sea, and that it is the chamber I love
best.”

“What can you know of it since, I take it, you have never seen it!”

“Have I not?” he began, in a voice that was awful in its threatening
calm. Then, recollecting himself, and shaking some of the drunkenness
from him: “In the old days, when the Marleighs were masters here,” he
mumbled, “I was often within these walls. Roland Marleigh was my friend.
The King’s chamber was ever accorded me, and there, for old time’s sake,
I’ll lay these old bones of mine to-night.”

“You were Roland Marleigh’s friend?” gasped Gregory. He was very white
now, and there was a sheen of moisture on his face. The sound of that
name had well-nigh sobered him. It was almost as if the ghost of Roland
Marleigh stood before him. His knees were loosened, and he sank back
into the chair from which he had but risen.

“Aye, I was his friend!” assented Crispin. “Poor Roland! He married your
sister, did he not, and it was thus that, having no issue and the family
being extinct, Castle Marleigh passed to you?”

“He married our cousin,” Gregory amended. “They were an ill-fated
family.”

“Ill-fated, indeed, an all accounts be true,” returned Crispin in a
maudlin voice. “Poor Roland! Well, for old time’s sake, I’ll sleep in
the King’s chamber, Master Ashburn.”

“You shall sleep where you list, sir,” answered Gregory, and they rose.

“Do you look to honour us long at Castle Marleigh, Sir Crispin?” was
Gregory’s last question before separating from his guest.

“Nay, sir, ‘tis likely I shall go hence to-morrow,” answered Crispin,
unmindful of what he said.

“I trust not,” said Gregory, in accents of relief that belied him. “A
friend of Roland Marleigh’s must ever be welcome in the house that was
Roland Marleigh’s.”

“The house that was Roland Marleigh’s,” Crispin muttered. “Heigho!
Life is precarious as the fall of a die at best an ephemeral business.
To-night you say the house that was Roland Marleigh’s; presently men
will be saying the house that the Ashburns lived--aye, and died--in.
Give you good night, Master Ashburn.”

He staggered off, and stumbled up the broad staircase at the head
of which a servant now awaited, taper in hand, to conduct him to the
chamber he demanded.

Gregory followed him with a dull, frightened eye. Galliard’s halting,
thickly uttered words had sounded like a prophecy in his ears.



CHAPTER XIII. THE METAMORPHOSIS OF KENNETH


When the morrow came, however, Sir Crispin showed no signs of carrying
out his proposal of the night before, and departing from Castle
Marleigh. Nor, indeed, did he so much as touch upon the subject, bearing
himself rather as one whose sojourn there was to be indefinite.

Gregory offered no comment upon this; through what he had done for
Kenneth they were under a debt to Galliard, and whilst he was a fugitive
from the Parliament’s justice it would ill become Gregory to hasten his
departure. Moreover, Gregory recalled little or nothing of the words
that had passed between them in their cups, save a vague memory that
Crispin had said that he had once known Roland Marleigh.

Kenneth was content that Galliard should lie idle, and not call upon him
to go forth again to lend him the aid he had pledged himself to render
when Crispin should demand it. He marvelled, as the days wore on, that
Galliard should appear to have forgotten that task of his, and that he
should make no shift to set about it. For the rest, however, it troubled
him but little; enough preoccupation did he find in Cynthia’s daily
increasing coldness. Upon all the fine speeches that he made her she
turned an idle ear, or if she replied at all it was but petulantly to
interrupt them, to call him a man of great words and small deeds. All
that he did she found ill done, and told him of it. His sober, godly
garments of sombre hue afforded her the first weapon of scorn wherewith
to wound him. A crow, she dubbed him; a canting, psalm-chanting
hypocrite; a Scripture-monger, and every other contumelious epithet of
like import that she should call to mind. He heard her in amazement.

“Is it for you, Cynthia,” he cried out in his surprise, “the child of a
God-fearing house, to mock the outward symbols of my faith?”

“A faith,” she laughed, “that is all outward symbols and naught besides;
all texts and mournings and nose-twangings.”

“Cynthia!” he exclaimed, in horror.

“Go your ways, sir,” she answered, half in jest, half in earnest. “What
need hath a true faith of outward symbols? It is a matter that lies
between your God and yourself, and it is your heart He will look at,
not your coat. Why, then, without becoming more acceptable in His eyes,
shall you but render yourself unsightly in the eyes of man?”

Kenneth’s cheeks were flushed with anger. From the terrace where they
walked he let his glance roam towards the avenue that split the park in
twain. Up this at that moment, with the least suspicion of a swagger
in his gait, Sir Crispin Galliard was approaching leisurely; he wore a
claret-coloured doublet edged with silver lace, and a grey hat decked
with a drooping red feather--which garments, together with the rest
of his apparel, he had drawn from the wardrobe of Gregory Ashburn.
His advent afforded Kenneth the retort he needed. Pointing him out to
Cynthia:

“Would you rather,” he cried hotly, “have me such a man as that?”

“And, pray, why not?” she taunted him. “Leastways, you would then be a
man.”

“If, madam, a debauchee, a drunkard, a profligate, a brawler be your
conception of a man, I would in faith you did not account me one.”

“And what, sir, would you sooner elect to be accounted?”

“A gentleman, madam,” he answered pompously.

“I think,” said she quietly, “that you are in as little danger of
becoming the one as the other. A gentleman does not slander a man behind
his back, particularly when he owes that man his life. Kenneth, I am
ashamed of you.”

“I do not slander,” he insisted hotly. “You yourself know of the drunken
excess wherewith three nights ago he celebrated his coming to Castle
Marleigh. Nor do I forget what I owe him, and payment is to be made in
a manner you little know of. If I said of him what I did, it was but in
answer to your taunts. Think you I could endure comparison with such a
man as that? Know you what name the Royalists give him? They call him
the Tavern Knight.”

She looked him over with an eye of quiet scorn.

“And how, sir, do they call you? The pulpit knight? Or is it the knight
of the white feather? Mr. Stewart, you weary me. I would have a man who
with a man’s failings hath also a man’s redeeming virtues of honesty,
chivalry, and courage, and a record of brave deeds, rather than one who
has nothing of the man save the coat--that outward symbol you lay such
store by.”

His handsome, weak face was red with fury.

“Since that is so, madam,” he choked, “I leave you to your swaggering,
ruffling Cavalier.”

And, without so much as a bow, he swung round on his heel and left her.
It was her turn to grow angry now, and well it was for him that he had
not tarried. She dwelt with scorn upon his parting taunt, bethinking
herself that in truth she had exaggerated her opinions of Galliard’s
merits. Her feelings towards that ungodly gentleman were rather of pity
than aught else. A brave, ready-witted man she knew him for, as much
from the story of his escape from Worcester as for the air that clung
to him despite his swagger, and she deplored that one possessing these
ennobling virtues should have fallen notwithstanding upon such evil ways
as those which Crispin trod. Some day, perchance, when she should come
to be better acquainted with him, she would seek to induce him to mend
his course.

Such root did this thought take in her mind that soon thereafter--and
without having waited for that riper acquaintance which at first she had
held necessary--she sought to lead their talk into the channels of this
delicate subject. But he as sedulously confined it to trivial matter
whenever she approached him in this mood, fencing himself about with a
wall of cold reserve that was not lightly to be overthrown. In this
his conscience was at work. Cynthia was the flaw in the satisfaction he
might have drawn from the contemplation of the vengeance he was there to
wreak. He beheld her so pure, so sweet and fresh, that he marvelled how
she came to be the daughter of Gregory Ashburn. His heart smote him at
the thought of how she--the innocent--must suffer with the guilty, and
at the contemplation of the sorrow which he must visit upon her. Out of
this sprang a constraint when in her company, for other than stiff and
formal he dared not be lest he should deem himself no better than the
Iscariot.

During the first days he had spent at Marleigh, he had been impatient for
Joseph Ashburn’s return. Now he found himself hoping each morning that
Joseph might not come that day.

A courier reached Gregory from Windsor with a letter wherein his brother
told him that the Lord General, not being at the castle, he was gone on
to London in quest of him. And Gregory, lacking the means to inform him
that the missing Kenneth was already returned, was forced to possess his
soul in patience until his brother, having learnt what was to be learnt
of Cromwell, should journey home.

And so the days sped on, and a week wore itself out in peace at Castle
Marleigh, none dreaming of the volcano on which they stood. Each night
Crispin and Gregory sat together at the board after Kenneth and Cynthia
had withdrawn, and both drank deep--the one for the vice of it, the
other (as he had always done) to seek forgetfulness.

He needed it now more than ever, for he feared that the consideration of
Cynthia might yet unman him. Had she scorned and avoided him and having
such evidences of his ways of life he marvelled that she did not--he
might have allowed his considerations of her to weigh less heavily. As
it was, she sought him out, nor seemed rebuffed at his efforts to evade
her, and in every way she manifested a kindliness that drove him almost
to the point of despair, and well-nigh to hating her.

Kenneth, knowing naught of the womanly purpose that actuated her,
and seeing but the outward signs, which, with ready jealousy, he
misconstrued and magnified, grew sullen and churlish to her, to
Galliard, and even to Gregory.

For hours he would mope alone, nursing his jealous mood, as though in
this clownish fashion matters were to be mended. Did Cynthia but speak
to Crispin, he scowled; did Crispin answer her, he grit his teeth at the
covert meaning wherewith his fancy invested Crispin’s tones; whilst did
they chance to laugh together--a contingency that fortunately for his
sanity was rare--he writhed in fury. He was a man transformed, and at
times there was murder in his heart. Had he been a swordsman of more
than moderate skill and dared to pit himself against the Tavern Knight,
blood would have been shed in Marleigh Park betwixt them.

It seemed at last as if with his insensate jealousy all the evil
humours that had lain dormant in the boy were brought to the surface,
to overwhelm his erstwhile virtues--if qualities that have bigotry for a
parent may truly be accounted virtues.

He cast off, not abruptly, but piecemeal, those outward symbols--his
sombre clothes. First ‘twas his hat he exchanged for a feather-trimmed
beaver of more sightly hue; then those stiff white bands that reeked of
sanctity and cant for a collar of fine point; next it was his coat that
took on a worldly edge of silver lace. And so, little by little, step
by step, was the metamorphosis effected, until by the end of the week
he came forth a very butterfly of fashion--a gallant, dazzling Cavalier.
Out of a stern, forbidding Covenanter he was transformed in a few days
into a most outrageous fop. He walked in an atmosphere of musk that he
himself exhaled; his fair hair--that a while ago had hung so straight
and limp--was now twisted into monstrous curls, a bunch of which were
gathered by his right ear in a ribbon of pale blue silk.

Galliard noted the change in amazement, yet, knowing to what follies
youth is driven when it woos, he accounted Cynthia responsible for it,
and laughed in his sardonic way, whereat the boy would blush and scowl
in one. Gregory, too, looked on and laughed, setting it down to the
same cause. Even Cynthia smiled, whereat the Tavern Knight was driven to
ponder.

With a courtier’s raiment Kenneth put on, too, a courtier’s ways; he
grew mincing and affected in his speech, and he--whose utterance a while
ago had been marked by a scriptural flavour--now set it off with some of
Galliard’s less unseemly oaths.

Since it was a ruffling gallant Cynthia required, he swore that a
ruffling gallant should she find him; nor had he wit enough to see
that his ribbons, his fopperies, and his capers served but to make him
ridiculous in her eyes. He did indeed perceive, however, that in spite
of this wondrous transformation, he made no progress in her favour.

“What signify these fripperies?” she asked him, one day, “any more than
did your coat of decent black? Are these also outward symbols?”

“You may take them for such, madam,” he answered sulkily. “You liked me
not as I was--”

“And I like you less as you are,” she broke in.

“Cynthia, you mock me,” he cried angrily.

“Now, Heaven forbid! I do but mark the change,” she answered airily.
“These scented clothes are but a masquerade, even as your coat of black
and your cant were a masquerade. Then you simulated godliness; now
you simulate Heaven knows what. But now, as then, it is no more than a
simulation, a pretence of something that you are not.”

He left her in a pet, and went in search of Gregory, into whose ear
he poured the story of his woes that had their source in Cynthia’s
unkindness. From this resulted a stormy interview ‘twixt Cynthia and her
father, in which Cynthia at last declared that she would not be wedded
to a fop.

Gregory shrugged his shoulders and laughed cynically, replying that it
was the way of young men to be fools, and that through folly lay the
road to wisdom.

“Be that as it may,” she answered him with spirit, “this folly
transcends all bounds. Master Stewart may return to his Scottish
heather; at Castle Marleigh he is wasting time.”

“Cynthia!” he cried.

“Father,” she pleaded, “why be angry? You would not have me marry
against the inclinations of my heart? You would not have me wedded to a
man whom I despise?”

“By what right do you despise him?” he demanded, his brow dark.

“By the right of the freedom of my thoughts--the only freedom that a
woman knows. For the rest it seems she is but a chattel; of no more
consideration to a man than his ox or his ass with which the Scriptures
rank her--a thing to be given or taken, bought or sold, as others shall
decree.”

“Child, child, what know you of these things?” he cried. “You are
overwrought, sweetheart.” And with the promise to wait until a calmer
frame of mind in her should be more propitious to what he wished to say
further on this score, he left her.

She went out of doors in quest of solitude among the naked trees of
the park; instead she found Sir Crispin, seated deep in thought upon a
fallen trunk.

Through the trees she espied him as she approached, whilst the rustle
of her gown announced to him her coming. He rose as she drew nigh, and,
doffing his hat, made shift to pass on.

“Sir Crispin,” she called, detaining him. He turned.

“Your servant, Mistress Cynthia.”

“Are you afraid of me, Sir Crispin?”

“Beauty, madam, is wont to inspire courage rather than fear,” he
answered, with a smile.

“That, sir, is an evasion, not an answer.”

“If read aright, Mistress Cynthia, it is also an answer.”

“That you do not fear me?”

“It is not a habit of mine.”

“Why, then, have you avoided me these three days past?”

Despite himself Crispin felt his breath quickening--quickening with
a pleasure that he sought not to account for--at the thought that she
should have marked his absence from her side.

“Because perhaps if I did not,” he answered slowly, “you might come to
avoid me. I am a proud man, Mistress Cynthia.”

“Satan, sir, was proud, but his pride led him to perdition.”

“So indeed may mine,” he answered readily, “since it leads me from you.”

“Nay, sir,” she laughed, “you go from me willingly enough.”

“Not willingly, Cynthia. Oh, not willingly,” he began. Then of a sudden
he checked his tongue, and asked himself what he was saying. With a
half-laugh and a courtier manner, he continued, “Of two evils, madam, we
must choose the lesser one.”

“Madam,” she echoed, disregarding all else that he had said. “It is an
ugly word, and but a moment back you called me Cynthia.”

“Twas a liberty that methought my grey hairs warranted, and for which
you should have reproved me.”

“You have not grey hairs enough to warrant it, Sir Crispin,” she
answered archly. “But what if even so I account it no liberty?”

The heavy lids were lifted from her eyes, and as their glance, frank and
kindly, met his, he trembled. Then, with a polite smile, he bowed.

“I thank you for the honour.”

For a moment she looked at him in a puzzled way, then moved past him,
and as he stood, stiffly erect, watching her graceful figure, he thought
that she was about to leave him, and was glad of it. But ere she had
taken half a dozen steps:

“Sir Crispin,” said she, looking back at him over her shoulder, “I am
walking to the cliffs.”

Never was a man more plainly invited to become an escort; but he ignored
it. A sad smile crept into his harsh face.

“I shall tell Kenneth if I see him,” said he.

At that she frowned.

“But I do not want him,” she protested. “Sooner would I go alone.”

“Why, then, madam, I’ll tell nobody.”

Was ever man so dull? she asked herself.

“There is a fine view from the cliffs,” said she.

“I have always thought so,” he agreed.

She inclined to call him a fool; yet she restrained herself. She had an
impulse to go her way without him; but, then, she desired his company,
and Cynthia was unused to having her desires frustrated. So finding him
impervious to suggestion:

“Will you not come with me?” she asked at last, point-blank.

“Why, yes, if you wish it,” he answered without alacrity.

“You may remain, sir.”

Her offended tone aroused him now to the understanding that he was
impolite. Contrite he stood beside her in a moment.

“With your permission, mistress, I will go with you. I am a dull fellow,
and to-day I know not what mood is on me. So sorry a one that I feared
I should be poor company. Still, if you’ll endure me, I’ll do my best to
prove entertaining.”

“By no means,” she answered coldly. “I seek not the company of dull
fellows.” And she was gone.

He stood where she had left him, and breathed a most ungallant prayer of
thanks. Next he laughed softly to himself, a laugh that was woeful with
bitterness.

“Fore George!” he muttered, “it is all that was wanting!”

He reseated himself upon the fallen tree, and there he set himself to
reflect, and to realize that he, war-worn and callous, come to Castle
Marleigh on such an errand as was his, should wax sick at the very
thought of it for the sake of a chit of a maid, with a mind to make a
mock and a toy of him. Into his mind there entered even the possibility
of flight, forgetful of the wrongs he had suffered, abandoning the
vengeance he had sworn. Then with an oath he stemmed his thoughts.

“God in heaven, am I a boy, beardless and green?” he asked himself. “Am
I turned seventeen again, that to look into a pair of eyes should make
me forget all things but their existence?” Then in a burst of passion:
“Would to Heaven,” he muttered, “they had left me stark on Worcester
Field!”

He rose abruptly, and set out to walk aimlessly along, until suddenly a
turn in the path brought him face to face with Cynthia. She hailed him
with a laugh.

“Sir laggard, I knew that willy-nilly you would follow me,” she cried.
And he, taken aback, could not but smile in answer, and profess that she
had conjectured rightly.



CHAPTER XIV. THE HEART OF CYNTHIA ASHBURN


Side by side stepped that oddly assorted pair along--the maiden whose
soul was as pure and fresh as the breeze that blew upon them from the
sea, and the man whose life years ago had been marred by a sorrow, the
quest of whose forgetfulness had led him through the mire of untold sin;
the girl upon the threshold of womanhood, her life all before her and
seeming to her untainted mind a joyous, wholesome business; the man
midway on his ill-starred career, his every hope blighted save the one
odious hope of vengeance, which made him cling to a life he had proved
worthless and ugly, and that otherwise he had likely enough cast from
him. And as they walked:

“Sir Crispin,” she ventured timidly, “you are unhappy, are you not?”

Startled by her words and the tone of them, Galliard turned his head
that he might observe her.

“I, unhappy?” he laughed; and it was a laugh calculated to acknowledge
the fitness of her question, rather than to refute it as he intended.
“Am I a clown, Cynthia, to own myself unhappy at such a season and while
you honour me with your company?”

She made a wry face in protest that he fenced with her.

“You are happy, then?” she challenged him.

“What is happiness?” quoth he, much as Pilate may have questioned what
was truth. Then before she could reply he hastened to add: “I have not
been quite so happy these many years.”

“It is not of the present moment that I speak,” she answered
reprovingly, for she scented no more than a compliment in his words,
“but of your life.”

Now either was he imbued with a sense of modesty touching the deeds
of that life of his, or else did he wisely realize that no theme could
there be less suited to discourse upon with an innocent maid.

“Mistress Cynthia,” said he as though he had not heard her question, “I
would say a word to you concerning Kenneth.”

At that she turned upon him with a pout.

“But it is concerning yourself that I would have you talk. It is not
nice to disobey a lady. Besides, I have little interest in Master
Stewart.”

“To have little interest in a future husband augurs ill for the time
when he shall come to be your husband.”

“I thought that you, at least, understood me. Kenneth will never be
husband of mine, Sir Crispin.”

“Cynthia!” he exclaimed.

“Oh, lackaday! Am I to wed a doll?” she demanded. “Is he--is he a man a
maid may love, Sir Crispin?”

“Indeed, had you but seen the half of life that I have seen,” said he
unthinkingly, “it might amaze you what manner of man a maid may love--or
at least may marry. Come, Cynthia, what fault do you find with him?”

“Why, every fault.”

He laughed in unbelief.

“And whom are we to blame for all these faults that have turned you so
against him?”

“Whom?”

“Yourself, Cynthia. You use him ill, child. If his behaviour has been
extravagant, you are to blame. You are severe with him, and he, in his
rash endeavours to present himself in a guise that shall render him
commendable in your eyes, has overstepped discretion.”

“Has my father bidden you to tell me this?”

“Since when have I enjoyed your father’s confidence to that degree? No,
no, Cynthia. I plead the boy’s cause to you because--I know not because
of what.”

“It is ill to plead without knowing why. Let us forget the valiant
Kenneth. They tell me, Sir Crispin”--and she turned her glorious eyes
upon him in a manner that must have witched a statue into answering
her--“that in the Royal army you were known as the Tavern Knight.”

“They tell you truly. What of that?”

“Well, what of it? Do you blush at the very thought?”

“I blush?” He blinked, and his eyes were full of humour as they met her
grave--almost sorrowing glance. Then a full-hearted peal of laughter
broke from him, and scared a flight of gulls from the rocks of
Sheringham Hithe below.

“Oh, Cynthia! You’ll kill me!” he gasped. “Picture to yourself this
Crispin Galliard blushing and giggling like a schoolgirl beset by her
first lover. Picture it, I say! As well and as easily might you picture
old Lucifer warbling a litany for the edification of a Nonconformist
parson.”

Her eyes were severe in their reproach.

“It is always so with you. You laugh and jest and make a mock of
everything. Such I doubt not has been your way from the commencement,
and ‘tis thus that you are come to this condition.”

Again he laughed, but this time it was in bitterness.

“Nay, sweet mistress, you are wrong--you are very wrong; it was not
always thus. Time was--” He paused. “Bah! ‘Tis the coward cries “time
was”! Leave me the past, Cynthia. It is dead, and of the dead we should
speak no ill,” he jested.

“What is there in your past?” she insisted, despite his words. “What
is there in it so to have warped a character that I am assured was
once--is, indeed, still--of lofty and noble purpose? What is it has
brought you to the level you occupy--you who were born to lead; you
who--”

“Have done, child. Have done,” he begged.

“Nay, tell me. Let us sit here.” And taking hold of his sleeve, she sat
herself upon a mound, and made room for him beside her on the grass.
With a half-laugh and a sigh he obeyed her, and there, on the cliff, in
the glow of the September sun, he took his seat at her side.

A silence prevailed about them, emphasized rather than broken by the
droning chant of a fisherman mending his nets on the beach below, the
intermittent plash of the waves on the shingle, and the scream of the
gulls that circled overhead. Before the eyes of his flesh was stretched
a wide desert of sky and water, and before the eyes of his mind the
hopeless desert of his thirty-eight years.

He was almost tempted to speak. The note of sympathy in her voice
allured him, and sympathy was to him as drink to one who perishes of
thirst. A passionate, indefinable longing impelled him to pour out the
story that in Worcester he had related unto Kenneth, and thus to set
himself better in her eyes; to have her realize indeed that if he was
come so low it was more the fault of others than his own. The temptation
drew him at a headlong pace, to be checked at last by the memory that
those others who had brought him to so sorry a condition were her own
people. The humour passed. He laughed softly, and shook his head.

“There is nothing that I can tell you, child. Let us rather talk of
Kenneth.”

“I do not wish to talk of Kenneth.”

“Nay, but you must. Willy-nilly must you. Think you it is only a
war-worn, hard-drinking, swashbuckling ruffler that can sin? Does it not
also occur to you that even a frail and tender little maid may do wrong
as well?”

“What wrong have I done?” she cried in consternation.

“A grievous wrong to this poor lad. Can you not realize how the only
desire that governs him is the laudable one of appearing favourably in
your eyes?”

“That desire gives rise, then, to curious manifestations.”

“He is mistaken in the means he adopts, that is all. In his heart his
one aim is to win your esteem, and, after all, it is the sentiment that
matters, not its manifestation. Why, then, are you unkind to him?”

“But I am not unkind. Or is it unkindness to let him see that I mislike
his capers? Would it not be vastly more unkind to ignore them and
encourage him to pursue their indulgence? I have no patience with him.”

“As for those capers, I am endeavouring to show you that you yourself
have driven him to them.”

“Sir Crispin,” she cried out, “you grow tiresome.”

“Aye,” said he, “I grow tiresome. I grow tiresome because I preach of
duty. Marry, it is in truth a tiresome topic.”

“How duty? Of what do you talk?” And a flush of incipient anger spread
now on her fair cheek.

“I will be clearer,” said he imperturbably. “This lad is your betrothed.
He is at heart a good lad, an honourable and honest lad--at times haply
over-honest and over-honourable; but let that be. To please a whim, a
caprice, you set yourself to flout him, as is the way of your sex when
you behold a man your utter slave. From this--being all unversed in
the obliquity of woman--he conceives, poor boy, that he no longer finds
favour in your eyes, and to win back this, the only thing that in the
world he values, he behaves foolishly. You flout him anew, and because
of it. He is as jealous with you as a hen with her brood.”

“Jealous?” echoed Cynthia.

“Why, yes, jealous; and so far does he go as to be jealous even of me,”
 he cried, with infinitely derisive relish. “Think of it--he is jealous
of me! Jealous of him they call the Tavern Knight!”

She did think of it as he bade her. And by thinking she stumbled upon a
discovery that left her breathless.

Strange how we may bear a sentiment in our hearts without so much as
suspecting its existence, until suddenly a chance word shall so urge it
into life that it reveals itself with unmistakable distinctness. With
her the revelation began in a vague wonder at the scorn with which
Crispin invested the notion that Kenneth should have cause for jealousy
on his score. Was it, she asked herself, so monstrously unnatural? Then
in a flash the answer came--and it was, that far from being a matter for
derision, such an attitude in Kenneth lacked not for foundation.

In that moment she knew that it was because of Crispin; because of this
man who spoke with such very scorn of self, that Kenneth had become in
her eyes so mean and unworthy a creature. Loved him she haply never had,
but leastways she had tolerated--been even flattered by--his wooing.
By contrasting him now with Crispin she had grown to despise him. His
weakness, his pusillanimity, his meannesses of soul, stood out in sharp
relief by contrast with the masterful strength and the high spirit of
Sir Crispin.

So easily may our ideals change that the very graces of face and form
that a while ago had pleased her in Kenneth, seemed now effeminate
attributes, well-attuned to a vacillating, purposeless mind. Far greater
beauty did her eyes behold in this grimfaced soldier of fortune; the
man as firm of purpose as he was upright of carriage; gloomy, proud, and
reckless; still young, yet past the callow age of adolescence. Since
the day of his coming to Castle Marleigh she had brought herself to look
upon him as a hero stepped from the romancers’ tales that in secret she
had read. The mystery that seemed to envelop him; those hints at a past
that was not good--but the measure of whose evil in her pure innocence
she could not guess; his very melancholy, his misfortunes, and the deeds
she had heard assigned to him, all had served to fire her fancy and more
besides, although, until that moment, she knew it not.

Subconsciously all this had long dwelt in her mind. And now of a
sudden that self-deriding speech of Crispin’s had made her aware of its
presence and its meaning.

She loved him. That men said his life had not been nice, that he was
a soldier of fortune, little better than an adventurer, a man of no
worldly weight, were matters of no moment then to her. She loved him.
She knew it now because he had mockingly bidden her to think whether
Kenneth had cause to be jealous of him, and because upon thinking of it,
she found that did Kenneth know what was in her heart, he must have more
than cause.


She loved him with that rare love that will urge a woman to the last
sacrifice a man may ask; a love that gives and gives, and seeks nothing
in return; that impels a woman to follow the man at his bidding, be his
way through the world cast in places never so rugged; cleaving to him
where all besides shall have abandoned him; and, however dire his lot,
asking of God no greater blessing than that of sharing it.

And to such a love as this Crispin was blind--blind to the very
possibility of its existence; so blind that he laughed to scorn the idea
of a puny milksop being jealous of him. And so, while she sat, her soul
all mastered by her discovery, her face white and still for very awe of
it, he to whom this wealth was given, pursued the odious task of wooing
her for another.

“You have observed--you must have observed this insensate jealousy,” he
was saying, “and how do you allay it? You do not. On the contrary, you
excite it at every turn. You are exciting it now by having--and I dare
swear for no other purpose--lured me to walk with you, to sit here with
you and preach your duty to you. And when, through jealousy, he shall
have flown to fresh absurdities, shall you regret your conduct and the
fruits it has borne? Shall you pity the lad, and by kindness induce him
to be wiser? No. You will mock and taunt him into yet worse displays.
And through these displays, which are--though you may not have bethought
you of it--of your own contriving, you will conclude that he is no fit
mate for you, and there will be heart-burnings, and years hence perhaps
another Tavern Knight, whose name will not be Crispin Galliard.”

She had listened with bent head; indeed, so deeply rapt by her
discovery, that she had but heard the half of what he said. Now, of a
sudden, she looked up, and meeting his glance:

“Is--is it a woman’s fault that you are as you are?”

“No, it is not. But how does that concern the case of Kenneth?”

“It does not. I was but curious. I was not thinking of Kenneth.”

He stared at her, dumfounded. Had he been talking of Kenneth to her with
such eloquence and such fervour, that she should calmly tell him as he
paused that it was not of Kenneth she had been thinking?

“You will think of him, Cynthia?” he begged. “You will bethink you too
of what I have said, and by being kinder and more indulgent with this
youth you shall make him grow into a man you may take pride in. Deal
fairly with him, child, and if anon you find you cannot truly love him,
then tell him so. But tell him kindly and frankly, instead of using him
as you are doing.”

She was silent a moment, and in their poignancy her feelings went very
near to anger. Presently:

“I would, Sir Crispin, you could hear him talk of you,” said she.

“He talks ill, not a doubt of it, and like enough he has good cause.”

“Yet you saved his life.”

The words awoke Crispin, the philosopher of love, to realities. He
recalled the circumstances of his saving Kenneth, and the price the boy
was to pay for that service; and it suddenly came to him that it was
wasted breath to plead Kenneth’s cause with Cynthia, when by his own
future actions he was, himself, more than likely to destroy the boy’s
every hope of wedding her. The irony of his attitude smote him hard,
and he rose abruptly. The sun hung now a round, red globe upon the very
brink of the sea.

“Hereafter he may have little cause to thank me,” muttered he. “Come,
Mistress Cynthia, it grows late.”

She rose in mechanical obedience, and together they retraced their steps
in silence, save for the stray word exchanged at intervals touching
matters of no moment.

But he had not advocated Kenneth’s cause in vain, for all that he little
recked what his real argument had been, what influences he had evoked
to urge her to make her peace with the lad. A melancholy listlessness of
mind possessed her now. Crispin did not see, never would see, what was
in her heart, and it might not be hers to show him. The life that might
have signified was not to be lived, and since that was so it seemed to
matter little what befell.

It was thus that when on the morrow her father returned to the subject,
she showed herself tractable and docile out of her indifference, and to
Gregory she appeared not averse to listen to what he had to advance
in the boy’s favour. Anon Kenneth’s own humble pleading, allied to his
contrite and sorrowful appearance, were received by her with that same
indifference, as also with indifference did she allow him later to kiss
her hand and assume the flattering belief that he was rehabilitated in
her favour.

But pale grew Mistress Cynthia’s cheeks, and sad her soul. Wistful she
waxed, sighing at every turn, until it seemed to her--as haply it hath
seemed to many a maid--that all her life must she waste in vain sighs
over a man who gave no single thought to her.



CHAPTER XV. JOSEPH’S RETURN


On his side Kenneth strove hard during the days that followed to right
himself in her eyes. But so headlong was he in the attempt, and
so misguided, that presently he overshot his mark by dropping an
unflattering word concerning Crispin, whereby he attributed to the
Tavern Knight’s influence and example the degenerate change that had of
late been wrought in him.

Cynthia’s eyes grew hard as he spoke, and had he been wise he had better
served his cause by talking in another vein. But love and jealousy
had so addled what poor brains the Lord had bestowed upon him, that he
floundered on, unmindful of any warning that took not the blunt shape
of words. At length, however, she stemmed the flow of invective that his
lips poured forth.

“Have I not told you already, Kenneth, that it better becomes a
gentleman not to slander the man to whom he owes his life? In fact, that
a gentleman would scorn such an action?”

As he had protested before, so did he protest now, that what he had
uttered was no slander. And in his rage and mortification at the way she
used him, and for which he now bitterly upbraided her, he was very near
the point of tears, like the blubbering schoolboy that at heart he was.

“And as for the debt, madam,” he cried, striking the oaken table of the
hall with his clenched hand, “it is a debt that shall be paid, a debt
which this gentleman whom you defend would not permit me to contract
until I had promised payment--aye, ‘fore George!--and with interest, for
in the payment I may risk my very life.”

“I see no interest in that, since you risk nothing more than what you
owe him,” she answered, with a disdain that brought the impending
tears to his eyes. But if he lacked the manliness to restrain them, he
possessed at least the shame to turn his back and hide them from her.
“But tell me, sir,” she added, her curiosity awakened, “if I am to
judge, what was the nature of this bargain?”

He was silent for a moment, and took a turn in the hall--mastering
himself to speak--his hands clasped behind his back, and his eyes bent
towards the polished floor which the evening sunlight, filtered through
the gules of the leaded windows, splashed here and there with a crimson
stain. She sat in the great leathern chair at the head of the board,
and, watching him, waited.

He was debating whether he was bound to secrecy in the matter, and in
the end he resolved that he was not. Thereupon, pausing before her,
he succinctly told the story Crispin had related to him that night in
Worcester--the story of a great wrong, that none but a craven could have
left unavenged. He added nothing to it, subtracted nothing from it, but
told the tale as it had been told to him on that dreadful night, the
memory of which had still power to draw a shudder from him.

Cynthia sat with parted lips and eager eyes, drinking in that touching
narrative of suffering that was rather as some romancer’s fabrication
than a true account of what a living man had undergone. Now with sorrow
and pity in her heart and countenance, now with anger and loathing, she
listened until he had done, and even when he ceased speaking, and flung
himself into the nearest chair, she sat on in silence for a spell.

Then of a sudden she turned a pair of flashing eyes upon the boy, and in
tones charged with a scorn ineffable:

“You dare,” she cried, “to speak of that man as you do, knowing all
this? Knowing what he has suffered, you dare to rail in his absence
against those sins to which his misfortunes have driven him? How, think
you, would it have fared with you, you fool, had you stood in the shoes
of this unfortunate? Had you fallen on your craven knees, and thanked
the Lord for allowing you to keep your miserable life? Had you succumbed
to the blows of fate with a whine of texts upon your lips? Who are you?”
 she went on, rising, breathless in her wrath, which caused him to recoil
in sheer affright before her. “Who are you, and what are you, that
knowing what you know of this man’s life, you dare to sit in judgment
upon his actions and condemn them? Answer me, you fool!”

But never a word had he wherewith to meet that hail of angry,
contemptuous questions. The answer that had been so ready to his lips
that night at Worcester, when, in a milder form the Tavern Knight had
set him the same question, he dared not proffer now. The retort that Sir
Crispin had not cause enough in the evil of others, which had wrecked
his life, to risk the eternal damnation of his soul, he dared no longer
utter. Glibly enough had he said to that stern man that which he dared
not say now to this sterner beauty. Perhaps it was fear of her that
made him dumb, perhaps that at last he knew himself for what he was by
contrast with the man whose vices he had so heartily despised a while
ago.

Shrinking back before her anger, he racked his shallow mind in vain for
a fitting answer. But ere he had found one, a heavy step sounded in the
gallery that overlooked the hall, and a moment later Gregory Ashburn
descended. His face was ghastly white, and a heavy frown furrowed the
space betwixt his brows.

In the fleeting glance she bestowed upon her father, she remarked not
the disorder of his countenance; whilst as for Kenneth, he had enough to
hold his attention for the time.

Gregory’s advent set an awkward constraint upon them, nor had he any
word to say as he came heavily up the hall.

At the lower end of the long table he paused, and resting his hand upon
the board, he seemed on the point of speaking when of a sudden a sound
reached him that caused him to draw a sharp breath; it was the rumble of
wheels and the crack of a whip.

“It is Joseph!” he cried, in a voice the relief of which was so marked
that Cynthia noticed it. And with that exclamation he flung past them,
and out through the doorway to meet his brother so opportunely returned.

He reached the terrace steps as the coach pulled up, and the lean figure
of Joseph Ashburn emerged from it.

“So, Gregory,” he grumbled for greeting, “it was on a fool’s errand you
sent me, after all. That knave, your messenger, found me in London at
last when I had outworn my welcome at Whitehall. But, ‘swounds, man,” he
cried, remarking the pallor, of his brother’s face, “what ails thee?”

“I have news for you, Joseph,” answered Gregory, in a voice that shook.

“It is not Cynthia?” he inquired. “Nay, for there she stands-and her
pretty lover by her side. ‘Slife, what a coxcomb the lad’s grown.”

And with that he hastened forward to kiss his niece, and congratulate
Kenneth upon being restored to her.

“I heard of it, lad, in London,” quoth he, a leer upon his sallow
face--“the story of how a fire-eater named Galliard befriended you,
trussed a parson and a trooper, and dragged you out of jail a short hour
before hanging-time.”

Kenneth flushed. He felt the sneer in Joseph’s, words like a stab. The
man’s tone implied that another had done for him that which he would
not have dared do for himself, and Kenneth felt that this was so said in
Cynthia’s presence with malicious, purpose.

He was right. Partly it was Joseph’s way to be spiteful and venomous
whenever chance afforded him the opportunity. Partly he had been
particularly soured at present by his recent discomforts, suffered in a
cause wherewith he had no, sympathy--that of the union Gregory desired
‘twixt Cynthia and Kenneth.

There was an evil smile on his thin lips, and his crooked eyes rested
tormentingly upon the young man. A fresh taunt trembled on his viperish
tongue, when Gregory plucked at the skirts of his coat, and drew him
aside. They entered the chamber where they had held their last interview
before Joseph had set out for news of Kenneth. With an air of mystery
Gregory closed the door, then turned to face his brother. He stayed him
in the act of unbuckling his sword-belt.

“Wait, Joseph!” he cried dramatically. “This is no time to disarm. Keep
your sword on your thigh, man; you will need it as you never yet have
needed it.” He paused, took a deep breath, and hurled the news at
his brother. “Roland Marleigh is here.” And he sat down like a man
exhausted.

Joseph did not start; he did not cry out; he did not so much as change
countenance. A slight quiver of the eyelids was the only outward sign
he gave of the shock that his brother’s announcement had occasioned. The
hand that had rested on the buckle of his sword-belt slipped quietly
to his side, and he deliberately stepped up to Gregory, his eyes set
searchingly upon the pale, flabby face before him. A sudden suspicion
darting through his mind, he took his brother by the shoulders and shook
him vigorously.

“Gregory, you fool, you have drunk overdeep in my absence.”

“I have, I have,” wailed Gregory, “and, my God, ‘twas he was my
table-fellow, and set me the example.”

“Like enough, like enough,” returned Joseph, with a contemptuous laugh.
“My poor Gregory, the wine has so fouled your worthless wits at last,
that they conjure up phantoms to sit at the table with you. Come, man,
what petticoat business is this? Bestir yourself, fool.”

At that Gregory caught the drift of Joseph’s suspicions.

“Tis you are the fool,” he retorted angrily, springing to his feet, and
towering above his brother.

“It was no ghost sat with me, but Roland Marleigh, himself, in the
flesh, and strangely changed by time. So changed that I knew him not,
nor should I know him now but for that which, not ten minutes ago, I
overheard.”

His earnestness was too impressive, his sanity too obvious, and Joseph’s
suspicions were all scattered before it.

He caught Gregory’s wrist in a grip that made him wince, and forced him
back into his seat.

“Gadslife, man, what is it you mean?” he demanded through set teeth.
“Tell me.”

And forthwith Gregory told him of the manner of Kenneth’s coming to
Sheringham and to Castle Marleigh, accompanied by one Crispin Galliard,
the same that had been known for his mad exploits in the late wars as
“rakehelly Galliard,” and that was now known to the malignants as “The
Tavern Knight” for his debauched habits. Crispin’s mention of Roland
Marleigh on the night of his arrival now returned vividly to Gregory’s
mind, and he repeated it, ending with the story that that very evening
he had overheard Kenneth telling Cynthia.

“And this Galliard, then, is none other than that pup of insolence,
Roland Marleigh, grown into a dog of war?” quoth Joseph.

He was calm--singularly calm for one who had heard such news.

“There remains no doubt of it.”

“And you saw this man day by day, sat with him night by night over your
damned sack, and knew him not? Oddswounds, man, where were your eyes?”

“I may have been blind. But he is greatly changed. I would defy you,
Joseph, to have recognized him.”

Joseph sneered, and the flash of his eyes told of the contempt wherein
he held his brother’s judgment and opinions.

“Think not that, Gregory. I have cause enough to remember him,” said
Joseph, with an unpleasant laugh. Then as suddenly changing his tone for
one of eager anxiety:

“But the lad, Gregory, does he suspect, think you?”

“Not a whit. In that lies this fellow’s diabolical cunning. Learning of
Kenneth’s relations with us, he seized the opportunity Fate offered him
that night at Worcester, and bound the lad on oath to help him when he
should demand it, without disclosing the names of those against whom he
should require his services. The boy expects at any moment to be bidden
to go forth with him upon his mission of revenge, little dreaming that
it is here that that tragedy is to be played out.”

“This comes of your fine matrimonial projects for Cynthia,” muttered
Joseph acridly. He laughed his unpleasant laugh again, and for a spell
there was silence.

“To think, Gregory,” he broke out at last, “that for a fortnight he
should have been beneath this roof, and you should have found no means
of doing more effectively that which was done too carelessly eighteen
years ago.”

He spoke as coldly as though the matter were a trivial one. Gregory
shuddered and looked at his brother in alarm.

“What now, fool?” cried Joseph, scowling. “Are you as cowardly as you
are blind? Damn me, sir, it seems well that I am returned. I’ll have no
Marleigh plague my old age for me.” He paused a moment, then continued
in a quieter voice, but one whose ring was sinister beyond words:
“Tomorrow I shall find a way to draw this your dog of war to some
secluded ground. I have some skill,” he pursued, tapping his hilt as he
spoke, “besides, you shall be there, Gregory.” And he smiled darkly. “Is
there no other way?” asked Gregory, in distress.

“There was,” answered Joseph. “There was in Parliament. At Whitehall I
met a man--one Colonel Pride--a bloodthirsty old Puritan soldier, who
would give his right hand to see this Galliard hanged. Galliard, it
seems, slew the fellow’s son at Worcester. Had I but known,” he added
regretfully--“had your wits been keener, and you had discovered it and
sent me word, I had found means to help Colonel Pride to his revenge. As
it is”--he shrugged his shoulders--“there is not time.”

“It may be--” began Gregory, then stopped abruptly with an exclamation
that caused Joseph to wheel sharply round. The door had opened, and on
the threshold Sir Crispin Galliard stood, deferentially, hat in hand.

Joseph’s astonished glance played rapidly over him for a second. Then:

“Who the devil may you be?” he blurted out.

Despite his anxiety, Gregory chuckled at the question. The Tavern Knight
came forward. “I am Sir Crispin Galliard, at your service,” said he,
bowing. “I was told that the master of Marleigh was returned, and that
I should find you here, and I hasten, sir, to proffer you my thanks for
the generous shelter this house has given me this fortnight past.”

Whilst he spoke he measured Joseph with his eyes, and his glance was as
hateful as his words were civil. Joseph was lost in amazement. Little
trace was there in this fellow of the Roland Marleigh he had known.
Moreover, he had looked to find an older man, forgetting that Roland’s
age could not exceed thirty-eight. Then, again, the fading light, whilst
revealing the straight, supple lines of his lank figure, softened the
haggardness of the face and made him appear yet younger than the light
of day would have shown him.

In an instant Joseph had recovered from his surprise, and for all that
his mind misgave him tortured by a desire to learn whether Crispin was
aware of their knowledge concerning him--his smile was serene, and his
tones level and pleasant, as he made answer:

“Sir, you are very welcome. You have valiantly served one dear to us,
and the entertainment of our poor house for as long as you may deign to
honour it is but the paltriest of returns.”



CHAPTER XVI. THE RECKONING


Sir Crispin had heard naught of what was being said as he entered the
room wherein the brothers plotted against him, and he little dreamt that
his identity was discovered. He had but hastened to perform that which,
under ordinary circumstances, would have been a natural enough duty
towards the master of the house. He had been actuated also by an
impatience again to behold this Joseph Ashburn--the man who had dealt
him that murderous sword-thrust eighteen years ago. He watched him
attentively, and gathering from his scrutiny that here was a dangerous,
subtle man, different, indeed, to his dull-witted brother, he had
determined to act at once.

And so when he appeared in the hall at suppertime, he came armed and
booted, and equipped as for a journey.

Joseph was standing alone by the huge fire-place, his face to the
burning logs, and his foot resting upon one of the andirons. Gregory and
his daughter were talking together in the embrasure of a window. By the
other window, across the hall, stood Kenneth, alone and disconsolate,
gazing out at the drizzling rain that had begun to fall.

As Galliard descended, Joseph turned his head, and his eyebrows shot up
and wrinkled his forehead at beholding the knight’s equipment.

“How is this, Sir Crispin?” said he. “You are going a journey?”

“Too long already have I imposed myself upon the hospitality of Castle
Marleigh,” Crispin answered politely as he came and stood before the
blazing logs. “To-night, Mr. Ashburn, I go hence.”

A curious expression flitted across Joseph’s face. The next moment,
his brows still knit as he sought to fathom his sudden action, he was
muttering the formal regrets that courtesy dictated. But Crispin had
remarked that singular expression on Joseph’s face--fleeting though it
had been--and it flashed across his mind that Joseph knew him. And as he
moved away towards Cynthia and her father, he thanked Heaven that he had
taken such measures as he had thought wise and prudent for the carrying
out of his resolve.

Following him with a glance, Joseph asked himself whether Crispin had
discovered that he was recognized, and had determined to withdraw,
leaving his vengeance for another and more propitious season. In
answer--little knowing the measure of the man he dealt with--he told
himself it must be so, and having arrived at that conclusion, he there
and then determined that Crispin should not depart free to return and
plague them when he listed. Since Galliard shrank from forcing matters
to an issue, he himself would do it that very night, and thereby settle
for all time his business. And so ere he sat down to sup Joseph looked
to it that his sword lay at hand behind his chair at the table-head.

The meal was a quiet one enough. Kenneth was sulking ‘neath the fresh
ill-usage--as he deemed it--that he had suffered at Cynthia’s hands.
Cynthia, in her turn, was grave and silent. That story of Sir Crispin’s
sufferings gave her much to think of, as did also his departure, and
more than once did Galliard find her eyes fixed upon him with a look
half of pity, half of some other feeling that he was at a loss to
interpret. Gregory’s big voice was little heard. The sinister glitter
in his brother’s eye made him apprehensive and ill at ease. For him the
hour was indeed in travail and like to bring forth strange doings--but
not half so much as it was for Crispin and Joseph, each bent upon
forcing matters to a head ere they quitted that board. And yet but for
these two the meal would have passed off in dismal silence. Joseph
was at pains to keep suspicion from his guest, and with that intent he
talked gaily of this and that, told of slight matters that had befallen
him on his recent journey and of the doings that in London he had
witnessed, investing each trifling incident with a garb of wit that
rendered it entertaining.

And Galliard--actuated by the same motives grew reminiscent whenever
Joseph paused and let his nimble tongue--even nimblest at a table amuse
those present, or seem to amuse them, by a score of drolleries.

He drank deeply too, and this Joseph observed with satisfaction. But
here again he misjudged his man. Kenneth, who ate but little, seemed
also to have developed an enormous thirst, and Crispin grew at length
alarmed at that ever empty goblet so often filled. He would have need
of Kenneth ere the hour was out, and he rightly feared that did matters
thus continue, the lad’s aid was not to be reckoned with. Had Kenneth
sat beside him he might have whispered a word of restraint in his eat,
but the lad was on the other side of the board.

At one moment Crispin fancied that a look of intelligence passed from
Joseph to Gregory, and when presently Gregory set himself to ply both
him and the boy with wine, his suspicions became certainties, and he
grew watchful and wary.

Anon Cynthia rose. Upon the instant Galliard was also on his feet. He
escorted her to the foot of the staircase, and there:

“Permit me, Mistress Cynthia,” said he, “to take my leave of you. In an
hour or so I shall be riding away from Castle Marleigh.”

Her eyes sought the ground, and had he been observant of her he might
have noticed that she paled slightly.

“Fare you well, sir,” said she in a low voice. “May happiness attend
you.”

“Madam, I thank you. Fare you well.”

He bowed low. She dropped him a slight curtsey, and ascended the stairs.
Once as she reached the gallery above she turned. He had resumed his
seat at table, and was in the act of filling his glass. The servants had
withdrawn, and for half an hour thereafter they sat on, sipping their
wine, and making conversation--while Crispin drained bumper after
bumper and grew every instant more boisterous, until at length his
boisterousness passed into incoherence. His eyelids drooped heavily, and
his chin kept ever and anon sinking forward on to his breast.

Kenneth, flushed with wine, yet master of his wits, watched him with
contempt. This was the man Cynthia preferred to him! Contempt was there
also in Joseph Ashburn’s eye, mingled with satisfaction. He had not
looked to find the task so easy. At length he deemed the season ripe.

“My brother tells me that you were once acquainted with Roland
Marleigh,” said he.

“Aye,” he answered thickly. “I knew the dog--a merry, reckless soul,
d--n me. ‘Twas his recklessness killed him, poor devil--that and your
hand, Mr. Ashburn, so the story goes.”

“What story?”

“What story?” echoed Crispin. “The story that I heard. Do you say I
lie?” And, swaying in his chair, he sought to assume an air of defiance.

Joseph laughed in a fashion that made Kenneth’s blood run cold.

“Why, no, I don’t deny it. It was in fair fight he fell. Moreover, he
brought the duel upon himself.”

Crispin spoke no word in answer, but rose unsteadily to his feet, so
unsteadily that his chair was overset and fell with a crash behind him.
For a moment he surveyed it with a drunken leer, then went lurching
across the hall towards the door that led to the servants’ quarters.
The three men sat on, watching his antics in contempt, curiosity, and
amusement. They saw him gain the heavy oaken door and close it. They
heard the bolts rasp as he shot them home, and the lock click; and they
saw him withdraw the key and slip it into his pocket.

The cold smile still played round Joseph’s lips as Crispin turned to
face them again, and on Joseph’s lips did that same smile freeze as he
saw him standing there, erect and firm, his drunkenness all vanished,
and his eyes keen and fierce; as he heard the ring of his metallic
voice:

“You lie, Joseph Ashburn. It was no fair fight. It was no duel. It was
a foul, murderous stroke you dealt him in the back, thinking to butcher
him as you butchered his wife and his babe. But there is a God, Master
Ashburn,” he went on in an ever-swelling voice, “and I lived. Like a
salamander I came through the flames in which you sought to destroy all
trace of your vile deed. I lived, and I, Crispin Galliard, the debauched
Tavern Knight that was once Roland Marleigh, am here to demand a
reckoning.”

The very incarnation was he then of an avenger, as he stood towering
before them, his grim face livid with the passion into which he had
lashed himself as he spoke, his blazing eyes watching them in that
cunning, half-closed way that was his when his mood was dangerous.
And yet the only one that quailed was Kenneth, his ally, upon whom
comprehension burst with stunning swiftness.

Joseph recovered quickly from the surprise of Crispin’s suddenly
reassumed sobriety. He understood the trick that Galliard had played
upon them so that he might cut off their retreat in the only direction
in which they might have sought assistance, and he cursed himself for
not having foreseen it. Still, anxiety he felt none; his sword was to
his hand, and Gregory was armed; at the very worst they were two calm
and able men opposed to a half-intoxicated boy, and a man whom fury, he
thought, must strip of half his power. Probably, indeed, the lad would
side with them, despite his plighted word. Again, he had but to raise
his voice, and, though the door that Crispin had fastened was a stout
one, he never doubted but that his call would penetrate it and bring
his servants to his rescue.

And so, a smile of cynical unconcern returned to his lips and his answer
was delivered in a cold, incisive voice.

“The reckoning you have come to demand shall be paid you, sir. Rakehelly
Galliard is the hero of many a reckless deed, but my judgment is much
at fault if this prove not his crowning recklessness and his last one.
Gadswounds, sir, are you mad to come hither single-handed to beard the
lion in his den?”

“Rather the cur in his kennel,” sneered Crispin back. “Blood and wounds,
Master Joseph, think you to affright me with words?”

Still Joseph smiled, deeming himself master of the situation.

“Were help needed, the raising of my voice would bring it me. But it is
not. We are three to one.”

“You reckon wrongly. Mr. Stewart belongs to me to-night--bound by an
oath that ‘twould damn his soul to break, to help me when and where I
may call upon him; and I call upon him now. Kenneth, draw your sword.”

Kenneth groaned as he stood by, clasping and unclasping his hands.

“God’s curse on you,” he burst out. “You have tricked me, you have
cheated me.”

“Bear your oath in mind,” was the cold answer. “If you deem yourself
wronged by me, hereafter you shall have what satisfaction you demand.
But first fulfil me what you have sworn. Out with your blade, man.”

Still Kenneth hesitated, and but for Gregory’s rash action at that
critical juncture, it is possible that he would have elected to
break his plighted word. But Gregory fearing that he might determine
otherwise, resolved there and then to remove the chance of it. Whipping
out his sword, he made a vicious pass at the lad’s breast. Kenneth
avoided it by leaping backwards, but in an instant Gregory had sprung
after him, and seeing himself thus beset, Kenneth was forced to draw
that he might protect himself.

They stood in the space between the table and that part of the hall that
abutted on to the terrace; opposite to them, by the door which he
had closed, stood Crispin. At the table-head Joseph still sat cool,
self-contained, even amused.

He realized the rashness of Gregory’s attack upon one that might yet
have been won over to their side; but he never doubted that a few passes
would dispose of the lad’s opposition, and he sought not to interfere.
Then he saw Crispin advancing towards him slowly, his rapier naked in
his hand, and he was forced to look to himself. He caught at the sword
that stood behind him, and leaping to his feet he sprang forward to
meet his grim antagonist. Galliard’s eyes flashed out a look of joy, he
raised his rapier, and their blades met.

To the clash of their meeting came an echoing clash from beyond the
table.

“Hold, sir!” Kenneth had cried, as Gregory bore down upon him. But
Gregory’s answer had been a lunge which the boy had been forced to
parry. Taking that crossing of blades for a sign of opposition, Gregory
thrust again more viciously. Kenneth parried narrowly, his blade
pointing straight at his aggressor. He saw the opening, and both
instinct and the desire to repel Gregory’s onslaught drew him into
attempting a riposte, which drove Gregory back until his shoulders
touched the panels of the wall. Simultaneously the boy’s foot struck the
back of the chair which in rising Crispin had overset, and he stumbled.
How it happened he scarcely knew, but as he hurtled forward his blade
slid along his opponent’s, and entering Gregory’s right shoulder pinned
him to the wainscot.

Joseph heard the tinkle of a falling blade, and assumed it to be
Kenneth’s. For the rest he was just then too busy to dare withdraw for
a second his eyes from Crispin’s. Until that hour Joseph Ashburn had
accounted himself something of a swordsman, and more than a match
for most masters of the weapon. But in Crispin he found a fencer of a
quality such as he had never yet encountered. Every feint, every botte
in his catalogue had he paraded in quick succession, yet ever with the
same result--his point was foiled and put aside with ease.

Desperately he fought now, darting that point of his hither and thither
in and out whenever the slightest opening offered; yet ever did it
meet the gentle averting pressure of Crispin’s blade. He fought on and
marvelled as the seconds went by that Gregory came not to his aid. Then
the sickening thought that perhaps Gregory was overcome occurred to
him. In such a case he must reckon upon himself alone. He cursed
the over-confidence that had led him into that ever-fatal error of
underestimating his adversary. He might have known that one who had
acquired Sir Crispin’s fame was no ordinary man, but one accustomed to
face great odds and master them. He might call for help.

He marvelled as the thought occurred to him that the clatter of their
blades had not drawn his servants from their quarters. Fencing still, he
raised his voice:

“Ho, there! John, Stephen!”

“Spare your breath,” growled the knight. “I dare swear you’ll have need
of it. None will hear you, call as you will. I gave your four henchmen
a flagon of wine wherein to drink to my safe journey hence. They have
emptied it ere this, I make no doubt, and a single glass of it would set
the hardest toper asleep for the round of the clock.”

An oath was Joseph’s only answer--a curse it was upon his own folly and
assurance. A little while ago he had thought to have drawn so tight
a net about this ruler, and here was he now taken in its very toils,
well-nigh exhausted and in his enemy’s power.

It occurred to him then that Crispin stayed his hand. That he fenced
only on the defensive, and he wondered what might his motive be. He
realized that he was mastered, and that at any moment Galliard might
send home his blade. He was bathed from head to foot in a sweat that was
at once of exertion and despair. A frenzy seized him. Might he not yet
turn to advantage this hesitancy of Crispin’s to strike the final blow?

He braced himself for a supreme effort, and turning his wrist from a
simulated thrust in the first position, he doubled, and stretching out,
lunged vigorously in quarte. As he lengthened his arm in the stroke
there came a sudden twitch at his wrist; the weapon was twisted from his
grasp, and he stood disarmed at Crispin’s mercy.

A gurgling cry broke despite him from his lips, and his eyes grew wide
in a sickly terror as they encountered the knight’s sinister glance. Not
three paces behind him was the wall, and on it, within the hand’s easy
reach, hung many a trophied weapon that might have served him then. But
the fascination of fear was upon him, benumbing his wits and paralysing
his limbs, with the thought that the next pulsation of his tumultuous
heart would prove its last. The calm, unflinching courage that had
been Joseph’s only virtue was shattered, and his iron will that had
unscrupulously held hitherto his very conscience in bondage was turned
to water now that he stood face to face with death.

Eons of time it seemed to him were sped since the sword was wrenched
from his hand, and still the stroke he awaited came not; still Crispin
stood, sinister and silent before him, watching him with magnetic,
fascinating eyes--as the snake watches the bird--eyes from which Joseph
could not withdraw his own, and yet before which it seemed to him that
he quaked and shrivelled.

The candles were burning low in their sconces, and the corners of that
ample, gloomy hall were filled with mysterious shadows that formed a
setting well attuned to the grim picture made by those two figures--the
one towering stern and vengeful, the other crouching palsied and livid.

Beyond the table, and with the wounded Gregory--lying unconscious and
bleeding--at his feet, stood Kenneth looking on in silence, in wonder
and in some horror too.

To him also, as he watched, the seconds seemed minutes from the time
when Crispin had disarmed his opponent until with a laugh--short and
sudden as a stab--he dropped his sword and caught his victim by the
throat.

However fierce the passion that had actuated Crispin, it had been held
hitherto in strong subjection. But now at last it suddenly welled up and
mastered him, causing him to cast all restraint to the winds, to abandon
reason, and to give way to the lust of rage that rendered ungovernable
his mood.

Like a burst of flame from embers that have been smouldering was the
upleaping of his madness, transfiguring his face and transforming his
whole being. A new, unconquerable strength possessed him; his pulses
throbbed swiftly and madly with the quickened coursing of his blood, and
his soul was filled with the cruel elation that attends a lust about to
be indulged the elation of the beast about to rend its prey.

He was pervaded by the desire to wreak slowly and with his hands the
destruction of his broken enemy. To have passed his sword through him
would have been too swiftly done; the man would have died, and Crispin
would have known nothing of his sufferings. But to take him thus by
the throat; slowly to choke the life’s breath out of him; to feel his
desperate, writhing struggles; to be conscious of every agonized twitch
of his sinews, to watch the purpling face, the swelling veins, the
protruding eyes filled with the dumb horror of his agony; to hold him
thus--each second becoming a distinct, appreciable division of time--and
thus to take what payment he could for all the blighted years that lay
behind him--this he felt would be something like revenge.

Meanwhile the shock of surprise at the unlooked-for movement had
awakened again the man in Joseph. For a second even Hope knocked at
his heart. He was sinewy and active, and perchance he might yet make
Galliard repent that he had discarded his rapier. The knight’s reason
for doing so he thought he had in Crispin’s contemptuous words:

“Good steel were too great an honour for you, Mr. Ashburn.”

And as he spoke, his lean, nervous fingers tightened about Joseph’s
throat in a grip that crushed the breath from him, and with it the
new-born hope of proving master in his fresh combat. He had not reckoned
with this galley-weaned strength of Crispin’s, a strength that was a
revelation to Joseph as he felt himself almost lifted from the ground,
and swung this way and that, like a babe in the hands of a grown man.
Vain were his struggles. His strength ebbed fast; the blood, held
overlong in his head, was already obscuring his vision, when at last the
grip relaxed, and his breathing was freed. As his sight cleared again
he found himself back in his chair at the table-head, and beside him Sir
Crispin, his left hand resting upon the board, his right grasping once
more the sword, and his eyes bent mockingly and evilly upon his victim.

Kenneth, looking on, could not repress a shudder. He had known Crispin
for a tempestuous man quickly moved to wrath, and he had oftentimes seen
anger make terrible his face and glance. But never had he seen aught
in him to rival this present frenzy; it rendered satanical the baleful
glance of his eyes and the awful smile of hate and mockery with which he
gazed at last upon the helpless quarry that he had waited eighteen
years to bring to earth. “I would,” said Crispin, in a harsh, deliberate
voice, “that you had a score of lives, Master Joseph. As it is I have
done what I could. Two agonies have you undergone already, and I am
inclined to mercy. The end is at hand. If you have prayers to say, say
them, Master Ashburn, though I doubt me it will be wasted breath--you
are over-ripe for hell.”

“You mean to kill me,” he gasped, growing yet a shade more livid.

“Does the suspicion of it but occur to you?” laughed Crispin, “and yet
twice already have I given you a foretaste of death. Think you I but
jested?”

Joseph’s teeth clicked together in a snap of determination. That sneer
of Crispin’s acted upon him as a blow--but as a blow that arouses the
desire to retaliate rather than lays low. He braced himself for fresh
resistance; not of action, for that he realized was futile, but of
argument.

“It is murder that you do,” he cried.

“No; it is justice. It has been long on the way, but it has come at
last.”

“Bethink you, Mr. Marleigh--”

“Call me not by that name,” cried the other harshly, fearfully. “I have
not borne it these eighteen years, and thanks to what you have made
me, it is not meet that I should bear it now.” There was a pause. Then
Joseph spoke again with great calm and earnestness.

“Bethink you, Sir Crispin, of what you are about to do. It can benefit
you in naught.”

“Oddslife, think you it cannot? Think you it will benefit me naught to
see you earn at last your reward?”

“You may have dearly to pay for what at best must prove a fleeting
satisfaction.”

“Not a fleeting one, Joseph,” he laughed. “But one the memory of which
shall send me rejoicing through what years or days of life be left me. A
satisfaction that for eighteen years I have been waiting to experience;
though the moment after it be mine find me stark and cold.”

“Sir Crispin, you are in enmity with the Parliament--an outlaw almost. I
have some influence much influence. By exerting it--”

“Have done, sir!” cried Crispin angrily. “You talk in vain. What to
me is life, or aught that life can give? If I have so long endured the
burden of it, it has been so that I might draw from it this hour. Do you
think there is any bribe you could offer would turn me from my purpose?”

A groan from Gregory, who was regaining consciousness, drew his
attention aside.

“Truss him up, Kenneth,” he commanded, pointing to the recumbent
figure. “How? Do you hesitate? Now, as God lives, I’ll be obeyed; or you
shall have an unpleasant reminder of the oath you swore me!”

With a look of loathing the lad dropped on his knees to do as he was
bidden. Then of a sudden:

“I have not the means,” he announced.

“Fool, does he not wear a sword-belt and a sash? Come, attend to it!”

“Why do you force me to do this?” the lad still protested passionately.
“You have tricked and cheated me, yet I have kept my oath and rendered
you the assistance you required. They are in your power now, can you not
do the rest yourself?”

“On my soul, Master Stewart, I am over-patient with you! Are we to
wrangle at every step before you’ll take it? I will have your assistance
through this matter as you swore to give it. Come, truss me that fellow,
and have done with words.”

His fierceness overthrew the boy’s outburst of resistance. Kenneth had
wit enough to see that his mood was not one to brook much opposition,
and so, with an oath and a groan, he went to work to pinion Gregory.

Then Joseph spoke again. “Weigh well this act of yours, Sir Crispin,”
 he cried. “You are still young; much of life lies yet before you. Do not
wantonly destroy it by an act that cannot repair the past.”

“But it can avenge it, Joseph. As for my life, you destroyed it years
ago. The future has naught to offer me; the present has this.” And he
drew back his sword to strike.



CHAPTER XVII. JOSEPH DRIVES A BARGAIN


A new terror leapt into Joseph’s eyes at that movement of Crispin’s,
and for the third time that night did he taste the agony that is Death’s
forerunner. Yet Galliard delayed the stroke. He held his sword poised,
the point aimed at Joseph’s breast, and holding, he watched him, marking
each phase of the terror reflected upon his livid countenance. He was
loth to strike, for to strike would mean to end this exquisite torture
of horror to which he was subjecting him.

Broken Joseph had been before and passive; now of a sudden he grew
violent again, but in a different way. He flung himself upon his knees
before Sir Crispin, and passionately he pleaded for the sparing of his
miserable life.

Crispin looked on with an eye both of scorn and of cold relish. It was
thus he wished to see him, broken and agonized, suffering thus something
of all that which he himself had suffered through despair in the years
that were sped. With satisfaction then he watched his victim’s agony;
he watched it too with scorn and some loathing--for a craven was in his
eyes an ugly sight, and Joseph in that moment was truly become as vile a
coward as ever man beheld. His parchment-like face was grey and mottled,
his brow bedewed with sweat; his lips were blue and quivering, his eyes
bloodshot and almost threatening tears.

In the silence of one who waits stood Crispin, listening, calm and
unmoved, as though he heard not, until Joseph’s whining prayers
culminated in an offer to make reparation. Then Crispin broke in at
length with an impatient gesture.

“What reparation can you make, you murderer? Can you restore to me the
wife and child you butchered eighteen years ago?”

“I can restore your child at least,” returned the other. “I can and will
restore him to you if you but stay your hand. That and much more will I
do to repair the past.”

Unconsciously Crispin lowered his sword-arm, and for a full minute he
stood and stared at Joseph. His jaw was fallen and the grim firmness all
gone from his face, and replaced by amazement, then unbelief followed
by inquiry; then unbelief again. The pallor of his cheeks seemed to
intensify. At last, however, he broke into a hard laugh.

“What lie is this you offer me? Zounds, man, are you not afraid?”

“It is no lie,” Joseph cried, in accents so earnest that some of the
unbelief passed again from Galliard’s face. “It is the truth-God’s
truth. Your son lives.”

“Hell-hound, it is a lie! On that fell night, as I swooned under
your cowardly thrust, I heard you calling to your brother to slit the
squalling bastard’s throat. Those were your very words, Master Joseph.”

“I own I bade him do it, but I was not obeyed. He swore we should give
the babe a chance of life. It should never know whose son it was, he
said, and I agreed. We took the boy away. He has lived and thrived.”

The knight sank on to a chair as though bereft of strength. He sought to
think, but thinking coherently he could not. At last:

“How shall I know that you are not lying? What proof can you advance?”
 he demanded hoarsely.

“I swear that what I have told you is true. I swear it by the cross
of our Redeemer!” he protested, with a solemnity that was not without
effect upon Crispin. Nevertheless, he sneered.

“I ask for proofs, man, not oaths. What proofs can you afford me?”

“There are the man and the woman whom the lad was reared by.”

“And where shall I find them?”

Joseph opened his lips to answer, then closed them again. In his
eagerness he had almost parted with the information which he now
proposed to make the price of his life. He regained confidence at
Crispin’s tone and questions, gathering from both that the knight was
willing to believe if proof were set before him. He rose to his feet,
and when next he spoke his voice had won back much of its habitual calm
deliberateness.

“That,” said he, “I will tell you when you have promised to go hence,
leaving Gregory and me unharmed. I will supply you with what money you
may need, and I will give you a letter to those people, so couched
that what they tell you by virtue of it shall be a corroboration of my
words.”

His elbow resting upon the table, and his hand to his brow so that it
shaded his eyes, sat Crispin long in thought, swayed by emotions and
doubts, the like of which he had never yet known in the whole of his
chequered life. Was Joseph lying to him?

That was the question that repeatedly arose, and oddly enough, for all
his mistrust of the man, he was inclined to account true the ring of his
words. Joseph watched him with much anxiety and some hope.

At length Crispin withdrew his hands from eyes that were grown haggard,
and rose.

“Let us see the letter that you will write,” said he. “There you have
pen, ink, and paper. Write.”

“You promise?” asked Joseph.

“I will tell you when you have written.”

In a hand that shook somewhat, Joseph wrote a few lines, then handed
Crispin the sheet, whereon he read:

The bearer of this is Sir Crispin Galliard, who is intimately interested
in the matter that lies betwixt us, and whom I pray you answer fully and
accurately the questions he may put you in that connexion.

“I understand,” said Crispin slowly. “Yes, it will serve. Now the
superscription.” And he returned the paper.

Ashburn was himself again by now. He realized the advantage he had
gained, and he would not easily relinquish it.

“I shall add the superscription,” said he calmly, “when you swear to
depart without further molesting us.”

Crispin paused a moment, weighing the position well in his mind. If
Joseph lied to him now, he would find means to return, he told himself,
and so he took the oath demanded.

Joseph dipped his pen, and paused meditatively to watch a drop of ink,
wherewith it was overladen, fall back into the horn. The briefest of
pauses was it, yet it was not the accident it appeared to be. Hitherto
Joseph had been as sincere as he had been earnest, intent alone upon
saving his life at all costs, and forgetting in his fear of the present
the dangers that the future might hold for him were Crispin Galliard
still at large. But in that second of dipping his quill, assured that
the peril of the moment was overcome, and that Crispin would go forth as
he said, the devil whispered in his ear a cunning and vile suggestion.
As he watched the drop of ink roll from his pen-point, he remembered
that in London there dwelt at the sign of the Anchor, in Thames Street,
one Colonel Pride, whose son this Galliard had slain, and who, did he
once lay hands upon him, was not like to let him go again. In a second
was the thought conceived and the determination taken, and as he folded
the letter and set upon it the superscription, Joseph felt that he could
have cried out in his exultation at the cunning manner in which he was
outwitting his enemy.

Crispin took the package, and read thereon:

This is to Mr. Henry Lane, at the sign of the Anchor, Thames Street,
London.

The name was a fictitious one--one that Joseph had set down upon the
spur of the moment, his intention being to send a messenger that should
outstrip Sir Crispin, and warn Colonel Pride of his coming.

“It is well,” was Crispin’s only comment. He, too, was grown calm again
and fully master of himself. He placed the letter carefully within the
breast of his doublet.

“If you have lied to me, if this is but a shift to win your miserable
life, rest assured, Master Ashburn, that you have but put off the day
for a very little while.”

It was on Joseph’s lips to answer that none of us are immortal, but
he bethought him that the pleasantry might be ill-timed, and bowed in
silence.

Galliard took his hat and cloak from the chair on which he had placed
them upon descending that evening. Then he turned again to Joseph.

“You spoke of money a moment ago,” he said, in the tones of one
demanding what is his own the tones of a gentleman speaking to his
steward. “I will take two hundred Caroluses. More I cannot carry in
comfort.”

Joseph gasped at the amount. For a second it even entered his mind to
resist the demand. Then he remembered that there was a brace of pistols
in his study; if he could get those he would settle matters there and
then without the aid of Colonel Pride.

“I will fetch the money,” said he, betraying his purpose by his
alacrity.

“By your leave, Master Ashburn, I will come with you.”

Joseph’s eyes flashed him a quick look of baffled hate.

“As you will,” said he, with an ill grace.

As they passed out, Crispin turned to Kenneth.

“Remember, sir, you are still in my service. See that you keep good
watch.”

Kenneth bent his head without replying. But Master Gregory required
little watching. He lay a helpless, half-swooning heap upon the floor,
which he had smeared with the blood oozing from his wounded shoulder.
Even were he untrussed, there was little to be feared from him.

During the brief while they were alone together, Kenneth did not so much
as attempt to speak to him. He sat himself down upon the nearest chair,
and with his chin in his hands and his elbows on his knees he pondered
over the miserable predicament into which Sir Crispin had got him, and
more bitter than ever it had been was his enmity at that moment towards
the knight. That Galliard should be upon the eve of finding his son, and
a sequel to the story he had heard from him that night in Worcester,
was to Kenneth a thing of no interest or moment. Galliard had ruined him
with these Ashburns. He could never now hope to win the hand of Cynthia,
to achieve which he had been willing to turn both fool and knave--aye,
had turned both. There was naught left him but to return him to the
paltry Scottish estate of his fathers, there to meet the sneers of those
who no doubt had heard that he was gone South to marry a great English
heiress.

That at such a season he could think of this but serves to prove the
shallow nature of his feelings. A love was his that had gain and
vanity for its foundation--in fact, it was no love at all. For what he
accounted love for Cynthia was but the love of himself, which through
Cynthia he sought to indulge.

He cursed the ill-luck that had brought Crispin into his life. He cursed
Crispin for the evil he had suffered from him, forgetting that but for
Crispin he would have been carrion a month ago and more.

Deep at his bitter musings was he when the door opened again to admit
Joseph, followed by Galliard. The knight came across the hall and
stooped to look at Gregory.

“You may untruss him, Kenneth, when I am gone,” said he. “And in a
quarter of an hour from now you are released from your oath to me. Fare
you well,” he added with unusual gentleness, and turning a glance that
was almost regretful upon the lad. “We are not like to meet again, but
should we, I trust it may be in happier times. If I have harmed you in
this business, remember that my need was great. Fare you well.” And he
held out his hand.

“Take yourself to hell, sir!” answered Kenneth, turning his back upon
him. The ghost of an evil smile played round Joseph Ashburn’s lips as he
watched them.



CHAPTER XVIII. COUNTER-PLOT


So soon as Sir Crispin had taken his departure, and whilst yet the beat
of his horse’s hoofs was to be distinguished above the driving storm of
rain and wind without, Joseph hastened across the hall to the servants’
quarters. There he found his four grooms slumbering deeply, their faces
white and clammy, and their limbs twisted into odd, helpless attitudes.
Vainly did he rain down upon them kicks and curses; arouse them he could
not from the stupor in whose thrall they lay.

And so, seizing a lanthorn, he passed out to the stables, whence Crispin
had lately taken his best nag, and with his own hands he saddled a
horse. His lips were screwed into a curious smile--a smile that still
lingered upon them when presently he retraced his steps to the room
where his brother sat with Kenneth.

In his absence the lad had dressed Gregory’s wound; he had induced him
to take a little wine, and had set him upon a chair, in which he now lay
back, white and exhausted.

“The quarter of an hour is passed, sir,” said Joseph coldly, as he
entered.

Kenneth made no sign that he heard. He sat on like a man in a dream. His
eyes that saw nothing were bent upon Gregory’s pale, flabby face.

“The quarter of an hour is passed, sir,” Joseph repeated in a louder
voice.

Kenneth looked up, then rose and sighed, passing his hand wearily across
his forehead.

“I understand, sir,” he replied in a low voice. “You mean that I must
go?”

Joseph waited a moment before replying. Then:

“It is past midnight,” he said slowly, “and the weather is wild. You may
lie here until morning, if you are so minded. But go you must then,”
 he added sternly. “I need scarce say, sir, that you must have no speech
with Mistress Cynthia, nor that never again must you set foot within
Castle Marleigh.”

“I understand, sir; I understand. But you deal hardly with me.”

Joseph raised his eyebrows in questioning surprise.

“I was the victim of my oath, given when I knew not against whom my hand
was to be lifted. Oh, sir, am I to suffer all my life for a fault that
was not my own? You, Master Gregory,” he cried, turning passionately to
Cynthia’s father, “you are perchance more merciful? You understand my
position--how I was forced into it.”

Gregory opened his heavy eyes.

“A plague on you, Master Stewart,” he groaned. “I understand that you
have given me a wound that will take a month to heal.”

“It was an accident, sir. I swear it was an accident!”

“To swear this and that appears to be your chief diversion in life,”
 growled Gregory for answer. “You had best go; we are not likely to
listen to excuses.”

“Did you rather suggest a remedy,” Joseph put in quietly, “we might hear
you.”

Kenneth swung round and faced him, hope brightening his eyes.

“What remedy is there? How can I undo what I have done? Show me but the
way, and I’ll follow it, no matter where it leads!”

Such protestations had Joseph looked to hear, and he was hard put to
it to dissemble his satisfaction. For a while he was silent, making
pretence to ponder. At length:

“Kenneth,” he said, “you may in some measure repair the evil you have
done, and if you are ready to undergo some slight discomfort, I shall be
willing on my side to forget this night.”

“Tell me how, sir, and whatever the cost I will perform it!”

He gave no thought to the fact that Crispin’s grievance against the
Ashburns was well-founded; that they had wrecked his life even as they
had sought to destroy it; even as eighteen years ago they had destroyed
his wife’s. His only thought was Cynthia; his only wish was to possess
her. Besides that, justice and honour itself were of small account.

“It is but a slight matter,” answered Joseph. “A matter that I might
entrust to one of my grooms.”

That whilst his grooms lay drugged the matter was so pressing that his
messenger must set out that very night, Joseph did not think of adding.

“I would, sir,” answered the boy, “that the task were great and
difficult.”

“Yes, yes,” answered Joseph with biting sarcasm, “we are acquainted with
both your courage and your resource.” He sat silent and thoughtful for
some moments, then with a sudden sharp glance at the lad:

“You shall have this chance of setting yourself right with us,” he said.
Then abruptly he added.

“Go make ready for a journey. You must set out within the hour for
London. Take what you may require and arm yourself; then return to me
here.”

Gregory, who, despite his sluggish wits, divined--partly, at least--what
was afoot, made shift to speak. But his brother silenced him with a
glance.

“Go,” Joseph said to the boy. And, without comment, Kenneth rose and
left them.

“What would you do?” asked Gregory when the door had closed.

“Make doubly sure of that ruffian,” answered Joseph coldly. “Colonel
Pride might be absent when he arrives, and he might learn that none
of the name of Lane dwells at the Anchor in Thames Street. It would be
fatal to awaken his suspicions and bring him back to us.”

“But surely Richard or Stephen might carry your errand?”

“They might were they not so drugged that they cannot be aroused. I
might even go myself, but it is better so.” He laughed softly. “There is
even comedy in it. Kenneth shall outride our bloodthirsty knight to warn
Pride of his coming, and when he comes he will walk into the hands of
the hangman. It will be a surprise for him. For the rest I shall keep
my promise concerning his son. He shall have news of him from Pride--but
when too late to be of service.”

Gregory shuddered.

“Fore God, Joseph, ‘tis a foul thing you do,” he cried. “Sooner would I
never set eyes on the lad again. Let him go his ways as you intended.”

“I never did intend it. What trustier messenger could I find now that
I have lent him zest by fright? To win Cynthia, we may rely upon him
safely to do that in which another might fail.”

“Joseph, you will roast in hell for it.”

Joseph laughed him to scorn.

“To bed with you, you canting hypocrite; your wound makes you
light-headed.”

It was a half-hour ere Kenneth returned, booted, cloaked, and ready for
his journey. He found Joseph alone, busily writing, and in obedience to
a sign he sat him down to wait.

A few minutes passed, then, with a final scratch and splutter Joseph
flung down his pen. With the sandbox tilted in the air, like a dicer
about to make his throw, he looked at the lad.

“You will spare neither whip nor spur until you arrive in London, Master
Kenneth. You must ride night and day; the matter is of the greatest
urgency.”

Kenneth nodded that he understood, and Joseph sprinkled the sand over
the written page.

“I know not when you should reach London so that you may be in time,
but,” he continued, and as he spoke he creased the paper and poured
the superfluous sand back into the box, “I should say that by midnight
to-morrow your message should be delivered. Aye,” he continued, in
answer to the lad’s gasp of surprise, “it is hard riding, I know, but
if you would win Cynthia you must do it. Spare neither money nor
horseflesh, and keep to the saddle until you are in Thames Street.”

He folded the letter, sealed it, and wrote the superscription: “This to
Colonel Pride, at the sign of the Anchor in Thames Street.”

He rose and handed the package to Kenneth, to whom the superscription
meant nothing, since he had not seen that borne by the letter which
Crispin had received.

“You will deliver this intact, and with your own hands, to Colonel Pride
in person--none other. Should he be absent from Thames Street upon your
arrival, seek him out instantly, wherever he may be, and give him this.
Upon your faithful observance of these conditions remember that your
future depends. If you are in time, as indeed I trust and think you will
be, you may account yourself Cynthia’s husband. Fail and--well, you need
not return here.”

“I shall not fail, sir,” cried Kenneth. “What man can do to accomplish
the journey within twenty-four hours, I will do.”

He would have stopped to thank Joseph for the signal favour of this
chance of rehabilitation, but Joseph cut him short.

“Take this purse,” he cried impatiently. “You will find a horse ready
saddled in the stables. Ride it hard. It will bear you to Norton at
least. There get you a fresh one, and when that is done, another. Now be
off.”



CHAPTER XIX. THE INTERRUPTED JOURNEY


When the Tavern Knight left the gates of Marleigh Park behind him on
that wild October night, he drove deep the rowels of his spurs, and set
his horse at a perilous gallop along the road to Norwich. The action was
of instinct rather than of thought. In the turbulent sea of his mind,
one clear current there was, and one only--the knowledge that he was
bound for London for news of this son of his whom Joseph told him lived.
He paused not even to speculate what manner of man his child was grown,
nor yet what walk of life he had been reared to tread. He lived: he was
somewhere in the world; that for the time sufficed him. The Ashburns
had not, it seemed, destroyed quite everything that made his life worth
enduring--the life that so often and so wantonly he had exposed.

His son lived, and in London he should have news of him. To London then
must he get himself with all dispatch, and he swore to take no rest
until he reached it. And with that firm resolve to urge him, he ploughed
his horse’s flanks, and sped on through the night. The rain beat in
his face, yet he scarce remarked it, as again more by instinct than by
reason--he buried his face to the eyes in the folds of his cloak.

Later the rain ceased, and clearer grew the line of light betwixt the
hedgerows, by which his horse had steered its desperate career. Fitfully
a crescent moon peered out from among the wind-driven clouds. The poor
ruffler was fallen into meditation, and noted not that his nag did no
more than amble. He roused himself of a sudden when half-way down
a gentle slope some five miles from Norwich, and out of temper at
discovering the sluggishness of the pace, he again gave the horse a
taste of the spurs. The action was fatal. The incline was become a bed
of sodden clay, and he had not noticed with what misgivings his horse
pursued the treacherous footing. The sting of the spur made the animal
bound forward, and the next instant a raucous oath broke from Crispin
as the nag floundered and dropped on its knees. Like a stone from a
catapult Galliard flew over its head and rolled down the few remaining
yards of the slope into a very lake of slimy water at the bottom.

Down this same hill, some twenty minutes later, came Kenneth Stewart
with infinite precaution. He was in haste--a haste more desperate
far than even Crispin’s. But his character held none of Galliard’s
recklessness, nor were his wits fogged by such news as Crispin had heard
that night. He realized that to be swift he must be cautious in his
night-riding. And so, carefully he came, with a firm hand on the reins,
yet leaving it to his horse to find safe footing.

He had reached the level ground in safety, and was about to put his nag
to a smarter pace, when of a sudden from the darkness of the hedge he
was hailed by a harsh, metallic voice, the sound of which sent a tremor
through him.

“Sir, you are choicely met, whoever you may be. I have suffered a
mischance down that cursed hill, and my horse has gone lame.”

Kenneth kept his cloak over his mouth, trusting that the muffling would
sufficiently disguise his accents as he made answer.

“I am in haste, my master. What is your will?”

“Why, marry, so am I in haste. My will is your horse, sir. Oh, I’m no
robber. I’ll pay you for it, and handsomely. But have it I must. ‘Twill
be no great discomfort for you to walk to Norwich. You may do it in an
hour.”

“My horse, sir, is not for sale,” was Kenneth’s brief answer. “Give you
good night.”

“Hold, man! Blood and hell, stop! If you’ll not sell the worthless beast
to serve a gentleman, I’ll shoot it under you. Make your choice.”

Kenneth caught the gleam of a pistol-barrel pointed at him from the
hedge, and he shivered. What was he to do? Every instant was precious to
him. As in a flash it came to him that perchance Sir Crispin also rode
to London, and that it was expected of him to arrive there first if he
were to be in time. Swiftly he weighed the odds in his mind, and took
the determination to dash past Sir Crispin, risking his aim and trusting
to the dark to befriend him.

But even as he determined thus, what moon there was became unveiled, and
the light of it fell upon his face, which was turned towards Galliard.
An exclamation of surprise escaped Sir Crispin.

“‘Slife, Master Stewart, I knew not your voice. Whither do you ride?”

“What is it to you? Have you not wrought enough of evil for me? Am I
never to be rid of you? Castle Marleigh,” he added, with well-feigned
anger, “has closed its doors upon me. What does it signify to you
whither I ride? Suffer me leastways to pass unmolested, and to leave
you.”

Kenneth’s passionate reproaches cut Galliard keenly. He held himself at
that moment a very knave for having dragged this boy into his work of
vengeance, and thereby cast a blight upon his life. He sought for words
wherein to give expression to something of what he felt, then realizing
how futile and effete all words must prove, he waved his hand in the
direction of the road.

“Go, Master Stewart,” he muttered. “Your way is clear.”

And Kenneth, waiting for no second invitation, rode on and left him. He
rode with gratitude in his heart to the Providence that had caused him
so easily to overcome an obstacle that at first he had held impassable.
Stronger grew in his mind the conviction that to fulfil the mission
Joseph required of him, he must reach London before Sir Crispin. The
knowledge that he was ahead of him, and that he must derive an ample
start from Galliard’s mishap, warmed him like wine.

His mind thus relieved from its weight of anxiety, he little recked
fatigue, and such excellent use did he make of his horse that he reached
Newmarket on it an hour before the morrow’s moon.

An hour he rested there, and broke his fast. Then on a fresh horse--a
powerful and willing animal he set out once more.

By half-past two he was at Newport. But so hard had he ridden that man
and beast alike were in a lather of sweat, and whilst he himself felt
sick and tired, the horse was utterly unfit to bear him farther. For
half an hour he rested there, and made a meal whose chief constituent
was brandy. Then on a third horse he started upon the last stage of his
journey.

The wind was damp and penetrating; the roads veritable morasses of mud,
and overhead gloomy banks of dark, grey clouds moved sluggishly, the
light that was filtered through them giving the landscape a bleak and
dreary aspect. In his jaded condition Kenneth soon became a prey to the
depression of it. His lightness of heart of some dozen hours ago was
now all gone, and not even the knowledge that his mission was well-nigh
accomplished sufficed to cheer him. To add to his discomfort a fine
rain set in towards four o’clock, and when a couple of hours later he
clattered along the road cut through a wooded slope in the direction of
Waltham, he was become a very limp and lifeless individual.

He noticed not the horsemen moving cautiously among the closely-set
trees on either side of the road. It was growing prematurely dark, and
objects were none too distinct. And thus it befell that when from the
reverie of dejection into which he had fallen he was suddenly aroused by
the thud of hoofs, he looked up to find two mounted men barring the road
some ten yards in front of him. Their attitude was unmistakable, and it
crossed poor Kenneth’s mind that he was beset by robbers. But a second
glance showed him their red cloaks and military steel caps, and he knew
them for soldiers of the Commonwealth.

Hearing the beat of hoofs behind him, he looked over his shoulder to see
four other troopers closing rapidly down upon him. Clearly he was the
object of their attention. He had been a fool not to have perceived this
earlier, and his heart misgave him, for all that had he paused to think
he must have realized that he had naught to fear, and that in this some
mistake must lie.

“Halt!” thundered the deep voice of the sergeant, who, with a trooper,
held the road in front.

Kenneth drew up within a yard of them, conscious that the man’s dark
eyes were scanning him sharply from beneath his morion.

“Who are you, sir?” the bass voice demanded.

Alas for the vanity of poor human mites! Even Kenneth, who never yet had
achieved aught for the cause he served, grew of a sudden chill to think
that perchance this sergeant might recognize his name for one that he
had heard before associated with deeds performed on the King’s behalf.

For a second he hesitated; then:

“Blount,” he stammered, “Jasper Blount.”

He little thought how that fruit of his vanity was to prove his undoing
thereafter.

“Verily,” sneered the sergeant, “it almost seemed you had forgotten it.”
 And from that sneer Kenneth gathered with fresh dread that the fellow
mistrusted him.

“Whence are you, Master Blount?”

Again Kenneth hesitated. Then recalling Ashburn’s high favour with the
Parliament, and seeing that it could but advance his cause to state the
true sum of his journey:

“From Castle Marleigh,” he replied.

“Verily, sir, you seem yet in some doubt. Whither do you go?”

“To London.”

“On what errand?” The sergeant’s questions fell swift as sword-strokes.

“With letters for Colonel Pride.”

The reply, delivered more boldly than Kenneth had spoken hitherto, was
not without its effect.

“From whom are these letters?”

“From Mr. Joseph Ashburn, of Castle Marleigh.”

“Produce them.”

With trembling fingers Kenneth complied. This the sergeant observed as
he took the package.

“What ails you, man?” quoth he.

“Naught, sir ‘tis the cold.”

The sergeant scanned the package and its seal. In a measure it was a
passport, and he was forced to the conclusion that this man was indeed
the messenger he represented himself. Certainly he had not the air nor
the bearing of him for whom they waited, nor did the sergeant think that
their quarry would have armed himself with a dummy package against such
a strait. And yet the sergeant was not master after all, and did he let
this fellow pursue his journey, he might reap trouble for it hereafter;
whilst likewise if he detained him, Colonel Pride, he knew, was not an
over-patient man. He was still debating what course to take, and had
turned to his companion with the muttered question: “What think you,
Peter?” when by his precipitancy Kenneth ruined his slender chance of
being permitted to depart.

“I pray you, sir, now that you know my errand, suffer me to pass on.”

There was an eager tremor in his voice that the sergeant mistook for
fear. He noted it, and remembering the boy’s hesitancy in answering his
earlier questions, he decided upon his course of action.

“We shall not delay your journey, sir,” he answered, eyeing Kenneth
sharply, “and as your way must lie through Waltham, I will but ask you
to suffer us to ride with you thus far, so that there you may answer any
questions our captain may have to ask ere you proceed.”

“But, sir--”

“No more, master courier,” snarled the sergeant. Then, beckoning a
trooper to his side, he whispered an order in his ear.

As the man withdrew they wheeled their horses, and at a sharp word
of command Kenneth rode on towards Waltham between the sergeant and a
trooper.



CHAPTER XX. THE CONVERTED HOGAN


Night black and impenetrable had set in ere Kenneth and his escort
clattered over the greasy stones of Waltham’s High Street, and drew up
in front of the Crusader Inn.

The door stood wide and hospitable, and a warm shaft of light fell from
it and set a glitter upon the wet street. Avoiding the common-room, the
sergeant led Kenneth through the inn-yard, and into the hostelry by a
side entrance. He urged the youth along a dimly-lighted passage. On a
door at the end of this he knocked, then, lifting the latch, he ushered
Kenneth into a roomy, oak-panelled chamber.

At the far end a huge fire burnt cheerfully, and with his back to it,
his feet planted wide apart upon the hearth, stood a powerfully built
man of medium height, whose youthful face and uprightness of carriage
assorted ill with the grey of his hair, pronouncing that greyness
premature. He seemed all clad in leather, for where his jerkin stopped
his boots began. A cuirass and feathered headpiece lay in a corner,
whilst on the table Kenneth espied a broad-brimmed hat, a huge sword,
and a brace of pistols.

As the boy’s eyes came back to the burly figure on the hearth, he was
puzzled by a familiar, intangible something in the fellow’s face.

He was racking his mind to recall where last he had seen it, when with
slightly elevated eyebrows and a look of recognition in his somewhat
prominent blue eyes.

“Soul of my body,” exclaimed the man in surprise, “Master Stewart, as I
live.”

“Stuart!” cried both sergeant and trooper in a gasp, starting forward to
scan their prisoner’s face.

At that the burly captain broke into a laugh.

“Not the young man Charles Stuart,” said he; “no, no. Your captive is
none so precious. It is only Master Kenneth Stewart, of Bailienochy.”

“Then it is not even our man,” grumbled the soldier.

“But Stewart is not the name he gave,” cried the sergeant. “Jasper
Blount he told me he was called. It seems that after all we have
captured a malignant, and that I was well advised to bring him to you.”

The captain made a gesture of disdain. In that moment Kenneth recognized
him. He was Harry Hogan--the man whose life Galliard had saved in
Penrith.

“Bah, a worthless capture, Beddoes,” he said.

“I know not that,” retorted the sergeant. “He carries papers which he
states are from Joseph Ashburn, of Castle Marleigh, to Colonel
Pride. Colonel Pride’s name is on the package, but may not that be a
subterfuge? Why else did he say he was called Blount?”

Hogan’s brows were of a sudden knit.

“Faith, Beddoes, you are right. Remove his sword and search him.”

Calmly Kenneth suffered them to carry out this order. Inwardly he boiled
at the delay, and cursed himself for having so needlessly given the
name of Blount. But for that, it was likely Hogan would have straightway
dismissed him. He cheered himself with the thought that after all they
would not long detain him. Their search made, and finding nothing upon
him but Ashburn’s letter, surely they would release him.

But their search was very thorough. They drew off his boots, and
well-nigh stripped him naked, submitting each article of his apparel to
a careful examination. At length it was over, and Hogan held Ashburn’s
package, turning it over in his hands with a thoughtful expression.

“Surely, sir, you will now allow me to proceed,” cried Kenneth. “I
assure you the matter is of the greatest urgency, and unless I am in
London by midnight I shall be too late.”

“Too late for what?” asked Hogan.

“I--I don’t know.”

“Oh?” The Irishman laughed unpleasantly. Colonel Pride and he were
on anything but the best of terms. The colonel knew him for a godless
soldier of fortune bound to the Parliament’s cause by no interest beyond
that of gain; and, himself a zealot, Colonel Pride had with distasteful
frequency shown Hogan the quality of his feelings towards him. That
Hogan was not afraid of him, was because it was not in Hogan’s nature to
be afraid of anyone. But he realized at least that he had cause to be,
and at the present moment it occurred to him that it would be passing
sweet to find a flaw in the old Puritan’s armour. If the package were
harmless his having opened it was still a matter that the discharge of
his duty would sanction. Thus he reasoned; and he resolved to break the
seal and make himself master of the contents of that letter.

Hogan’s unpleasant laugh startled Kenneth. It suggested to him that
perhaps, after all, his delay was by no means at an end; that Hogan
suspected him of something--he could not think of what.

Then in a flash an idea came to him.

“May I speak to you privately for a moment, Captain Hogan?” he inquired
in such a tone of importance--imperiousness, almost--that the Irishman
was impressed by it. He scented disclosure.

“Faith, you may if you have aught to tell me,” and he signed to Beddoes
and his companion to withdraw.

“Now, Master Hogan,” Kenneth began resolutely as soon as they were
alone, “I ask you to let me go my way unmolested. Too long already has
the stupidity of your followers detained me here unjustly. That I reach
London by midnight is to me a matter of the gravest moment, and you
shall let me.”

“Soul of my body, Mr. Stewart, what a spirit you have acquired since
last we met.”

“In your place I should leave our last meeting unmentioned, master
turncoat.”

The Irishman’s eyebrows shot up.

“By the Mass, young cockerel, I mislike your tone--”

“You’ll have cause to dislike it more if you detain me.” He was
desperate now. “What would your saintly, crop-eared friends say if they
knew as much of your past history as I do?”

“Tis a matter for conjecture,” said Hogan, humouring him.

“How think you would they welcome the story of the roystering rake and
debauchee who deserted the army of King Charles because they were about
to hang him for murder?”

“Ah! how, indeed?” sighed Hogan.

“What manner of reputation, think you, that for a captain of the godly
army of the Commonwealth?”

“A vile one, truly,” murmured Hogan with humility.

“And now, Mr. Hogan,” he wound up loftily, “you had best return me that
package, and be rid of me before I sow mischief enough to bring you a
crop of hemp.”

Hogan stared at the lad’s flushed face with a look of whimsical
astonishment, and for a brief spell there was silence between them.
Slowly then, with his eyes still fixed upon Kenneth’s, the captain
unsheathed a dagger. The boy drew back, with a sudden cry of alarm.
Hogan vented a horse-laugh, and ran the blade under the seal of
Ashburn’s letter.

“Be not afraid, my man of threats,” he said pleasantly. “I have no
thought of hurting you--leastways, not yet.” He paused in the act of
breaking the seal. “Lest you should treasure uncomfortable delusions,
dear Master Stewart, let me remind you that I am an Irishman--not a
fool. Do you conceive my fame to be so narrow a thing that when I left
the beggarly army of King Charles for that of the Commonwealth, I did
not realize how at any moment I might come face to face with someone who
had heard of my old exploits, and would denounce me? You do not find me
masquerading under an assumed name. I am here, sir, as Harry Hogan, a
sometime dissolute follower of the Egyptian Pharaoh, Charles Stuart;
an erstwhile besotted, blinded soldier in the army of the Amalekite,
a whilom erring malignant, but converted by a crowning mercy into
a zealous, faithful servant of Israel. There were vouchsafings and
upliftings, and the devil knows what else, when this stray lamb was
gathered to the fold.”

He uttered the words with a nasal intonation, and a whimsical look at
Kenneth.

“Now, Mr. Stewart, tell them what you will, and they will tell you yet
more in return, to show you how signally the light of grace hath been
shed over me.”

He laughed again, and broke the seal. Kenneth, crestfallen and abashed,
watched him, without attempting further interference. Of what avail?

“You had been better advised, young sir, had you been less hasty and
anxious. It is a fatal fault of youth’s, and one of which nothing but
time--if, indeed, you live--will cure you. Your anxiety touching this
package determines me to open it.”

Kenneth sneered at the man’s conclusions, and, shrugging his shoulders,
turned slightly aside.

“Perchance, master wiseacres, when you have read it, you will appreciate
how egotism may also lead men into fatal errors. Haply, too, you will be
able to afford Colonel Pride some satisfactory reason for tampering with
his correspondence.”

But Hogan heard him not. He had unfolded the letter, and at the first
words he beheld, a frown contracted his brows. As he read on the frown
deepened, and when he had done, an oath broke from his lips. “God’s
life!” he cried, then again was silent, and so stood a moment with bent
head. At last he raised his eyes, and let them rest long and searchingly
upon Kenneth, who now observed him in alarm.

“What--what is it?” the lad asked, with hesitancy.

But Hogan never answered. He strode past him to the door, and flung it
wide.

“Beddoes!” he called. A step sounded in the passage, and the sergeant
appeared. “Have you a trooper there?”

“There is Peter, who rode with me.”

“Let him look to this fellow. Tell him to set him under lock and bolt
here in the inn until I shall want him, and tell him that he shall
answer for him with his neck.”

Kenneth drew back in alarm.

“Sir--Captain Hogan--will you explain?”

“Marry, you shall have explanations to spare before morning, else I’m
a fool. But have no fear, for we intend you no hurt,” he added more
softly. “Take him away, Beddoes; then return to me here.”

When Beddoes came back from consigning Kenneth into the hands of his
trooper, he found Hogan seated in the leathern arm-chair, with Ashburn’s
letter spread before him on the table.

“I was right in my suspicions, eh?” ventured Beddoes complacently.

“You were more than right, Beddoes, you were Heaven-inspired. It is no
State matter that you have chanced upon, but one that touches a man in
whom I am interested very nearly.”

The sergeant’s eyes were full of questions, but Hogan enlightened him no
further.

“You will ride back to your post at once, Beddoes,” he commanded.
“Should Lord Oriel fall into your hands, as we hope, you will send him
to me. But you will continue to patrol the road, and demand the business
of all comers. I wish one Crispin Galliard, who should pass this way ere
long, detained, and brought to me. He is a tall, lank man--”

“I know him, sir,” Beddoes interrupted. “The Tavern Knight they called
him in the malignant army--a rakehelly, dissolute brawler. I saw him in
Worcester when he was taken after the fight.”

Hogan frowned. The righteous Beddoes knew overmuch. “That is the man,”
 he answered calmly. “Go now, and see that he does not ride past you. I
have great and urgent need of him.”

Beddoes’ eyes were opened in surprise.

“He is possessed of valuable information,” Hogan explained. “Away with
you, man.”

When alone, Harry Hogan turned his arm-chair sideways towards the fire.
Then, filling himself a pipe--for in his foreign campaigning he had
acquired the habit of tobacco-smoking--he stretched his sinewy legs
across a second chair, and composed himself for meditation. An hour went
by; the host looked in to see if the captain required anything. Another
hour sped on, and the captain dozed.

He awoke with a start. The fire had burned low, and the hands of the
huge clock in the corner pointed to midnight. From the passage came to
him the sound of steps and angry voices.

Before Hogan could rise, the door was flung wide, and a tall, gaunt man
was hustled across the threshold by two soldiers. His head was bare,
and his hair wet and dishevelled. His doublet was torn and his shoulder
bleeding, whilst his empty scabbard hung like a lambent tail behind him.

“We have brought him, captain,” one of the men announced.

“Aye, you crop-eared, psalm-whining cuckolds, you’ve brought me, d--n
you,” growled Sir Crispin, whose eyes rolled fiercely.

As his angry glance lighted upon Hogan’s impressive face, he abruptly
stemmed the flow of invective that rushed to his lips.

The Irishman rose, and looked past him at the troopers. “Leave us,” he
commanded shortly.

He remained standing by the hearth until the footsteps of his men had
died away, then he crossed the chamber, passed Crispin without a word,
and quietly locked the door. That done, he turned a friendly smile on
his tanned face--and holding out his hand:

“At last, Cris, it is mine to thank you and to repay you in some measure
for the service you rendered me that night at Penrith.”



CHAPTER XXI. THE MESSAGE KENNETH BORE


In bewilderment Crispin took the outstretched hand of his old
fellow-roysterer.

“Oddslife,” he growled, “if to have me waylaid, dragged from my horse
and wounded by those sons of dogs, your myrmidons, be your manner of
expressing gratitude, I’d as lief you had let me go unthanked.”

“And yet, Cris, I dare swear you’ll thank me before another hour is
sped. Ough, man, how cold you are! There’s a bottle of strong waters
yonder--”

Then, without completing his sentence, Hogan had seized the black jack
and poured half a glass of its contents, which he handed Crispin.

“Drink, man,” he said briefly, and Crispin, nothing loath, obeyed him.

Next Hogan drew the torn and sodden doublet from his guest’s back,
pushed a chair over to the table, and bade him sit. Again, nothing
loath, Crispin did as he was bidden. He was stiff from long riding, and
so with a sigh of satisfaction he settled himself down and stretched out
his long legs.

Hogan slowly took the seat opposite to him, and coughed. He was at a
loss how to open the parlous subject, how to communicate to Crispin the
amazing news upon which he had stumbled.

“Slife’ Hogan,” laughed Crispin dreamily, “I little thought it was to
you those crop-ears carried me with such violence. I little thought,
indeed, ever to see you again. But you have prospered, you knave, since
that night you left Penrith.”

And he turned his head the better to survey the Irishman.

“Aye, I have prospered,” Hogan assented. “My life is a sort of parable
of the fatted son and the prodigal calf. They tell me there is greater
joy in heaven over the repentance of a sinner than--than--Plague on it!
How does it go?”

“Than over the downfall of a saint?” suggested Crispin.

“I’ll swear that’s not the text, but any of my troopers could quote it
you; every man of them is an incarnate Church militant.” He paused,
and Crispin laughed softly. Then abruptly: “And so you were riding to
London?” said he.

“How know you that?”

“Faith, I know more--much more. I can even tell you to what house you
rode, and on what errand. You were for the sign of the Anchor in Thames
Street, for news of your son, whom Joseph Ashburn hath told you lives.”

Crispin sat bolt upright, a look of mingled wonder and suspicion on his
face.

“You are well informed, you gentlemen of the Parliament,” he said.

“On the matter of your errand,” the Irishman returned quietly, “I am
much better informed than are you. Shall I tell you who lives at the
sign of the Anchor--not whom you have been told lives there, but who
really does occupy the house?” Hogan paused a second as though awaiting
some reply; then softly he answered his own question: “Colonel Pride.”
 And he sat back to await results.

There were none. For the moment the name awoke no recollections,
conveyed no meaning to Crispin.

“Who may Colonel Pride be?” he asked, after a pause.

Hogan was visibly disappointed.

“A certain powerful and vindictive member of the Rump, whose son you
killed at Worcester.”

This time the shaft went home. Galliard sprang out of the chair, his
brows darkening, and his cheeks pale beyond their wont.

“Zounds, Hogan, do you mean that Joseph Ashburn was betraying me into
this man’s hands?”

“You have said it.”

“But--”

Crispin stopped short. The pallor of his face increased; it became
ashen, and his eyes glittered as though a fever consumed him. He sank
back into his chair, and setting both hands upon the table before him,
he looked straight at Hogan.

“But my son, Hogan, my son?” he pleaded, and his voice was broken as no
man had heard it yet. “Oh, God in heaven!” he cried in a sudden frenzy.
“What hell’s work is this?”

Behind his blue lips his teeth were chattering now. His hands shook as
he held them, still clenched, before him. Then, in a dull, concentrated
voice:

“Hogan,” he vowed, “I’ll kill him for it. Fool, blind, pitiful fool that
I am.”

Then--his face distorted by passion--he broke into a torrent of
imprecations that was at length stemmed by Hogan.

“Wait, Cris,” said he, laying his hand upon the other’s arm. “It is not
all false. Joseph Ashburn sought, it is true, to betray you into the
hands of Colonel Pride, sending you to the sign of the Anchor with the
assurance that there you should have news of your son. That was false;
yet not all false. Your son does live, and at the sign of the Anchor it
is likely you would have had the news of him you sought. But that news
would have come when too late to have been of value to you.”

Crispin tried to speak, but failed. Then, mastering himself by an
effort, and in a voice that was oddly shaken:

“Hogan,” he cried, “you are torturing me! What is the sum of your
knowledge?”

At last the Irishman produced Ashburn’s letter to Colonel Pride.

“My men,” said he, “are patrolling the roads in wait for a malignant
that has incurred the Parliament’s displeasure. We have news that he is
making for Harwich, where a vessel lies waiting to carry him to France,
and we expect that he will ride this way. Three hours ago a young man
unable clearly to account for himself rode into our net, and was brought
to me. He was the bearer of a letter to Colonel Pride from Joseph
Ashburn. He had given my sergeant a wrong name, and betrayed such
anxiety to be gone that I deemed his errand a suspicious one, and broke
the seal of that letter. You may thank God, Galliard, every night of
your life that I did so.”

“Was this youth Kenneth Stewart?” asked Crispin.

“You have guessed it.”

“D--n the lad,” he began furiously. Then repressing himself, he sighed,
and in an altered tone, “No, no,” said he. “I have grievously wronged
him! have wrecked his life--or at least he thinks so now. I can hardly
blame him for seeking to be quits with me.”

“The lad,” returned Hogan, “must be himself a dupe. He can have had no
suspicion of the message he carried. Let me read it to you; it will make
all clear.”

Hogan drew a taper nearer, and spreading the paper upon the table, he
smoothed it out, and read:

HONOURED SIR,

The bearer of the present should, if he rides well, outstrip another
messenger I have dispatched to you upon a fool’s errand, with a letter
addressed to one Mr. Lane at the sign of the Anchor. The bearer of that
is none other than the notorious malignant, Sir Crispin Galliard, by
whose hand your son was slain under your very eyes at Worcester, whose
capture I know that you warmly desire and with whom I doubt not you will
know how to deal. To us he has been a source of no little molestation;
his liberty, in fact, is a perpetual menace to our lives. For some
eighteen years this Galliard has believed dead a son that my cousin bore
him. News of this son, whom I have just informed him lives--as indeed he
does--is the bait wherewith I have lured him to your address. Forewarned
by the present, I make no doubt you will prepare to receive him
fittingly. But ere that justice he escaped at Worcester be meted out
to him at Tyburn or on Tower Hill, I would have you give him that news
touching his son which I am sending him to you to receive. Inform him,
sir, that his son, Jocelyn Marleigh...

Hogan paused, and shot a furtive glance at Galliard. The knight was
leaning forward now, his eyes strained, his forehead beaded with
perspiration, and his breathing heavy.

“Read on,” he begged hoarsely.

His son, Jocelyn Marleigh, is the bearer of this letter, the man whom
he has injured and who detests him, the youth with whom he has, by a
curious chance, been in much close association, and whom he has known as
Kenneth Stewart.

“God!” gasped Crispin. Then with sudden vigour, “Oh, ‘tis a lie,” he
cried, “a fresh invention of that lying brain to torture me.”

Hogan held up his hand.

“There is a little more,” he said, and continued:

Should he doubt this, bid him look closely into the lad’s face, and ask
him, after he has scrutinized it, what image it evokes. Should he still
doubt thereafter, thinking the likeness to which he has been singularly
blind to be no more than accidental, bid them strip the lad’s right
foot. It bears a mark that I think should convince him. For the rest,
honoured sir, I beg you to keep all information touching his parentage
from the boy himself, wherein I have weighty ends to serve. Within a
few days of your receipt of this letter, I look to have the honour of
waiting upon you. In the meanwhile, honoured sir, believe that while I
am, I am your obedient servant,

JOSEPH ASHBURN


Across the narrow table the two men’s glances met--Hogan’s full of
concern and pity, Crispin’s charged with amazement and horror. A little
while they sat thus, then Crispin rose slowly to his feet, and with
steps uncertain as a drunkard’s he crossed to the window. He pushed it
open, and let the icy wind upon his face and head, unconscious of its
sting. Moments passed, during which the knight went over the last few
months of his turbulent life since his first meeting at Perth with
Kenneth Stewart. He recalled how strangely and unaccountably he had been
drawn to the boy when first he beheld him in the castle yard, and how,
owing to a feeling for which he could not account, since the lad’s
character had little that might commend him to such a man as Crispin, he
had contrived that Kenneth should serve in his company.

He recalled how at first--aye, and often afterwards even--he had sought
to win the boy’s affection, despite the fact that there was naught
in the boy that he truly admired, and much that he despised. Was
it possible that these his feelings were dictated by Nature to his
unconscious mind? It must indeed be so, and the written words of Joseph
Ashburn to Colonel Pride were true. Kenneth was indeed his son; the
conviction was upon him. He conjured up the lad’s face, and a cry of
discovery escaped him. How blind he had been not to have seen before the
likeness of Alice--his poor, butchered girl-wife of eighteen years ago.
How dull never before to have realized that that likeness it was had
drawn him to the boy.

He was calm by now, and in his calm he sought to analyse his thoughts,
and he was shocked to find that they were not joyous. He yearned--as he
had yearned that night in Worcester--for the lad’s affection, and yet,
for all his yearning, he realized that with the conviction that Kenneth
was his offspring came a dull sense of disappointment. He was not such
a son as the rakehelly knight would have had him. Swiftly he put the
thought from him. The craven hands that had reared the lad had warped
his nature; he would guide it henceforth; he would straighten it out
into a nobler shape.

Then he smiled bitterly to himself. What manner of man was he to train
a youth to loftiness and honour?--he, a debauched ruler with a nickname
for which, had he any sense of shame, he would have blushed! Again he
remembered the lad’s disposition towards himself; but these, he thought,
he hoped, he knew that he would now be able to overcome.

He closed the window, and turned to face his companion. He was himself
again, and calm, for all that his face was haggard beyond its wont.

“Hogan, where is the boy?”

“I have detained him in the inn. Will you see him now?”

“At once, Hogan. I am convinced.”

The Irishman crossed the chamber, and opening the door he called an
order to the trooper waiting in the passage.

Some minutes they waited, standing, with no word uttered between them.
At last steps sounded in the corridor, and a moment later Kenneth was
rudely thrust into the room. Hogan signed to the trooper, who closed the
door and withdrew.

As Kenneth entered, Crispin advanced a step and paused, his eyes
devouring the lad and receiving in exchange a glance that was full of
malevolence.

“I might have known, sir, that you were not far away,” he exclaimed
bitterly, forgetting for the moment how he had left Crispin behind him
on the previous night. “I might have guessed that my detention was your
work.”

“Why so?” asked Crispin quietly, his eyes ever scanning the lad’s face
with a pathetic look.

“Because it is your way, I know not why, to work my ruin in all things.
Not satisfied with involving me in that business at Castle Marleigh, you
must needs cross my path again when I am about to make amends, and so
blight my last chance. My God, sir, am I never to be rid of you? What
harm have I done you?”

A spasm of pain, like a ripple over water, crossed the knight’s swart
face.

“If you but consider, Kenneth,” he said, speaking very quietly, “you
must see the injustice of your words. Since when has Crispin Galliard
served the Parliament, that Roundhead troopers should do his bidding as
you suggest? And touching that business at Sheringham you are over-hard
with me. It was a compact you made, and but for which, you forget that
you had been carrion these three weeks.”

“Would to Heaven that I had been,” the boy burst out, “sooner than pay
such a price for keeping my life!”

“As for my presence here,” Crispin continued, leaving the outburst
unheeded, “it has naught to do with your detention.”

“You lie!”

Hogan caught his breath with a sharp hiss, and a dead silence followed.
That silence struck terror into Kenneth’s heart. He encountered
Crispin’s eye bent upon him with a look he could not fathom, and much
would he now have given to recall the two words that had burst from him
in the heat of his rage. He bethought him of the unscrupulous, deadly
character attributed to the man to whom he had addressed them, and in
his coward’s fancy he saw already payment demanded. Already he
pictured himself lying cold and stark in the streets of Waltham with
a sword-wound through his middle. His face went grey and his lips
trembled.

Then Galliard spoke at last, and the mildness of his tone filled Kenneth
with a new dread. In his experience of Crispin’s ways he had come to
look upon mildness as the man’s most dangerous phase:

“You are mistaken,” Crispin said. “I spoke the truth; it is a habit of
mine--haply the only gentlemanly habit left me. I repeat, I have had
naught to do with your detention. I arrived here half an hour ago, as
the captain will inform you, and I was conducted hither by force, having
been seized by his men, even as you were seized. No,” he added, with a
sigh, “it was not my hand that detained you; it was the hand of Fate.”
 Then suddenly changing his voice to a more vehement key, “Know you on
what errand you rode to London?” he demanded. “To betray your father
into the hands of his enemies; to deliver him up to the hangman.”

Kenneth’s eyes grew wide; his mouth fell open, and a frown of perplexity
drew his brows together. Dully, uncomprehendingly he met Sir Crispin’s
sad gaze.

“My father,” he gasped at last. “‘Sdeath, sir, what is it you mean? My
father has been dead these ten years. I scarce remember him.”

Crispin’s lips moved, but no word did he utter. Then with a sudden
gesture of despair he turned to Hogan, who stood apart, a silent
witness.

“My God, Hogan,” he cried. “How shall I tell him?”

In answer to the appeal, the Irishman turned to Kenneth.

“You have been in error, sir, touching your parentage,” quoth he
bluntly. “Alan Stewart, of Bailienochy, was not your father.”

Kenneth looked from one to the other of them.

“Sirs, is this a jest?” he cried, reddening. Then, remarking at length
the solemnity of their countenances, he stopped short. Crispin came
close up to him, and placed a hand upon his shoulder. The boy shrank
visibly beneath the touch, and again an expression of pain crossed the
poor ruffler’s face.

“Do you recall, Kenneth,” he said slowly, almost sorrowfully, “the story
that I told you that night in Worcester, when we sat waiting for dawn
and the hangman?”

The lad nodded vacantly.

“Do you remember the details? Do you remember I told you how, when I
swooned beneath the stroke of Joseph Ashburn’s sword, the last words
I heard were those in which he bade his brother slit the throat of the
babe in the cradle? You were, yourself, present yesternight at Castle
Marleigh when Joseph Ashburn told me Gregory had been mercifully
inclined; that my child had not died; that if I gave him his life he
would restore him to me. You remember?”

Again Kenneth nodded. A vague, numbing fear was creeping round his
heart, and his blood seemed chilled by it and stagnant. With fascinated
eyes he watched the knight’s face--drawn and haggard.

“It was a trap that Joseph Ashburn set for me. Yet he did not altogether
lie. The child Gregory had indeed spared, and it seems from what I have
learned within the last half-hour that he had entrusted his rearing to
Alan Stewart, of Bailienochy, seeking afterwards--I take it--to wed him
to his daughter, so that should the King come to his own again, they
should have the protection of a Marleigh who had served his King.”

“You mean,” the lad almost whispered, and his accents were unmistakably
of horror, “you mean that I am your--Oh, God, I’ll not believe it!” he
cried out, with such sudden loathing and passion that Crispin recoiled
as though he had been struck. A dull flush crept into his cheeks to fade
upon the instant and give place to a pallor, if possible, intenser than
before.

“I’ll not believe it! I’ll not believe it!” the boy repeated, as if
seeking by that reiteration to shut out a conviction by which he was
beset. “I’ll not believe it!” he cried again; and now his voice had lost
its passionate vehemence, and was sunk almost to a moan.

“I found it hard to believe myself,” was Crispin’s answer, and his
voice was not free from bitterness. “But I have a proof here that seems
incontestable, even had I not the proof of your face to which I have
been blind these months. Blind with the eyes of my body, at least. The
eyes of my soul saw and recognized you when first they fell on you in
Perth. The voice of the blood ordered me then to your side, and though
I heard its call, I understood not what it meant. Read this letter,
boy--the letter that you were to have carried to Colonel Pride.”

With his eyes still fixed in a gaze of stupefaction upon Galliard’s
face, Kenneth took the paper. Then slowly, involuntarily almost it
seemed, he dropped his glance to it, and read. He was long in reading,
as though the writing presented difficulties, and his two companions
watched him the while, and waited. At last he turned the paper over,
and examined seal and superscription as if suspicious that he held a
forgery.

But in some subtle, mysterious way--that voice of the blood perchance
to which Crispin had alluded--he felt conviction stealing down upon his
soul. Mechanically he moved across to the table, and sat down. Without a
word, and still holding the crumpled letter in his clenched hand, he set
his elbows on the table, and, pressing his temples to his palms, he sat
there dumb. Within him a very volcano raged, and its fires were fed with
loathing--loathing for this man whom he had ever hated, yet never as he
hated him now, knowing him to be his father. It seemed as if to all
the wrongs which Crispin had done him during the months of their
acquaintanceship he had now added a fresh and culminating wrong by
discovering this parentage.

He sat and thought, and his soul grew sick. He probed for some flaw,
sought for some mistake that might have been made. And yet the more
he thought, the more he dwelt upon his youth in Scotland, the more
convinced was he that Crispin had told him the truth. Pre-eminent
argument of conviction to him was the desire of the Ashburns that he
should marry Cynthia. Oft he had marvelled that they, wealthy, and even
powerful, selfish and ambitious, should have selected him, the scion of
an obscure and impoverished Scottish house, as a bridegroom for their
daughter. The news now before him made their motives clear; indeed, no
other motive could exist, no other explanation could there be. He was
the heir of Castle Marleigh, and the usurpers sought to provide against
the day when another revolution might oust them and restore the rightful
owners.

Some elation his shallow nature felt at realizing this, but that
elation was short-lived, and dashed by the thought that this ruler, this
debauchee, this drunken, swearing, roaring tavern knight was his father;
dashed by the knowledge that meanwhile the Parliament was master,
and that whilst matters stood so, the Ashburns could defy--could even
destroy him, did they learn how much he knew; dashed by the memory that
Cynthia, whom in his selfish way--out of his love for himself--he loved,
was lost to him for all time.

And here, swinging in a circle, his thoughts reverted to the cause of
this--Crispin Galliard, the man who had betrayed him into yesternight’s
foul business and destroyed his every chance of happiness; the man whom
he hated, and whom, had he possessed the courage as he was possessed
by the desire, he had risen up and slain; the man that now announced
himself his father.

And thinking thus, he sat on in silent, resentful vexation. He started
to feel a hand upon his shoulder, and to hear the voice of Galliard
evidently addressing him, yet using a name that was new to him.

“Jocelyn, my boy,” the voice trembled. “You have thought, and you have
realized--is it not so? I too thought, and thought brought me conviction
that what that paper tells is true.”

Vaguely then the boy remembered that Jocelyn was the name the letter
gave him. He rose abruptly, and brushed the caressing hand from his
shoulder. His voice was hard--possibly the knowledge that he had
gained told him that he had nothing to fear from this man, and in that
assurance his craven soul grew brave and bold and arrogant.

“I have realized naught beyond the fact that I owe you nothing but
unhappiness and ruin. By a trick, by a low fraud, you enlisted me into
a service that has proved my undoing. Once a cheat always a cheat. What
credit in the face of that can I give this paper?” he cried, talking
wildly. “To me it is incredible, nor do I wish to credit it, for though
it were true, what then? What then?” he repeated, raising his voice into
accents of defiance.

Grief and amazement were blended in Galliard’s glance, and also, maybe,
some reproach.

Hogan, standing squarely upon the hearth, was beset by the desire to
kick Master Kenneth, or Master Jocelyn, into the street. His lip curled
into a sneer of ineffable contempt, for his shrewd eyes read to the
bottom of the lad’s mean soul and saw there clearly writ the confidence
that emboldened him to voice that insult to the man he must know for his
father. Standing there, he compared the two, marvelling deeply how they
came to be father and son. A likeness he saw now between them, yet
a likeness that seemed but to mark the difference. The one harsh,
resolute, and manly, for all his reckless living and his misfortunes;
the other mild, effeminate, hypocritical and shifty. He read it not on
their countenances alone, but in every line of their figures as they
stood, and in his heart he cursed himself for having been the instrument
to disclose the relationship in which they stood.

The youth’s insolent question was followed by a spell of silence.
Crispin could not believe that he had heard aright. At last he stretched
out his hands in a gesture of supplication--he who throughout his
thirty-eight years of life, and despite the misfortunes that had been
his, had never yet stooped to plead from any man.

“Jocelyn,” he cried, and the pain in his voice must have melted a heart
of steel, “you are hard. Have you forgotten the story of my miserable
life, the story that I told you in Worcester? Can you not understand how
suffering may destroy all that is lofty in a man; how the forgetfulness
of the winecup may come to be his only consolation; the hope of
vengeance his only motive for living on, withholding him from
self-destruction? Can you not picture such a life, and can you not pity
and forgive much of the wreck that it may make of a man once virtuous
and honourable?”

Pleadingly he looked into the lad’s face. It remained cold and unmoved.

“I understand,” he continued brokenly, “that I am not such a man as any
lad might welcome for a father. But you who know what my life has been,
Jocelyn, you can surely find it in your heart to pity. I had naught
that was good or wholesome to live for, Jocelyn; naught to curb the evil
moods that sent me along evil ways to seek forgetfulness and reparation.

“But from to-night, Jocelyn, my life in you must find a new interest, a
new motive. I will abandon my old ways. For your sake, Jocelyn, I will
seek again to become what I was, and you shall have no cause to blush
for your father.”

Still the lad stood silent.

“Jocelyn! My God, do I talk in vain?” cried the wretched man. “Have you
no heart, no pity, boy?”

At last the youth spoke. He was not moved. The agony of this strong man,
the broken pleading of one whom he had ever known arrogant and strong
had no power to touch his mean, selfish mind, consumed as it was by the
contemplation of his undoing--magnified a hundredfold--which this man
had wrought.

“You have ruined my life,” was all he said.

“I will rebuild it, Jocelyn,” cried Galliard eagerly. “I have friends in
France--friends high in power who lack neither the means nor the will to
aid me. You are a soldier, Jocelyn.”

“As much a soldier as I’m a saint,” sneered Hogan to himself.

“Together we will find service in the armies of Louis,” Crispin pursued.
“I promise it. Service wherein you shall gain honour and renown. There
we will abide until this England shakes herself out of her rebellious
nightmare. Then, when the King shall come to his own, Castle Marleigh
will be ours again. Trust in me, Jocelyn.” Again his arms went out
appealingly: “Jocelyn my son!”

But the boy made no move to take the outstretched hands, gave no sign of
relenting. His mind nurtured its resentment--cherished it indeed.

“And Cynthia?” he asked coldly.

Crispin’s hands fell to his sides; they grew clenched, and his eyes
lighted of a sudden.

“Forgive me, Jocelyn. I had forgotten! I understand you now. Yes, I
dealt sorely with you there, and you are right to be resentful. What,
after all, am I to you what can I be to you compared with her whose
image fills your soul? What is aught in the world to a man, compared
with the woman on whom his heart is set? Do I not know it? Have I not
suffered for it?

“But mark me, Jocelyn”--and he straightened himself suddenly--“even in
this, that which I have done I will undo. As I have robbed you of your
mistress, so will I win her back for you. I swear it. And when that is
done, when thus every harm I have caused you is repaired, then, Jocelyn,
perhaps you will come to look with less repugnance upon your father, and
to feel less resentment towards him.”

“You promise much, sir,” quoth the boy, with an illrepressed sneer. “How
will you accomplish it?”

Hogan grunted audibly. Crispin drew himself up, erect, lithe and
supple--a figure to inspire confidence in the most despairing. He placed
a hand, nervous, and strong as steel, upon the boy’s shoulder, and the
clutch of his fingers made Jocelyn wince.

“Low though your father be fallen,” said he sternly, “he has never yet
broken his word. I have pledged you mine, and to-morrow I shall set out
to perform what I have promised. I shall see you ere I start. You will
sleep here, will you not?”

Jocelyn shrugged his shoulders.

“It signifies little where I lie.”

Crispin smiled sadly, and sighed.

“You have no faith in me yet. But I shall earn it, or”--and his voice
fell suddenly--“or rid you of a loathsome parent. Hogan, can you find
him quarters?”

Hogan replied that there was the room he had already been confined in,
and that he could lie in it. And deeming that there was nothing to be
gained by waiting, he thereupon led the youth from the room and down
the passage. At the foot of the stairs the Irishman paused in the act of
descending, and raised the taper aloft so that its light might fall full
upon the face of his companion.

“Were I your father,” said he grimly, “I would kick you from one end of
Waltham to the other by way of teaching you filial piety! And were you
not his son, I would this night read you a lesson you’d never live to
practise. I would set you to sleep a last long sleep in the kennels
of Waltham streets. But since you are--marvellous though it seem--his
offspring, and since I love him and may not therefore hurt you, I
must rest content with telling you that you are the vilest thing that
breathes. You despise him for a roysterer, for a man of loose ways. Let
me, who have seen something of men, and who read you to-night to the
very dregs of your contemptible soul, tell you that compared with you he
is a very god. Come, you white-livered cur!” he ended abruptly. “I will
light you to your chamber.”

When presently Hogan returned to Crispin he found the Tavern
Knight--that man of iron in whom none had ever seen a trace of fear
or weakness seated with his arms before him on the table, and his face
buried in them, sobbing like a poor, weak woman.



CHAPTER XXII. SIR CRISPIN’S UNDERTAKING


Through the long October night Crispin and Hogan sat on, and neither
sought his bed. Crispin’s quick wits his burst of grief once over--had
been swift to fasten on a plan to accomplish that which he had
undertaken.

One difficulty confronted him, and until he had mentioned it to Hogan
seemed unsurmountable he had need of a ship. But in this the Irishman
could assist him. He knew of a vessel then at Greenwich, whose master
was in his debt, which should suit the purpose. Money, however, would
be needed. But when Crispin announced that he was master of some two
hundred Caroluses, Hogan, with a wave of the hand, declared the matter
settled. Less than half that sum would hire the man he knew of. That
determined, Crispin unfolded his project to Hogan, who laughed at the
simplicity of it, for all that inwardly he cursed the risk Sir Crispin
must run for the sake of one so unworthy.

“If the maid loves him, the thing is as good as done.”

“The maid does not love him; leastways, I fear not.”

Hogan was not surprised.

“Why, then it will be difficult, well-nigh impossible.” And the Irishman
became grave.

But Crispin laughed unpleasantly. Years and misfortune had made him
cynical.

“What is the love of a maid?” quoth he derisively. “A caprice, a fancy,
a thing that may be guided, overcome or compelled as the occasion shall
demand. Opportunity is love’s parent, Hogan, and given that, any maid
may love any man. Cynthia shall love my son.”

“But if she prove rebellious? If she say nay to your proposals? There
are such women.”

“How then? Am I not the stronger? In such a case it shall be mine to
compel her, and as I find her, so shall I carry her away. It will be
none so poor a vengeance on the Ashburns after all.” His brow grew
clouded. “But not what I had dreamed of; what I should have taken had
he not cheated me. To forgo it now--after all these years of waiting--is
another sacrifice I make to Jocelyn. To serve him in this matter I must
proceed cautiously. Cynthia may fret and fume and stamp, but willy-nilly
I shall carry her away. Once she is in France, friendless, alone, I make
no doubt that she will see the convenience of loving Jocelyn--leastways
of wedding him and thus shall I have more than repaired the injuries I
have done him.”

The Irishman’s broad face was very grave; his reckless merry eye fixed
Galliard with a look of sorrow, and this grey-haired, sinning soldier of
fortune, who had never known a conscience, muttered softly:

“It is not a nice thing you contemplate, Cris.”

Despite himself, Galliard winced, and his glance fell before Hogan’s.
For a moment he saw the business in its true light, and he wavered in
his purpose. Then, with a short bark of laughter:

“Gadso, you are sentimental, Harry!” said he, to add, more gravely:
“There is my son, and in this lies the only way to his heart.”.

Hogan stretched a hand across the table, and set it upon Crispin’s arm.

“Is he worth such a stain upon your honour, Crispin?”

There was a pause.

“Is it not late in the day, Hogan, for you and me to prate of honour?”
 asked Crispin bitterly, yet with averted gaze. “God knows my honour is
as like honour as a beggar’s rags are like unto a cloak of ermine. What
signifies another splash, another rent in that which is tattered beyond
all semblance of its original condition?”

“I asked you,” the Irishman persisted, “whether your son was worth the
sacrifice that the vile deed you contemplate entails?”

Crispin shook his arm from the other’s grip, and rose abruptly. He
crossed to the window, and drew back the curtain.

“Day is breaking,” said he gruffly. Then turning, and facing Hogan
across the room, “I have pledged my word to Jocelyn,” he said. “The
way I have chosen is the only one, and I shall follow it. But if your
conscience cries out against it, Hogan, I give you back your promise of
assistance, and I shall shift alone. I have done so all my life.”

Hogan shrugged his massive shoulders, and reached out for the bottle of
strong waters.

“If you are resolved, there is an end to it. My conscience shall not
trouble me, and upon what aid I have promised and what more I can give,
you may depend. I drink to the success of your undertaking.”

Thereafter they discussed the matter of the vessel that Crispin would
require, and it was arranged between them that Hogan should send a
message to the skipper, bidding him come to Harwich, and there await and
place himself at the command of Sir Crispin Galliard. For fifty pounds
Hogan thought that he would undertake to land Sir Crispin in France. The
messenger might be dispatched forthwith, and the Lady Jane should be at
Harwich, two days later.

By the time they had determined upon this, the inmates of the hostelry
were astir, and from the innyard came to them the noise of bustle and
preparation for the day.

Presently they left the chamber where they had sat so long, and at the
yard pump the Tavern Knight performed a rude morning toilet. Thereafter,
on a simple fare of herrings and brown ale, they broke their fast; and
ere that meal was done, Kenneth, pale and worn, with dark circles round
his eyes, entered the common room, and sat moodily apart. But when later
Hogan went to see to the dispatching of his messenger, Crispin rose and
approached the youth.

Kenneth watched him furtively, without pausing in his meal. He had spent
a very miserable night pondering over the future, which looked
gloomy enough, and debating whether--forgetting and ignoring what had
passed--he should return to the genteel poverty of his Scottish home, or
accept the proffered service of this man who announced himself--and whom
he now believed--to be his father. He had thought, but he was far from
having chosen between Scotland and France, when Crispin now greeted him,
not without constraint.

“Jocelyn,” he said, speaking slowly, almost humbly. “In an hour’s time I
shall set out to return to Marleigh to fulfil my last night’s promise to
you. How I shall accomplish it I scarce know as yet; but accomplish it
I shall. I have arranged to have a vessel awaiting me, and within three
days--or four at the most--I look to cross to France, bearing your bride
with me.”

He paused for some reply, but none came. The boy sat on with an
impassive face, his eyes glued to the table, but his mind busy enough
upon that which his father was pouring into his ear. Presently Crispin
continued:

“You cannot refuse to do as I suggest, Jocelyn. I shall make you the
fullest amends for the harm that I have done you, if you but obey my
directions. You must quit this place as soon as possible, and proceed on
your way to London. There you must find a boat to carry you to France,
and you will await me at the Auberge du Soleil at Calais. You are
agreed, Jocelyn?”

There was a slight pause, and Jocelyn took his resolution. Yet there was
still a sullen look in the eyes he lifted to his father’s face.

“I have little choice, sir,” he made answer, “and so I must agree. If
you accomplish what you promise, I own that you will have made amends,
and I shall crave your pardon for my yesternight’s want of faith. I
shall await you at Calais.”

Crispin sighed, and for a second his face hardened. It was not the
answer to which he held himself entitled, and for a moment it rose to
the lips of this man of fierce and sudden moods to draw back and let
the son, whom at the moment he began to detest, go his own way, which
assuredly would lead him to perdition. But a second’s thought sufficed
to quell that mood of his.

“I shall not fail you,” he said coldly. “Have you money for the
journey?”

The boy flushed as he remembered that little was left of what Joseph
Ashburn had given him. Crispin saw the flush, and reading aright its
meaning, he drew from his pocket a purse that he had been fingering,
and placed it quietly upon the table. “There are fifty Caroluses in that
bag. That should suffice to carry you to France. Fare you well until we
meet at Calais.”

And without giving the boy time to utter thanks that might be unwilling,
he quickly left the room.

Within the hour he was in the saddle, and his horse’s head was turned
northwards once more.

He rode through Newport some three hours later without drawing rein. By
the door of the Raven Inn stood a travelling carriage, upon which he did
not so much as bestow a look.

By the merest thread hangs at times the whole of a man’s future life,
the destinies even of men as yet unborn. So much may depend indeed upon
a glance, that had not Crispin kept his eyes that morning upon the grey
road before him, had he chanced to look sideways as he passed the Raven
Inn at Newport, and seen the Ashburn arms displayed upon the panels of
that coach, he would of a certainty have paused. And had he done so, his
whole destiny would assuredly have shaped a different course from that
which he was unconsciously steering.



CHAPTER XXIII. GREGORY’S ATTRITION


Joseph’s journey to London was occasioned by his very natural anxiety to
assure himself that Crispin was caught in the toils of the net he had so
cunningly baited for him, and that at Castle Marleigh he would trouble
them no more. To this end he quitted Sheringham on the day after
Crispin’s departure.

Not a little perplexed was Cynthia at the topsy-turvydom in which that
morning she had found her father’s house. Kenneth was gone; he had left
in the dead of night, and seemingly in haste and suddenness, since on
the previous evening there had been no talk of his departing. Her father
was abed with a wound that made him feverish. Their grooms were all
sick, and wandered in a dazed and witless fashion about the castle,
their faces deadly pale and their eyes lustreless. In the hall she had
found a chaotic disorder upon descending, and one of the panels of the
wainscot she saw was freshly cracked.

Slowly the idea forced itself upon her mind that there had been brawling
the night before, yet was she far from surmising the motives that could
have led to it. The conclusion she came to in the end was that the men
had drunk deep, that in their cups they had waxed quarrelsome, and that
swords had been drawn.

Of Joseph then she sought enlightenment, and Joseph lied right
handsomely, like the ready-witted knave he was. A wondrously plausible
story had he for her ear; a story that played cunningly upon her
knowledge of the compact that existed between Kenneth and Sir Crispin.

“You may not know,” said he--full well aware that she did know--“that
when Galliard saved Kenneth’s life at Worcester he exacted from the
lad the promise that in return Kenneth should aid him in some vengeful
business he had on hand.”

Cynthia nodded that she understood or that she knew, and glibly Joseph
pursued:

“Last night, when on the point of departing, Crispin, who had drunk
over-freely, as is his custom, reminded Kenneth of his plighted word,
and demanded of the boy that he should upon the instant go forth with
him. Kenneth replied that the hour was overlate to be setting out upon
a journey, and he requested Galliard to wait until to-day, when he
would be ready to fulfil what he had promised. But Crispin retorted that
Kenneth was bound by his oath to go with him when he should require it,
and again he bade the boy make ready at once. Words ensued between them,
the boy insisting upon waiting until to-day, and Crispin insisting upon
his getting his boots and cloak and coming with him there and then. More
heated grew the argument, till in the end Galliard, being put out of
temper, snatched at his sword, and would assuredly have spitted the
boy had not your father interposed, thereby getting himself wounded.
Thereafter, in his drunken lust Sir Crispin went the length of wantonly
cracking that panel with his sword by way of showing Kenneth what he
had to expect unless he obeyed him. At that I intervened, and using my
influence, I prevailed upon Kenneth to go with Galliard as he demanded.
To this, for all his reluctance, Kenneth ended by consenting, and so
they are gone.”

By that most glib and specious explanation Cynthia was convinced. True,
she added a question touching the amazing condition of the grooms, in
reply to which Joseph afforded her a part of the truth.

“Sir Crispin sent them some wine, and they drank to his departure so
heartily that they are not rightly sober yet.”

Satisfied with this explanation Cynthia repaired to her father.

Now Gregory had not agreed with Joseph what narrative they were to offer
Cynthia, for it had never crossed his dull mind that the disorder of
the hall and the absence of Kenneth might cause her astonishment. And so
when she touched upon the matter of his wound, like the blundering fool
he was, he must needs let his tongue wag upon a tale which, if no less
imaginative than Joseph’s, was vastly its inferior in plausibility and
had yet the quality of differing from it totally in substance.

“Plague on that dog, your lover, Cynthia,” he growled from the mountain
of pillows that propped him. “If he should come to wed my daughter after
pinning me to the wainscot of my own hall may I be for ever damned.”

“How?” quoth she. “Do you say that Kenneth did it?”

“Aye, did he. He ran at me ere I could draw, like the coward he is, sink
him, and had me through the shoulder in the twinkling of an eye.”

Here was something beyond her understanding. What were they concealing
from her? She set her wits to the discovery and plied her father with
another question.

“How came you to quarrel?”

“How? ‘Twas--‘twas concerning you, child,” replied Gregory at random,
and unable to think of a likelier motive.

“How, concerning me?”

“Leave me, Cynthia,” he groaned in despair. “Go, child. I am grievously
wounded. I have the fever, girl. Go; let me sleep.”

“But tell me, father, what passed.”

“Unnatural child,” whined Gregory feebly, “will you plague a sick man
with questions? Would you keep him from the sleep that may mean recovery
to him?”

“Father, dear,” she murmured softly, “if I thought it was as you say,
I would leave you. But you know that you are but attempting to conceal
something from me something that I should know, that I must know.
Bethink you that it is of my lover that you have spoken.”

By a stupendous effort Gregory shaped a story that to him seemed likely.

“Well, then, since know you must,” he answered, “this is what befell:
we had all drunk over-deep to our shame do I confess it--and growing
tenderhearted for you, and bethinking me of your professed distaste to
Kenneth’s suit, I told him that for all the results that were likely
to attend his sojourn at Castle Marleigh, he might as well bear Crispin
company in his departure. He flared up at that, and demanded of me that
I should read him my riddle. Faith, I did by telling him that we were
like to have snow on midsummer’s day ere he ‘became your husband. That
speech of mine so angered him, being as he was all addled with wine and
ripe for any madness, that he sprang up and drew on me there and then.
The others sought to get between us, but he was over-quick, and before I
could do more than rise from the table his sword was through my shoulder
and into the wainscot at my back. After that it was clear he could
not remain here, and I demanded that he should leave upon the instant.
Himself he was nothing loath, for he realized his folly, and he misliked
the gleam of Joseph’s eye--which can be wondrous wicked upon occasion.
Indeed, but for my intercession Joseph had laid him stark.”

That both her uncle and her father had lied to her--the one cunningly,
the other stupidly--she had never a doubt, and vaguely uneasy was
Cynthia to learn the truth. Later that day the castle was busy with the
bustle of Joseph’s departure, and this again was a matter that puzzled
her.

“Whither do you journey, uncle?” she asked of him as he was in the act
of stepping out to enter the waiting carriage.

“To London, sweet cousin,” was his brisk reply. “I am, it seems,
becoming a very vagrant in my old age. Have you commands for me?”

“What is it you look to do in London?”

“There, child, let that be for the present. I will tell you perhaps when
I return. The door, Stephen.”

She watched his departure with uneasy eyes and uneasy heart. A fear
pervaded her that in all that had befallen, in all that was befalling
still--what ever it might be--some evil was at work, and an evil that
had Crispin for its scope. She had neither reason nor evidence from
which to draw this inference. It was no more than the instinct whose
voice cries out to us at times a presage of ill, and oftentimes compels
our attention in a degree far higher than any evidence could command.

The fear that was in her urged her to seek what information she could
on every hand, but without success. From none could she cull the merest
scrap of evidence to assist her.

But on the morrow she had information as prodigal as it was
unlooked-for, and from the unlikeliest of sources--her father himself.
Chafing at his inaction and lured into indiscretions by the subsiding of
the pain of his wound, Gregory quitted his bed and came below that
night to sup with his daughter. As his wont had been for years, he drank
freely. That done, alive to the voice of his conscience, and seeking to
drown its loud-tongued cry, he drank more freely still, so that in the
end his henchman, Stephen, was forced to carry him to bed.

This Stephen had grown grey in the service of the Ashburns, and amongst
much valuable knowledge that he had amassed, was a skill in dealing with
wounds and a wide understanding of the ways to go about healing
them. This knowledge made him realize how unwise at such a season was
Gregory’s debauch, and sorrowfully did he wag his head over his master’s
condition of stupor.

Stephen had grave fears concerning him, and these fears were realized
when upon the morrow Gregory awoke on fire with the fever. They summoned
a leech from Sheringham, and this cunning knave, with a view to adding
importance to the cure he was come to effect, and which in reality
presented no alarming difficulty, shook his head with ominous gravity,
and whilst promising to do “all that his skill permitted,” he spoke of a
clergyman to help Gregory make his peace with God. For the leech had no
cause to suspect that the whole of the Sacred College might have found
the task beyond its powers.

A wild fear took Gregory in its grip. How could he die with such a load
as that which he now carried upon his soul? And the leech, seeing how
the matter preyed upon his patient’s mind, made shift--but too late--to
tranquillize him with assurances that he was not really like to die, and
that he had but mentioned a parson so that Gregory in any case should be
prepared.

The storm once raised, however, was not so easily to be allayed, and the
conviction remained with Gregory that his sands were well-nigh run, and
that the end could be but a matter of days in coming.

Realizing as he did how richly he had earned damnation, a frantic terror
was upon him, and all that day he tossed and turned, now blaspheming,
now praying, now weeping. His life had been indeed one protracted course
of wrong-doing, and many had suffered by Gregory’s evil ways--many a man
and many a woman. But as the stars pale and fade when the sun mounts the
sky, so too were the lesser wrongs that marked his earthly pilgrimage of
sin rendered pale or blotted into insignificance by the greater wrong
he had done Ronald Marleigh--a wrong which was not ended yet, but whose
completion Joseph was even then working to effect. If only he could save
Crispin even now in the eleventh hour; if by some means he could warn
him not to repair to the sign of the Anchor in Thames Street. His
disordered mind took no account of the fact that in the time that was
sped since Galliard’s departure, the knight should already have reached
London.

And so it came about that, consumed at once by the desire to make
confession to whomsoever it might be, and the wish to attempt yet to
avert the crowning evil of whose planning he was partly guilty inasmuch
as he had tacitly consented to Joseph’s schemes, Gregory called for his
daughter. She came readily enough, hoping for exactly that which was
about to take place, yet fearing sorely that her hopes would suffer
frustration, and that she would learn nothing from her father.

“Cynthia,” he cried, in mingled dread and sorrow, “Cynthia, my child, I
am about to die.”

She knew both from Stephen and from the leech that this was far from
being his condition. Nevertheless her filial piety was at that moment a
touching sight. She smoothed his pillows with a gentle grace that was
in itself a soothing caress, even as her soft sympathetic voice was
a caress. She took his hand, and spoke to him endearingly, seeking to
relieve the sombre mood whose prey he was become, assuring him that the
leech had told her his danger was none so imminent, and that with quiet
and a little care he would be up and about again ere many days were
sped. But Gregory rejected hopelessly all efforts at consolation.

“I am on my death-bed, Cynthia,” he insisted, “and when I am gone I know
not whom there may be to cheer and comfort your lot in life. Your lover
is away on an errand of Joseph’s, and it may well betide that he will
never again cross the threshold of Castle Marleigh. Unnatural though I
may seem, sweetheart, my dying wish is that this may be so.”

She looked up in some surprise.

“Father, if that be all that grieves you, I can reassure you. I do not
love Kenneth.”

“You apprehend me amiss,” said he tartly. “Do you recall the story of
Sir Crispin Galliard’s life that you had from Kenneth on the night of
Joseph’s return?” His voice shook as he put the question.

“Why, yes. I am not like to forget it, and nightly do I pray,” she went
on, her tongue outrunning discretion and betraying her feelings
for Galliard, “that God may punish those murderers who wrecked his
existence.”

“Hush, girl,” he whispered in a quavering voice. “You know not what you
say.”

“Indeed I do; and as there is a just God my prayer shall be answered.”

“Cynthia,” he wailed. His eyes were wild, and the hand that rested in
hers trembled violently. “Do you know that it is against your father and
your father’s brother that you invoke God’s vengeance?”

She had been kneeling at his bedside; but now, when he pronounced those
words, she rose slowly and stood silent for a spell, her eyes seeking
his with an awful look that he dared not meet. At last:

“Oh, you rave,” she protested, “it is the fever.”

“Nay, child, my mind is clear, and what I have said is true.”

“True?” she echoed, no louder than a whisper, and her eyes grew round
with horror. “True that you and my uncle are the butchers who slew their
cousin, this man’s wife, and sought to murder him as well--leaving him
for dead? True that you are the thieves who claiming kinship by virtue
of that very marriage have usurped his estates and this his castle
during all these years, whilst he himself went an outcast, homeless and
destitute? Is that what you ask me to believe?”

“Even so,” he assented, with a feeble sob.

Her face was pale--white to the very lips, and her blue eyes smouldered
behind the shelter of her drooping lids. She put her hand to her breast,
then to her brow, pushing back the brown hair by a mechanical gesture
that was pathetic in the tale of pain it told. For support she was
leaning now against the wall by the head of his couch. In silence she
stood so while you might count to twenty; then with a sudden vehemence
revealing the passion of anger and grief that swayed her:

“Why,” she cried, “why in God’s name do you tell me this?”

“Why?” His utterance was thick, and his eyes, that were grown dull as a
snake’s, stared straight before him, daring not to meet his daughter’s
glance. “I tell it you,” he said, “because I am a dying man.” And he
hoped that the consideration of that momentous fact might melt her, and
might by pity win her back to him--that she was lost to him he realized.

“I tell you because I am a dying man,” he repeated. “I tell it you
because in such an hour I fain would make confession and repent, that
God may have mercy upon my soul. I tell it you, too, because the tragedy
begun eighteen years ago is not yet played out, and it may yet be mine
to avert the end we had prepared--Joseph and I. Thus perhaps a merciful
God will place it in my power to make some reparation. Listen, child.
It was against us, as you will have guessed, that Galliard enlisted
Kenneth’s services, and here on the night of Joseph’s return he called
upon the boy to fulfil him what he had sworn. The lad had no choice but
to obey; indeed, I forced him to it by attacking him and compelling him
to draw, which is how I came by this wound.

“Crispin had of a certainty killed Joseph but that your uncle bethought
him of telling him that his son lived.”

“He saved his life by a lie! That was worthy of him,” said Cynthia
scornfully.

“Nay, child, he spoke the truth, and when Joseph offered to restore the
boy to him, he had every intention of so doing. But in the moment of
writing the superscription to the letter Crispin was to bear to those
that had reared the child, Joseph bethought him of a foul scheme for
Galliard’s final destruction. And so he has sent him to London instead,
to a house in Thames Street, where dwells one Colonel Pride, who
bears Sir Crispin a heavy grudge, and into whose hands he will be thus
delivered. Can aught be done, Cynthia, to arrest this--to save Sir
Crispin from Joseph’s snare?”

“As well might you seek to restore the breath to a dead man,” she
answered, and her voice was so oddly calm, so cold and bare of
expression, that Gregory shuddered to hear it.

“Do not delude yourself,” she added. “Sir Crispin will have reached
London long ere this, and by now Joseph will be well on his way to see
that there is no mistake made, and that the life you ruined hopelessly
years ago is plucked at last from this unfortunate man. Merciful God! am
I truly your daughter?” she cried. “Is my name indeed Ashburn, and have
I been reared upon the estates that by crime you gained possession of?
Estates that by crime you hold--for they are his; every stone, every
stick that goes to make the place belongs to him, and now he has gone to
his death by your contriving.”

A moan escaped her, and she covered her face with her hands. A moment
she stood rocking there--a fair, lissom plant swept by a gale of
ineffable emotion. Then the breath seemed to go all out of her in one
great sigh, and Gregory, who dared not look her way, heard the swish of
her gown, followed by a thud as she collapsed and lay swooning on the
ground.

So disturbed at that was Gregory’s spirit that, forgetting his wound,
his fever, and the death which he had believed impending, he leapt from
his couch, and throwing wide the door, bellowed lustily for Stephen. In
frightened haste came his henchman to answer the petulant summons, and
in obedience to Gregory’s commands he went off again as quickly in quest
of Catherine--Cynthia’s woman.

Between them they bore the unconscious girl to her chamber, leaving
Gregory to curse himself for having been lured into a confession that
it now seemed to him had been unnecessary, since in his newly found
vitality he realized that death was none so near a thing as that
scoundrelly fool of a leech had led him to believe.



CHAPTER XXIV. THE WOOING OF CYNTHIA


Cynthia’s swoon was after all but brief. Upon recovering consciousness
her first act was to dismiss her woman. She had need to be alone--the
need of the animal that is wounded to creep into its lair and hide
itself. And so alone with her sorrow she sat through that long day.

That her father’s condition was grievous she knew to be untrue, so that
concerning him there was not even that pity that she might have felt had
she believed--as he would have had her believe that he was dying.

As she pondered the monstrous disclosure he had made, her heart hardened
against him, and even as she had asked him whether indeed she was his
daughter, so now she vowed to herself that she would be his daughter no
longer. She would leave Castle Marleigh, never again to set eyes upon
her father, and she hoped that during the little time she must yet
remain there--a day, or two at most--she might be spared the ordeal of
again meeting a parent for whom respect was dead, and who inspired her
with just that feeling of horror she must have for any man who confessed
himself a murderer and a thief.

She resolved to repair to London to a sister of her mother’s, where for
her dead mother’s sake she would find a haven extended readily.

At eventide she came at last from her chamber.

She had need of air, need of the balm that nature alone can offer in
solitude to poor wounded human souls.

It was a mild and sunny evening, worthy rather of August than of
October, and aimlessly Mistress Cynthia wandered towards the cliffs
overlooking Sheringham Hithe. There she sate herself in sad dejection
upon the grass, and gazed wistfully seaward, her mind straying now from
the sorry theme that had held dominion in it, to the memories that very
spot evoked.

It was there, sitting as she sat now, her eyes upon the shimmering waste
of sea, and the gulls circling overhead, that she had awakened to
the knowledge of her love for Crispin. And so to him strayed now her
thoughts, and to the fate her father had sent him to; and thus back
again to her father and the evil he had wrought. It is matter for
conjecture whether her loathing for Gregory would have been as intense
as it was, had another than Crispin Galliard been his victim.

Her life seemed at an end as she sat that October evening on the cliffs.
No single interest linked her to existence; nothing, it seemed, was left
her to hope for till the end should come--and no doubt it would be long
in coming, for time moves slowly when we wait.

Wistful she sat and thought, and every thought begat a sigh, and then
of a sudden--surely her ears had tricked her, enslaved by her
imagination--a crisp, metallic voice rang out close behind her.

“Why are we pensive, Mistress Cynthia?”

There was a catch in her breath as she turned her head. Her cheeks took
fire, and for a second were aflame. Then they went deadly white, and
it seemed that time and life and the very world had paused in its
relentless progress towards eternity. For there stood the object of her
thoughts and sighs, sudden and unexpected, as though the earth had cast
him up on to her surface.

His thin lips were parted in a smile that softened wondrously the
harshness of his face, and his eyes seemed then to her alight with
kindness. A moment’s pause there was, during which she sought her voice,
and when she had found it, all that she could falter was:

“Sir, how came you here? They told me that you rode to London.”

“Why, so I did. But on the road I chanced to halt, and having halted I
discovered reason why I should return.”

He had discovered a reason. She asked herself breathlessly what might
that reason be, and finding herself no answer to the question, she put
it next to him.

He drew near to her before replying. “May I sit with you awhile,
Cynthia?”

She moved aside to make room for him, as though the broad cliff had been
a narrow ledge, and with the sigh of a weary man finding a resting-place
at last, he sank down beside her.

There was a tenderness in his voice that set her pulses stirring wildly.
Did she guess aright the reason that had caused him to break his journey
and return? That he had done so--no matter what the reason--she thanked
God from her inmost heart, as for a miracle that had saved him from the
doom awaiting him in London town.

“Am I presumptuous, child, to think that haply the meditation in which
I found you rapt was for one, unworthy though he be, who went hence but
some few days since?”

The ambiguous question drove every thought from her mind, filling it to
overflowing with the supreme good of his presence, and the frantic hope
that she had read aright the reason of it.

“Have I conjectured rightly?” he asked, since she kept silence.

“Mayhap you have,” she whispered in return, and then, marvelling at her
boldness, blushed. He glanced sharply at her from narrowing eyes. It was
not the answer he had looked to hear.

As a father might have done he took the slender hand that rested upon
the grass beside him, and she, poor child, mistaking the promptings of
that action, suffered it to lie in his strong grasp. With averted head
she gazed upon the sea below, until a mist of tears rose up to blot it
out. The breeze seemed full of melody and gladness. God was very good
to her, and sent her in her hour of need this great consolation--a
consolation indeed that must have served to efface whatever sorrow could
have beset her.

“Why then, sweet lady, is my task that I had feared to find all fraught
with difficulty, grown easy indeed.”

And hearing him pause:

“What task is that, Sir Crispin?” she asked, intent on helping him.

He did not reply at once. He found it difficult to devise an answer.
To tell her brutally that he was come to bear her away, willing
or unwilling, on behalf of another, was not easy. Indeed, it was
impossible, and he was glad that inclinations in her which he had little
dreamt of, put the necessity aside.

“My task, Mistress Cynthia, is to bear you hence. To ask you to resign
this peaceful life, this quiet home in a little corner of the world,
and to go forth to bear life’s hardships with one who, whatever be his
shortcomings, has the all-redeeming virtue of loving you beyond aught
else in life.”

He gazed intently at her as he spoke, and her eyes fell before his
glance. He noted the warm, red blood suffusing her cheeks, her brow, her
very neck; and he could have laughed aloud for joy at finding so simple
that which he had feared would prove so hard. Some pity, too, crept
unaccountably into his stern heart, fathered by the little faith which
in his inmost soul he reposed in Jocelyn. And where, had she resisted
him, he would have grown harsh and violent, her acquiescence struck
the weapons from his hands, and he caught himself well-nigh warning her
against accompanying him.

“It is much to ask,” he said. “But love is selfish, and love asks much.”

“No, no,” she protested softly, “it is not much to ask. Rather is it
much to offer.”

At that he was aghast. Yet he continued:

“Bethink you, Mistress Cynthia, I have ridden back to Sheringham to ask
you to come with me into France, where my son awaits us?”

He forgot for the moment that she was in ignorance of his relationship
to him he looked upon as her lover, whilst she gave this mention of his
son, of whose existence she had already heard from her; father, little
thought at that moment. The hour was too full of other things that
touched her more nearly.

“I ask you to abandon the ease and peace of Sheringham for a life as a
soldier’s bride that may be rough and precarious for a while, though,
truth to tell, I have some influence at the Luxembourg, and friends upon
whose assistance I can safely count, to find your husband honourable
employment, and set him on the road to more. And how, guided by so sweet
a saint, can he but mount to fame and honour?”

She spoke no word, but the hand resting in his entwined his fingers in
an answering pressure.

“Dare I then ask so much?” cried he. And as if the ambiguity which
had marked his speech were not enough, he must needs, as he put this
question, bend in his eagerness towards her until her brown tresses
touched his swart cheek. Was it then strange that the eagerness
wherewith he urged another’s suit should have been by her interpreted as
her heart would have had it?

She set her hands upon his shoulders, and meeting his eager gaze with
the frank glance of the maid who, out of trust, is fearless in her
surrender:

“Throughout my life I shall thank God that you have dared it,” she made
answer softly.

A strange reply he deemed it, yet, pondering, he took her meaning to be
that since Jocelyn had lacked the courage to woo boldly, she was glad
that he had sent an ambassador less timid.

A pause followed, and for a spell they sat silent, he thinking of how
to frame his next words; she happy and content to sit beside him without
speech.

She marvelled somewhat at the strangeness of his wooing, which was
like unto no wooing her romancer’s tales had told her of, but then
she reflected how unlike he was to other men, and therein she saw the
explanation.

“I wish,” he mused, “that matters were easier; that it might be mine
to boldly sue your hand from your father, but it may not be. Even had
events not fallen out as they have done, it had been difficult; as it
is, it is impossible.”

Again his meaning was obscure, and when he spoke of suing for her hand
from her father, he did not think of adding that he would have sued it
for his son.

“I have no father,” she replied. “This very day have I disowned him.”
 And observing the inquiry with which his eyes were of a sudden charged:
“Would you have me own a thief, a murderer, my father?” she demanded,
with a fierceness of defiant shame.

“You know, then?” he ejaculated.

“Yes,” she answered sorrowfully, “I know all there is to be known. I
learnt it all this morning. All day have I pondered it in my shame to
end in the resolve to leave Sheringham. I had intended going to London
to my mother’s sister. You are very opportunely come.” She smiled up at
him through the tears that were glistening in her eyes. “You come even
as I was despairing--nay, when already I had despaired.”

Sir Crispin was no longer puzzled by the readiness of her acquiescence.
Here was the explanation of it. Forced by the honesty of her pure soul
to abandon the house of a father she knew at last for what he was, the
refuge Crispin now offered her was very welcome. She had determined
before he came to quit Castle Marleigh, and timely indeed was his offer
of the means of escape from a life that was grown impossible. A great
pity filled his heart. She was selling herself, he thought; accepting
the proposal which, on his son’s behalf, he made, and from which at any
other season, he feared, she would have shrunk in detestation.

That pity was reflected on his countenance now, and noting its
solemnity, and misconstruing it, she laughed outright, despite herself.
He did not ask her why she laughed, he did not notice it; his thoughts
were busy already upon another matter.

When next he spoke, it was to describe to her the hollow of the road
where on the night of his departure from the castle he had been flung
from his horse. She knew the spot, she told him, and there at dusk upon
the following day she would come to him. Her woman must accompany her,
and for all that he feared such an addition to the party might retard
their flight, yet he could not gainsay her resolution. Her uncle, he
learnt from her, was absent from Sheringham; he had set out four days
ago for London. For her father she would leave a letter, and in this
matter Crispin urged her to observe circumspection, giving no indication
of the direction of her journey.

In all he said, now that matters were arranged he was calm, practical,
and unloverlike, and for all that she would he had been less
self-possessed, her faith in him caused her, upon reflection, even to
admire this which she conceived to be restraint. Yet, when at parting he
did no more than courteously bend before her, and kiss her hand as any
simpering gallant might have done, she was all but vexed, and not to be
outdone in coldness, she grew frigid. But it was lost upon him. He had
not a lover’s discernment, quickened by anxious eyes that watch for each
flitting change upon his mistress’s face.

They parted thus, and into the heart of Mistress Cynthia there crept
that night a doubt that banished sleep. Was she wise in entrusting
herself so utterly to a man of whom she knew but little, and that learnt
from rumours which had not been good? But scarcely was it because
of that that doubts assailed her. Rather was it because of his cool
deliberateness which argued not the great love wherewith she fain would
fancy him inspired.

For consolation she recalled a line that had it great fires were soon
burnt out, and she sought to reassure herself that the flame of his
love, if not all-consuming, would at least burn bright and steadfastly
until the end of life. And so she fell asleep, betwixt hope and fear,
yet no longer with any hesitancy touching the morrow’s course.

In the morning she took her woman into her confidence, and scared her
with it out of what little sense the creature owned. Yet to such purpose
did she talk, that when that evening, as Crispin waited by the coach he
had taken, in the hollow of the road, he saw approaching him a portly,
middle-aged dame with a valise. This was Cynthia’s woman, and Cynthia
herself was not long in following, muffled in a long, black cloak.

He greeted her warmly--affectionately almost yet with none of the
rapture to which she held herself entitled as some little recompense for
all that on his behalf she left behind.

Urbanely he handed her into the coach, and, after her, her woman. Then
seeing that he made shift to close the door:

“How is this?” she cried. “Do you not ride with us?”

He pointed to a saddled horse standing by the roadside, and which she
had not noticed.

“It will be better so. You will be at more comfort in the carriage
without me. Moreover, it will travel the lighter and the swifter, and
speed will prove our best friend.”

He closed the door, and stepped back with a word of command to the
driver. The whip cracked, and Cynthia flung herself back almost in a
pet. What manner of lover, she asked herself, was thin and what manner
of woman she, to let herself be borne away by one who made so little use
of the arts and wiles of sweet persuasion? To carry her off, and yet not
so much as sit beside her, was worthy only of a man who described such a
journey as tedious. She marvelled greatly at it, yet more she marvelled
at herself that she did not abandon this mad undertaking.

The coach moved on and the flight from Sheringham was begun.



CHAPTER XXV. CYNTHIA’S FLIGHT


Throughout the night they went rumbling on their way at a pace whose
sluggishness elicited many an oath from Crispin as he rode a few yards
in the rear, ever watchful of the possibility of pursuit. But there was
none, nor none need he have feared, since whilst he rode through the
cold night, Gregory Ashburn slept as peacefully as a man may with the
fever and an evil conscience, and imagined his dutiful daughter safely
abed.

With the first streaks of steely light came a thin rain to heighten
Crispin’s discomfort, for of late he had been overmuch in the saddle,
and strong though he was, he was yet flesh and blood, and subject to
its ills. Towards ten o’clock they passed through Denham. When they were
clear of it Cynthia put her head from the window. She had slept well,
and her mood was lighter and happier. As Crispin rode a yard or so
behind, he caught sight of her fresh, smiling face, and it affected him
curiously. The tenderness that two days ago had been his as he talked
to her upon the cliffs was again upon him, and the thought that anon she
would be linked to him by the ties of relationship, was pleasurable.
She gave him good morrow prettily, and he, spurring his horse to the
carriage door, was solicitous to know of her comfort. Nor did he again
fall behind until Stafford was reached at noon. Here, at the sign of the
Suffolk Arms, he called a halt, and they broke their fast on the best
the house could give them.

Cynthia was gay, and so indeed was Crispin, yet she noted in him that
coolness which she accounted restraint, and gradually her spirits sank
again before it.

To Crispin’s chagrin there were no horses to be had. Someone in great
haste had ridden through before them, and taken what relays the hostelry
could give, leaving four jaded beasts in the stable. It seemed, indeed,
that they must remain there until the morrow, and in coming to that
conclusion, Sir Crispin’s temper suffered sorely.

“Why need it put you so about,” cried Cynthia, in arch reproach, “since
I am with you?”

“Blood and fire, madam,” roared Galliard, “it is precisely for that
reason that I am exercised. What if your father came upon us here?”

“My father, sir, is abed with a sword-wound and a fever,” she replied,
and he remembered then how Kenneth had spitted Gregory through the
shoulder.

“Still,” he returned, “he will have discovered your flight, and I dare
swear we shall have his myrmidons upon our heels. Should they come up
with us we shall hardly find them more gentle than he would be.”

She paled at that, and for a second there was silence. Then her hand
stole forth upon his arm, and she looked at him with tightened lips and
a defiant air.

“What, indeed, if they do? Are you not with me?” A king had praised
his daring, and for his valour had dubbed him knight upon a field of
stricken battle; yet the honour of it had not brought him the elation
those words--expressive of her utter faith in him and his prowess--begat
in his heart. Upon the instant the delay ceased to fret him.

“Madam,” he laughed, “since you put it so, I care not who comes. The
Lord Protector himself shall not drag you from me.”

It was the nearest he had gone to a passionate speech since they had
left Sheringham, and it pleased her; yet in uttering it he had stood a
full two yards away, and in that she had taken no pleasure.

Bidding her remain and get what rest she might, he left her, and she,
following his straight, lank figure--so eloquent of strength--and the
familiar poise of his left hand upon the pummel of his sword, felt proud
indeed that he belonged to her, and secure in his protection. She sat
herself at the window when he was gone, and whilst she awaited his
return, she hummed a gay measure softly to herself. Her eyes were
bright, and there was a flush upon her cheeks. Not even in the wet,
greasy street could she find any unsightliness that afternoon. But as
she waited, and the minutes grew to hours, that flush faded, and the
sparkle died gradually from her eyes. The measure that she had hummed
was silenced, and her shapely mouth took on a pout of impatience, which
anon grew into a tighter mould, as he continued absent.

A frown drew her brows together, and Mistress Cynthia’s thoughts were
much as they had been the night before she left Castle Marleigh. Where
was he? Why came he not? She took up a book of plays that lay upon the
table, and sought to while away the time by reading. The afternoon faded
into dusk, and still he did not come. Her woman appeared, to ask whether
she should call for lights and at that Cynthia became almost violent.

“Where is Sir Crispin?” she demanded. And to the dame’s quavering answer
that she knew not, she angrily bade her go ascertain.

In a pet, Cynthia paced the chamber whilst Catherine was gone upon that
errand. Did this man account her a toy to while away the hours for which
he could find no more profitable diversion, and to leave her to die of
ennui when aught else offered? Was it a small thing that he had asked of
her, to go with him into a strange land, that he should show himself so
little sensible of the honour done him?

With such questions did she plague herself, and finding them either
unanswerable, or answerable only by affirmatives, she had well-nigh
resolved upon leaving the inn, and making her way back to London to seek
out her aunt, when the door opened and her woman reappeared.

“Well?” cried Cynthia, seeing her alone. “Where is Sir Crispin?”

“Below, madam.”

“Below?” echoed she. “And what, pray, doth he below?”

“He is at dice with a gentleman from London.”

In the dim light of the October twilight the woman saw not the sudden
pallor of her mistress’s cheeks, but she heard the gasp of pain that
was almost a cry. In her mortification, Cynthia could have wept had she
given way to her feelings. The man who had induced her to elope with him
sat at dice with a gentleman from London! Oh, it was monstrous! At the
thought of it she broke into a laugh that appalled her tiring-woman;
then mastering her hysteria, she took a sudden determination.

“Call me the host,” she cried, and the frightened Catherine obeyed her
at a run.

When the landlord came, bearing lights, and bending his aged back
obsequiously:

“Have you a pillion?” she asked abruptly. “Well, fool, why do you stare?
Have you a pillion?”

“I have, madam.”

“And a knave to ride with me, and a couple more as escort?”

“I might procure them, but--”

“How soon?”

“Within half an hour, but--”

“Then go see to it,” she broke in, her foot beating the ground
impatiently.

“But, madam--”

“Go, go, go!” she cried, her voice rising at each utterance of that
imperative.

“But, madam,” the host persisted despairingly, and speaking quickly so
that he might get the words out, “I have no horses fit to travel ten
miles.”

“I need to go but five,” she retorted quickly, her only thought being to
get the beasts, no matter what their condition. “Now, go, and come not
back until all is ready. Use dispatch and I will pay you well, and above
all, not a word to the gentleman who came hither with me.”

The sorely-puzzled host withdrew to do her bidding, won to it by her
promise of good payment.

Alone she sat for half an hour, vainly fostering the hope that ere
the landlord returned to announce the conclusion of his preparations,
Crispin might have remembered her and come. But he did not appear, and
in her solitude this poor little maid was very miserable, and shed
some tears that had still more of anger than sorrow in their source. At
length the landlord came. She summoned her woman, and bade her follow by
post on the morrow. The landlord she rewarded with a ring worth twenty
times the value of the service, and was led by him through a side door
into the innyard.

Here she found three horses, one equipped with the pillion on which she
was to ride behind a burly stableboy. The other two were mounted by
a couple of stalwart and well-armed men, one of whom carried a
funnel-mouthed musketoon with a swagger that promised prodigies of
valour.

Wrapped in her cloak, she mounted behind the stable-boy, and bade him
set out and take the road to Denham. Her dream was at an end.

Master Quinn, the landlord, watched her departure with eyes that
were charged with doubt and concern. As he made fast the door of the
stableyard after she had passed out, he ominously shook his hoary head
and muttered to himself humble, hostelry-flavoured philosophies touching
the strange ways of men with women, and the stranger ways of women with
men. Then, taking up his lanthorn, he slowly retraced his steps to the
buttery where his wife was awaiting him.

With sleeves rolled high above her pink and deeply-dimpled elbows stood
Mistress Quinn at work upon the fashioning of a pastry, when her husband
entered and set down his lanthorn with a sigh.

“To be so plagued,” he growled. “To be browbeaten by a slip of a
wench--a fine gentleman’s baggage with the airs and vapours of a lady of
quality. Am I not a fool to have endured it?”

“Certainly you are a fool,” his wife agreed, kneading diligently,
“whatever you may have endured. What now?”

His fat face was puckered into a thousand wrinkles. His little eyes
gazed at her with long-suffering malice.

“You are my wife,” he answered pregnantly, as who would say: Thus is
my folly clearly proven! and seeing that the assertion was not one that
admitted of dispute, Mistress Quinn was silent.

“Oh, ‘tis ill done!” he broke out a moment later. “Shame on me for it;
it is ill done!”

“If you have done it ‘tis sure to be ill done, and shame on you in good
sooth--but for what?” put in his wife.

“For sending those poor jaded beasts upon the road.”

“What beasts?”

“What beasts? Do I keep turtles? My horses, woman.”

“And whither have you sent them?”

“To Denham with the baggage that came hither this morning in the company
of that very fierce gentleman who was in such a pet because we had no
horses.”

“Where is he?” inquired the hostess.

“At dice with those other gallants from town.”

“At dice quotha? And she’s gone, you say?” asked Mrs. Quinn, pausing in
her labours squarely to face her husband.

“Aye,” said he.

“Stupid!” rejoined his docile spouse, vexed by his laconic assent. “Do
you mean she has run away?”

“Tis what anyone might take from what I have told you,” he answered
sweetly.

“And you have lent her horses and helped her to get away, and you leave
her husband at play in there?”

“You have seen her marriage lines, I make no doubt,” he sneered
irrelevantly.

“You dolt! If the gentleman horsewhips you, you will have richly earned
it.”

“Eh? What?” gasped he, and his rubicund cheeks lost something of their
high colour, for here was a possibility that had not entered into his
calculations. But Mistress Quinn stayed not to answer him. Already she
was making for the door, wiping the dough from her hands on to her apron
as she went. A suspicion of her purpose flashed through her husband’s
mind.

“What would you do?” he inquired nervously.

“Tell the gentleman what has taken place.”

“Nay,” he cried, resolutely barring her way. “Nay. That you shall not.
Would you--would you ruin me?”

She gave him a look of contempt, and dodging his grasp she gained the
door and was half-way down the passage towards the common room before he
had overtaken her and caught her round the middle.

“Are you mad, woman?” he shouted. “Will you undo me?”

“Do you undo me,” she bade him, snatching at his hands. But he clutched
with the tightness of despair.

“You shall not go,” he swore. “Come back and leave the gentleman to
make the discovery for himself. I dare swear it will not afflict him
overmuch. He has abandoned her sorely since they came; not a doubt of
it but that he is weary of her. At least he need not know I lent her
horses. Let him think she fled a-foot, when he discovers her departure.”

“I will go,” she answered stubbornly, dragging him with her a yard or
two nearer the door. “The gentleman shall be warned. Is a woman to run
away from her husband in my house, and the husband never be warned of
it?”

“I promised her,” he began.

“What care I for your promises?” she asked. “I will tell him, so that he
may yet go after her and bring her back.”

“You shall not,” he insisted, gripping her more closely. But at that
moment a delicately mocking voice greeted their ears.

“Marry, ‘tis vastly diverting to hear you,” it said. They looked round,
to find one of the party of town sparks that had halted at the inn
standing arms akimbo in the narrow passage, clearly waiting for them
to make room. “A touching sight, sir,” said he sardonically to the
landlord. “A wondrous touching sight to behold a man of your years
playing the turtle-dove to his good wife like the merest fledgeling.
It grieves me to intrude myself so harshly upon your cooing, though
if you’ll but let me pass you may resume your chaste embrace without
uneasiness, for I give you my word I’ll never look behind me.”

Abashed, the landlord and his dame fell apart. Then, ere the gentleman
could pass her, Mistress Quinn, like a true opportunist, sped swiftly
down the passage and into the common room before her husband could again
detain her.

Now, within the common room of the Suffolk Arms Sir Crispin sat face to
face with a very pretty fellow, all musk and ribbons, and surrounded by
some half-dozen gentlemen on their way to London who had halted to rest
at Stafford.

The pretty gentleman swore lustily, affected a monstrous wicked look,
assured that he was impressing all who stood about with some conceit of
the rakehelly ways he pursued in town.

A game started with crowns to while away the tedium of the enforced
sojourn at the inn had grown to monstrous proportions. Fortune had
favoured the youth at first, but as the stakes grew her favours to him
diminished, and at the moment that Cynthia rode out of the inn-yard, Mr.
Harry Foster flung his last gold piece with an oath upon the table.

“Rat me,” he groaned, “there’s the end of a hundred.”

He toyed sorrowfully with the red ribbon in his black hair, and Crispin,
seeing that no fresh stake was forthcoming, made shift to rise. But the
coxcomb detained him.

“Tarry, sir,” he cried, “I’ve not yet done. ‘Slife, we’ll make a night
of it.”

He drew a ring from his finger, and with a superb gesture of disdain
pushed it across the board.

“What’ll ye stake?” And, in the same breath, “Boy, another stoup,” he
cried.

Crispin eyed the gem carelessly.

“Twenty Caroluses,” he muttered.

“Rat me, sir, that nose of yours proclaims you a jew, without more. Say
twenty-five, and I’ll cast.”

With a tolerant smile, and the shrug of a man to whom twenty-five or
a hundred are of like account, Crispin consented. They threw; Crispin
passed and won.

“What’ll ye stake?” cried Mr. Foster, and a second ring followed the
first.

Before Crispin could reply, the door leading to the interior of the inn
was flung open, and Mrs. Quinn, breathless with exertion and excitement,
came scurrying across the room. In the doorway stood the host in
hesitancy and fear. Bending to Crispin’s ear, Mrs. Quinn delivered her
message in a whisper that was heard by most of those who were about.

“Gone!” cried Crispin in consternation.

The woman pointed to her husband, and Crispin, understanding from this
that she referred him to the host, called to him.

“What know you, landlord?” he shouted. “Come hither, and tell me whither
is she gone!”

“I know not,” replied the quaking host, adding the particulars of
Cynthia’s departure, and the information that the lady seemed in great
anger.

“Saddle me a horse,” cried Crispin, leaping to his feet, and pitching
Mr. Foster’s trinket upon the table as though it were a thing of no
value. “Towards Denham you say they rode? Quick, man!” And as the host
departed he swept the gold and the ring he had won into his pockets
preparing to depart.

“Hoity toity!” cried Mr. Foster. “What sudden haste is this?”

“I am sorry, sir, that Fortune has been unkind to you, but I must go.
Circumstances have arisen which--”

“D--n your circumstances!” roared Foster, get ting on his feet. “You’ll
not leave me thus!”

“With your permission, sir, I will.”

“But you shall not have my permission!”

“Then I shall be so unfortunate as to go without it. But I shall
return.”

“Sir, ‘tis an old legend, that!”

Crispin turned about in despair. To be embroiled now might ruin
everything, and by a miracle he kept his temper. He had a moment to
spare while his horse was being saddled.

“Sir,” he said, “if you have upon your pretty person trinkets to half
the value of what I have won from you, I’ll stake the whole against
them on one throw, after which, no matter what the result, I take my
departure. Are you agreed?”

There was a murmur of admiration from those present at the recklessness
and the generosity of the proposal, and Foster was forced to accept it.
Two more rings he drew forth, a diamond from the ruffles at his throat,
and a pearl that he wore in his ear. The lot he set upon the board, and
Crispin threw the winning cast as the host entered to say that his horse
was ready.

He gathered the trinkets up, and with a polite word of regret he was
gone, leaving Mr. Harry Foster to meditate upon the pledging of one of
his horses to the landlord in discharge of his lodging.

And so it fell out that before Cynthia had gone six miles along the road
to Denham, one of her attendants caught a rapid beat of hoofs behind
them, and drew her attention to it, suggesting that they were being
followed. Faster Cynthia bade them travel, but the pursuer gained
upon them at every stride. Again the man drew her attention to it, and
proposed that they should halt and face him who followed. The possession
of the musketoon gave him confidence touching the issue. But Cynthia
shuddered at the thought, and again, with promises of rich reward, urged
them to go faster. Another mile they went, but every moment brought the
pursuing hoof-beats nearer and nearer, until at last a hoarse challenge
rang out behind them, and they knew that to go farther would be vain;
within the next half-mile, ride as they might, their pursuer would be
upon them.

The night was moonless, yet sufficiently clear for objects to be
perceived against the sky, and presently the black shadow of him who
rode behind loomed up upon the road, not a hundred paces off.

Despite Cynthia’s orders not to fire, he of the musketoon raised his
weapon under cover of the darkness and blazed at the approaching shadow.

Cynthia cried out--a shriek of dismay it was; the horses plunged, and
Sir Crispin laughed aloud as he bore down upon them. He of the musketoon
heard the swish of a sword being drawn, and saw the glitter of the blade
in the dark. A second later there was a shock as Crispin’s horse dashed
into his, and a crushing blow across the forehead, which Galliard
delivered with the hilt of his rapier, sent him hurtling from the
saddle. His comrade clapped spurs to his horse at that and was running a
race with the night wind in the direction of Denham.

Before Cynthia quite knew what had happened the seat on the pillion in
front of her was empty, and she was riding back to Stafford with Crispin
beside her, his hand upon the bridle of her horse.

“You little fool!” he said half-angrily, half-gibingly; and thereafter
they rode in silence--she too mortified with shame and anger to venture
upon words.

That journey back to Stafford was a speedy one, and soon they stood
again in the inn-yard out of which she had ridden but an hour ago.
Avoiding the common room, Crispin ushered her through the side door by
which she had quitted the house. The landlord met them in the passage,
and looking at Crispin’s face the pallor and fierceness of it drove him
back without a word.

Together they ascended to the chamber where in solitude she had
spent the day. Her feelings were those of a child caught in an act of
disobedience, and she was angry with herself and her weakness that
it should be so. Yet within the room she stood with bent head, never
glancing at her companion, in whose eyes there was a look of blended
anger and amazement as he observed her. At length in calm, level tones:

“Why did you run away?” he asked.

The question was to her anger as a gust of wind to a smouldering fire.
She threw back her head defiantly, and fixed him with a glance as fierce
as his own.

“I will tell you,” she cried, and suddenly stopped short. The fire died
from her eyes, and they grew wide in wonder--in fascinated wonder--to
see a deep stain overspreading one side of his grey doublet, from the
left shoulder downwards. Her wonder turned to horror as she realized the
nature of that stain and remembered that one of her men had fired upon
him.

“You are wounded?” she faltered.

A sickly smile came into his face, and seemed to accentuate its pallor.
He made a deprecatory gesture. Then, as if in that gesture he had
expended his last grain of strength, he swayed suddenly as he stood.
He made as if to reach a chair, but at the second step he stumbled, and
without further warning he fell prone at her feet, his left hand upon
his heart, his right outstretched straight from the shoulder. The loss
of blood he had sustained, following upon the fatigue and sleeplessness
that had been his of late, had demanded its due from him, man of iron
though he was.

Upon the instant her anger vanished. A great fear that he was dead
descended upon her, and to heighten the horror of it came the thought
that he had received his death-wound through her agency. With a moan of
anguish she went down upon her knees beside him. She raised his head
and pillowed it in her lap, calling to him by name, as though her
voice alone must suffice to bring him back to life and consciousness.
Instinctively she unfastened his doublet at the neck, and sought to draw
it away that she might see the nature of his hurt and staunch the wound
if possible, but her strength ebbed away from her, and she abandoned her
task, unable to do more than murmur his name.

“Crispin, Crispin, Crispin!”

She stooped and kissed the white, clammy forehead, then his lips, and
as she did so a tremor ran through her, and he opened his eyes. A moment
they looked dull and lifeless, then they waxed questioning.

A second ago these two had stood in anger with the width of the room
betwixt them; now, in a flash, he found his head on her lap, her lips on
his. How came he there? What meant it?

“Crispin, Crispin,” she cried, “thank God you did but swoon!”

Then the awakening of his soul came swift upon the awakening of his
body. He lay there, oblivious of his wound, oblivious of his mission,
oblivious of his son. He lay with senses still half dormant and
comprehension dulled, but with a soul alert he lay, and was supremely
happy with a happiness such as he had never known in all his ill-starred
life.

In a feeble voice he asked:

“Why did you run away?”

“Let us forget it,” she answered softly.

“Nay--tell me first.”

“I thought--I thought--” she stammered; then, gathering courage, “I
thought you did not really care, that you made a toy of me,” said she.
“When they told me that you sat at dice with a gentleman from London I
was angry at your neglect. If you loved me, I told myself, you would not
have used me so, and left me to mope alone.”

For a moment Crispin let his grey eyes devour her blushing face. Then
he closed them and pondered what she had said, realization breaking upon
him now like a great flood. The light came to him in one blinding yet
all-illuming flash. A hundred things that had puzzled him in the last
two days grew of a sudden clear, and filled him with a joy unspeakable.
He dared scarce believe that he was awake, and Cynthia by him--that he
had indeed heard aright what she had said. How blind he had been, how
nescient of himself!

Then, as his thoughts travelled on to the source of the misapprehension
he remembered his son, and the memory was like an icy hand upon his
temples that chilled him through and through. Lying there with eyes
still closed he groaned. Happiness was within his grasp at last. Love
might be his again did he but ask it, and the love of as pure and sweet
a creature as ever God sent to chasten a man’s life. A great tenderness
possessed him. A burning temptation to cast to the winds his plighted
word, to make a mock of faith, to deride honour, and to seize this woman
for his own. She loved him he knew it now; he loved her--the knowledge
had come as suddenly upon him. Compared with this what could his faith,
his word, his honour give him? What to him, in the face of this, was
that paltry fellow, his son, who had spurned him!

The hardest fight he ever fought, he fought it there, lying supine upon
the ground, his head in her lap.

Had he fought it out with closed eyes, perchance honour and his plighted
word had won the day; but he opened them, and they met Cynthia’s.

A while they stayed thus; the hungry glance of his grey eyes peering
into the clear blue depths of hers; and in those depths his soul was
drowned, his honour stifled.

“Cynthia,” he cried, “God pity me, I love you!” And he swooned again.



CHAPTER XXVI. TO FRANCE


That cry, which she but half understood, was still ringing in her ears,
when the door was of a sudden flung open, and across the threshold a
very daintily arrayed young gentleman stepped briskly, the expostulating
landlord following close upon his heels.

“I tell thee, lying dog,” he cried, “I saw him ride into the yard, and,
‘fore George, he shall give me the chance of mending my losses. Be off
to your father, you Devil’s natural.”

Cynthia looked up in alarm, whereupon that merry blood catching sight of
her, halted in some confusion at what he saw.

“Rat me, madam,” he cried, “I did not know--I had not looked to--” He
stopped, and remembering at last his manners he made her a low bow.

“Your servant, madam,” said he, “your servant Harry Foster.”

She gazed at him, her eyes full of inquiry, but said nothing, whereat
the pretty gentleman plucked awkwardly at his ruffles and wished himself
elsewhere.

“I did not know, madam, that your husband was hurt.”

“He is not my husband, sir,” she answered, scarce knowing what she said.

“Gadso!” he ejaculated. “Yet you ran away from him?”

Her cheeks grew crimson.

“The door, sir, is behind you.”

“So, madam, is that thief the landlord,” he made answer, no whit
abashed. “Come hither, you bladder of fat, the gentleman is hurt.”

Thus courteously summoned, the landlord shuffled forward, and Mr.
Foster begged Cynthia to allow him with the fellow’s aid to see to the
gentleman’s wound. Between them they laid Crispin on a couch, and the
town spark went to work with a dexterity little to have been expected
from his flippant exterior. He dressed the wound, which was in the
shoulder and not in itself of a dangerous character, the loss of blood
it being that had brought some gravity to the knight’s condition. They
propped his head upon a pillow, and presently he sighed and, opening his
eyes, complained of thirst, and was manifestly surprised at seeing the
coxcomb turned leech.

“I came in search of you to pursue our game,” Foster explained when they
had ministered to him, “and, ‘fore George, I am vastly grieved to find
you in this condition.”

“Pish, sir, my condition is none so grievous--a scratch, no more, and
were my heart itself pierced the knowledge that I have gained--” He
stopped short. “But there, sir,” he added presently, “I am grateful
beyond words for your timely ministration, and if to my debt you will
add that of leaving me awhile to rest, I shall appreciate it.”

His glance met Cynthia’s and he smiled. The host coughed significantly,
and shuffled towards the door. But Master Foster made no shift to move;
but stood instead beside Galliard, though in apparent hesitation.

“I should like a word with you ere I go,” he said at length. Then
turning and perceiving the landlord standing by the door in an attitude
of eloquent waiting: “Take yourself off,” he cried to him. “Crush me,
may not one gentleman say a word to another without being forced to
speak into your inquisitive ears as well? You will forgive my heat,
madam, but, God a’mercy, that greasy rascal tries me sorely.”

“Now, sir,” he resumed, when the host was gone. “I stand thus: I have
lost to you to-day a sum of money which, though some might account
considerable, is in itself no more than a trifle.

“I am, however, greatly exercised at the loss of certain trinkets which
have to me a peculiar value, and which, to be frank, I staked in a
moment of desperation. I had hoped, sir, to retrieve my losses o’er a
friendly main this evening, for I have still to stake a coach and four
horses--as noble a set of beasts as you’ll find in England, aye rat
me. Your wound, sir, renders it impossible for me to ask you to give
yourself the fatigue of obliging me. I come, then, to propose that you
return me those trinkets against my note of hand for the amount that was
staked on them. I am well known in town, sir,” he added hurriedly, “and
you need have no anxiety.”

Crispin stopped him with a wave of the hand.

“I have none, sir, in that connexion, and I am willing to do as you
suggest.” He thrust his hand into his pocket, and drew forth the rings,
the brooch and the ear-ring he had won. “Here, sir, are your trinkets.”

“Sir,” cried Mr. Foster, thrown into some confusion by Galliard’s
unquestioning generosity, “I am indebted to you. Rat me, sir, I am
indeed. You shall have my note of hand on the instant. How much shall we
say?”

“One moment, Mr. Foster,” said Crispin, an idea suddenly occurring to
him. “You mentioned horses. Are they fresh?”

“As June roses.”

“And you are returning to London, are you not?”

“I am.”

“When do you wish to proceed?”

“To-morrow.”

“Why, then, sir, I have a proposal to make which will remove the need of
your note of hand. Lend me your horses, sir, to reach Harwich. I wish to
set out at once!”

“But your wound?” cried Cynthia. “You are still faint.”

“Faint! Not I. I am awake and strong. My wound is no wound, for a
scratch may not be given that name. So there, sweetheart.” He laughed,
and drawing down her head, he whispered the words: “Your father.” Then
turning again to Foster. “Now, sir,” he continued, “there are four
tolerable posthorses of mine below, on which you can follow tomorrow to
Harwich, there exchanging them again for your own, which you shall find
awaiting you, stabled at the Garter Inn. For this service, to me of
immeasurable value, I will willingly cede those gewgaws to you.”

“But, rat me, sir,” cried Foster in bewilderment, “tis too
generous--‘pon honour it is. I can’t consent to it. No, rat me, I
can’t.”

“I have told you how great a boon you will confer. Believe me, sir, to
me it is worth twice, a hundred times the value of those trinkets.”

“You shall have my horses, sir, and my note of hand as well,” said
Foster firmly.

“Your note of hand is of no value to me, sir. I look to leave England
to-morrow, and I know not when I may return.”

Thus in the end it came about that the bargain was concluded. Cynthia’s
maid was awakened and bidden to rise. The horses were harnessed to
Crispin’s coach, and Crispin, leaning upon Harry Foster’s arm, descended
and took his place within the carriage.

Leaving the London blood at the door of the Suffolk Arms, crushing,
burning, damning and ratting himself at Crispin’s magnificence, they
rolled away through the night in the direction of Ipswich.

Ten o’clock in the morning beheld them at the door of the Garter Inn at
Harwich. But the jolting of the coach had so hardly used Crispin that he
had to be carried into the hostelry. He was much exercised touching the
Lady Jane and his inability to go down to the quay in quest of her, when
he was accosted by a burly, red-faced individual who bluntly asked him
was he called Sir Crispin Galliard. Ere he could frame an answer the man
had added that he was Thomas Jackson, master of the Lady Jane--at which
piece of good news Crispin felt like to shout for joy.

But his reflection upon his present position, when at last he lay in the
schooner’s cabin, brought him the bitter reverse of pleasure. He had set
out to bring Cynthia to his son; he had pledged his honour to accomplish
it. How was he fulfilling his trust? In his despondency, during a moment
when alone, he cursed the knave that had wounded him for his clumsiness
in not having taken a lower aim when he fired, and thus solved him this
ugly riddle of life for all time.

Vainly did he strive to console himself and endeavour to palliate the
wrong he had done with the consideration that he was the man Cynthia
loved, and not his son; that his son was nothing to her, and that she
would never have accompanied him had she dreamt that he wooed her for
another.

No. The deed was foul, and rendered fouler still by virtue of those
other wrongs in whose extenuation it had been undertaken. For a moment
he grew almost a coward. He was on the point of bidding Master Jackson
avoid Calais and make some other port along the coast. But in a moment
he had scorned the craven argument of flight, and determined that come
what might he would face his son, and lay the truth before him, leaving
him to judge how strong fate had been. As he lay feverish and fretful in
the vessel’s cabin, he came well-nigh to hating Kenneth; he remembered
him only as a poor, mean creature, now a bigot, now a fop, now a
psalm-monger, now a roysterer, but ever a hypocrite, ever a coward,
and never such a man as he could have taken pride in presenting as his
offspring.

They had a fair wind, and towards evening Cynthia, who had been absent
from his side a little while, came to tell him that the coast of France
grew nigh.

His answer was a sigh, and when she chid him for it, he essayed a smile
that was yet more melancholy. For a second he was tempted to confide
in her; to tell her of the position in which he found himself and to
lighten his load by sharing it with her. But this he dared not do.
Cynthia must never know.



CHAPTER XXVII. THE AUBERGE DU SOLEIL


In a room of the first floor of the Auberge du Soleil, at Calais, the
host inquired of Crispin if he were milord Galliard. At that question
Crispin caught his breath in apprehension, and felt himself turn pale.
What it portended, he guessed; and it stifled the hope that had been
rising in him since his arrival, and because he had not found his
son awaiting him either on the jetty or at the inn. He dared ask no
questions, fearing that the reply would quench that hope, which rose
despite himself, and begotten of a desire of which he was hardly
conscious.

He sighed before replying, and passing his brown, nervous hand across
his brow, he found it moist.

“My name, M. l’hote, is Crispin Galliard. What news have you for me?”

“A gentleman--a countryman of milord’s--has been here these three days
awaiting him.”

For a little while Crispin sat quite still, stripped of his last rag of
hope. Then suddenly bracing himself, he sprang up, despite his weakness.

“Bring him to me. I will see him at once.”

“Tout-a-l’heure, monsieur,” replied the landlord. “At the moment he is
absent. He went out to take the air a couple of hours ago, and is not
yet returned.”

“Heaven send he has walked into the sea!” Crispin broke out
passionately. Then as passionately he checked himself. “No, no, my
God--not that! I meant not that.”

“Monsieur will sup?”

“At once, and let me have lights.” The host withdrew, to return a moment
later with a couple of lighted tapers, which he set upon the table.

As he was retiring, a heavy step sounded on the stair, accompanied by
the clank of a scabbard against the baluster.

“Here comes milord’s countryman,” the landlord announced.

And Crispin, looking up in apprehension, saw framed in the doorway the
burly form of Harry Hogan.

He sat bolt upright, staring as though he beheld an apparition. With
a sad smile, Hogan advanced, and set his hand affectionately upon
Galliard’s shoulder.

“Welcome to France, Crispin,” said he. “If not him whom you looked to
find, you have at least a loyal friend to greet you.”

“Hogan!” gasped the knight. “What make you here? How came you here?
Where is Jocelyn?”

The Irishman looked at him gravely for a moment, then sighed and sank
down upon a chair. “You have brought the lady?” he asked.

“She is here. She will be with us presently.”

Hogan groaned and shook his grey head sorrowfully.

“But where is Jocelyn?” cried Galliard again, and his haggard face
looked very wan and white as he turned it inquiringly upon his
companion. “Why is he not here?”

“I have bad news.”

“Bad news?” muttered Crispin, as though he understood not the meaning of
the words. “Bad news?” he repeated musingly. Then bracing himself, “What
is this news?”

“And you have brought the lady too!” Hogan complained. “Faith, I had
hoped that you had failed in that at least.”

“Sdeath, Harry,” Crispin exclaimed. “Will you tell me the news?”

Hogan pondered a moment. Then:

“I will relate the story from the very beginning,” said he. “Some four
hours after your departure from Waltham) my men brought in the malignant
we were hunting. I dispatched my sergeant and the troop forthwith to
London with the prisoner, keeping just two troopers with me. An hour or
so later a coach clattered into the yard, and out of it stepped a short,
lean man in black, with a very evil face and a crooked eye, who bawled
out that he was Joseph Ashburn of Castle Marleigh, a friend of the Lord
General’s, and that he must have horses on the instant to proceed upon
his journey to London. I was in the yard at the time, and hearing the
full announcement I guessed what his business in London was. He entered
the inn to refresh himself and I followed him. In the common room the
first man his eyes lighted on was your son. He gasped at sight of him,
and when he had recovered his breath he let fly as round a volley of
blasphemy as ever I heard from the lips of a Puritan. When that was
over, “Fool,” he yells, “what make you here?” The lad stammered and grew
confused. At last--“I was detained here,” says he. “Detained!” thunders
the other, “and by whom?” “By my father, you murdering villain!” was the
hot answer.

“At that Master Ashburn grows very white and very evil-looking. “So,” he
says, in a playful voice, “you have learnt that, have you? Well, by God!
the lesson shall profit neither you nor that rascal your father. But
I’ll begin with you, you cur.” And with that he seizes a jug of ale that
stood on the table, and empties it over the boy’s face. Soul of my body!
The lad showed such spirit then as I had never looked to find in him.
“Outside,” yells he, tugging at his sword with one hand, and pointing
to the door with the other. “Outside, you hound, where I can kill you!”
 Ashburn laughed and cursed him, and together they flung past me into the
yard. The place was empty at the moment, and there, before the clash of
their blades had drawn interference, the thing was over--and Ashburn had
sent his sword through Jocelyn’s heart.”

Hogan paused, and Crispin sat very still and white, his soul in torment.

“And Ashburn?” he asked presently, in a voice that was singularly hoarse
and low. “What became of him? Was he not arrested?”

“No,” said Hogan grimly, “he was not arrested. He was buried. Before he
had wiped his blade I had stepped up to him and accused him of murdering
a beardless boy. I remembered the reckoning he owed you, I remembered
that he had sought to send you to your death; I saw the boy’s body still
warm and bleeding upon the ground, and I struck him with my knuckles on
the mouth. Like the cowardly ruffian he was, he made a pass at me with
his sword before I had got mine out. I avoided it narrowly, and we set
to work.

“People rushed in and would have stopped us, but I cursed them so whilst
I fenced, swearing to kill any man that came between us, that they held
off and waited. I didn’t keep them overlong. I was no raw youngster
fresh from the hills of Scotland. I put the point of my sword through
Joseph Ashburn’s throat within a minute of our engaging.

“It was then as I stood in that shambles and looked down upon my
handiwork that I recalled in what favour Master Ashburn was held by the
Parliament, and I grew sick to think of what the consequences might be.
To avoid them I got me there and then to horse, and rode in a straight
line for Greenwich, hoping to find the Lady Jane still there. But my
messenger had already sent her to Harwich for you. I was well ahead of
possible pursuit, and so I pushed on to Dover, and thence I crossed,
arriving here three days ago.”

Crispin rose and stepped up to Hogan. “The last time you came to me
after killing a man, Harry, I was of some service to you. You shall find
me no less useful now. You will come to Paris with me?”

“But the lady?” gasped Hogan, amazed at Crispin’s lack of thought for
her.

“I hear her step upon the stairs. Leave me now, Harry, but as you go,
desire the landlord to send for a priest. The lady remains.”

One look of utter bewilderment did Hogan bestow upon Sir Crispin, and
for once his glib, Irish tongue could shape no other words than:

“Soul of my body!”

He wrung Crispin’s hand, and in a state of ineffable perplexity he
hurried from the room to do what was required of him.

For a moment Crispin stood by the window, and looking out into the night
he thanked God from his heart for his solution of the monstrous riddle
that had been set him.

Then the rustle of a gown drew his attention, and he swung round to find
Cynthia smiling upon him from the threshold.

He advanced to meet her, and setting his hands upon her shoulders, he
held her at arm’s length, looking down into her eyes.

“Cynthia, my Cynthia!” he cried. And she, breaking past the barrier of
his grasp, nestled up to him with a sigh of sweet and unalloyed content.





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