CHAPTER XII.
MOTHER GOOSE'S TALES.
Lovelier spring than this one now passing into early summer had not been within living memory. Never had the trees budded more green and fresh-looking, and the roses and larkspurs shown more hurry to break forth and mingle their fragrance with the breath of the soft sweet air; and yet Ruth Rumbold's heart felt as wintry as if some load of ice-bound earth weighed it down.
Poor old Maudlin wondered sorely what ailed her pet, that she went about the place, doing her little household duties as carefully and deftly indeed as she always did do them, but not to the tune of her own sweet young voice, as her wont was. No, the child had grown silent as any stock and stone, and as grave—and that wasn't saying a little neither—as the master himself; and then Maudlin set about concocting a variety of messes and electuaries in the still-room with a view to restoring the roses to the pale cheeks, and charming back the lost music. And then, after all her trouble, to think that Ruth refused to swallow a mouthful of her medicaments, and vowed that nothing ailed her—if only Maudlin would leave her to herself!
For three whole days this sort of thing has been going on; and to-night, tired out with her ineffectual expostulations, the old woman has gone off, not without dudgeon, to "get a mouthful of fresh air," as she says. And truly the atmosphere is heavy—as if a storm were not so far off—and to indulge in a little interchange of ideas in the gate-house parlour; for there you are always safe to pick up the latest news stirring, trifling and important, just as you would come upon it in the Mall or the Covent Garden coffee-houses.
Ruth at her studies.
And so Ruth is left to her musings; for though at the first glance you might call them studies, since one book of the little heap piled up on the broad ledge of the window where she is seated, lies open on her lap, you have but to look again, to see she is not reading it.
As, however, the sound of a heavy step descending the stairs falls upon her ear, she drops her eyes to the page, not even raising them again when the maltster enters, and crossing slowly to her side, stands gazing out absently into the rays of the setting sun, which are luridly firing the yew-tree peacock into a blaze of red and yellow.
Presently, however, he turned his eyes upon Ruth. "Does not the book please you?" he asked, pointing to the volume before her. "I see," he went on, when she looked up, but made no answer, "that you have not turned the page since you opened it haphazard when I bid you be reading it half an hour ago. Or is it that the picture of the blessed martyrdom of Mistress Anne Askew so fascinates you?"
"'Tis a fearful thing!" said Ruth, shuddering, as she looked, for the first time, if truth must be owned, at the pictured page. "Poor Mistress Askew! She must have been a right brave lady."
"A bold Christian woman, rather," quickly corrected the maltster, "who counted her life for nought beside the truth."
"Truth is indeed a pure noble thing to live for," acquiesced Ruth.
"And to die for. Yes," said Rumbold; "that blessed work of Master Fox's is indeed a mighty treasure-house of the scores who have shed their blood for it."
"Ay," sighed Ruth, "'tis indeed a book of death, and ghastliness, and—"
A batch of books.
"And wholesome teaching, and fitter far for thy recreation moments than all this farrago of chap-book trash I found you head over ears upon. Where did you get it?"
"I bought it of the old packman who came to the gatehouse yesterday morning; and a fine collection there was in his wallet," continued Ruth, her eyes waxing bright. "He had come straight by way of Bow and Waltham, and on here across the Rye, from the 'Looking Glass,' the big chap-bookseller's shop that stands on London Bridge, father, dear, and he'd got Reynard the Fox, the sly wicked creature. Father, what an odious hypocrite he was—eh? And Mother Bunch, and Jack and the Giants—
"'Fe! Fi! Fo! Fum!
I smell the blood of an English—mun!
Let him be alive, or let him be dead,
I'll grind his bones—'"
"Tut! tut! tut!" frowned the maltster.
The maltster hates romance.
"To make my bread!" went on Ruth, absorbed in the vision of the valiant little Cornishman's attack on the three-headed monster. "Yes, and then there was Tarlton's Jests," she hurried on, all unconscious of the deepening frowns of Rumbold, "and Guy of Warwick, and—let me see, what came next? Why, to be sure, 'twas the Blind Beggar's Daughter of Bethnal Green—'Pretty Bessee,' you know, father; and the history of the Two Children in the Wood, poor pretty dears! with a picture running all along atop of the page, showing all the sad woes they suffered, and ending up with the hanging of the cruel uncle. And then—well, I protest, there was such a heap, that I cannot remember them half. But I know he had John Barleycorn, because—well, father, it made me think"—and a merry smile rippled on Ruth's mobile lips—"of somebody we know, eh? and how they squeezed the poor old fellow to death. And then," chattered on Ruth, encouraged by the faint smile that dawned on the maltster's stolid face, "then there was The World Turned Upside Down. Well, I had half a mind for that; but just then I came upon this, and it looked the very best of all, and as I—" Ruth hesitated to explain that her resources had not reached to the purchase of all the chap-books she had coveted, and the thrilling woodcuts of the one she now held towards him had carried the day with her. "Well, 'twill divert you, I'm sure, father, dear."
It was The Seven Champions of Christendom!
"Seven dunderheads!" frowned Rumbold, turning the book's pages with a contemptuous finger. "Harkye, Ruth," he continued, in stern tones, "not a groat more of pocket-money will I waste on you till you have learned to spend it something more discreetly than on trash like this. I had rather see my money at the bottom of the moat than frittered so. Pah! dragons, forsooth, and fair captive ladies! and knights-errant, and saints—beshrew them, all! Mighty saints, I'll warrant me they were. Pagans in motley! Saint David of Scotland. If he set foot there now the presbytery would be for hanging him high as Holyrood tower. And Saint Patrick of Ireland, with his superstitious shamrock symbol, and Saint George of England."
"Merry England, father," corrected Ruth.
A burning shame.
"Pah! pish! a seemly time this for England to be merry! when she needs bow her head even to the dust for the weight of her sins!" and he turned and threw the book angrily into the fire. "That for your chap-book saints!"
"Now," thought poor Ruth, "he would be as cruel to them, if they were real flesh and blood men, as ever Bishop Bonner and Queen Mary were to the poor Protestant martyrs;" and silently, for she dared not trust herself to speak, she began to turn the pages of the volume on her knee; but Rumbold took it from her.
"Read no more," he said, "till your spirit is better attuned to such profitable instruction. Lay it by till to-morrow," he went on, in less harsh tones; "mayhap when you have slept on what you have read, and digested it—"
"I doubt I shall not do that," despairingly answered Ruth, "for the woodcuts alone would serve to give bolder hearts than mine a nightmare."
A soft place in his heart.
"And yet," went on Rumbold, softening still more at the notion that his favourite reading had impressed Ruth more strongly than he had at first assumed, "I do not think yours is lacking in courage. Your father's daughter would dare much in a righteous cause were she called upon to do it. Eh, Ruth?"
She did not answer; but sat gazing dreamily at the fire as it reduced the poor chap-book to a few filmy shreds. "But now, little one," went on the maltster, "to your room. Good-night!" and he bent and kissed her forehead,
"Nay, father!" she rejoined, looking up in surprise; "not good-night yet awhile. 'Tis hours too early."
"I like not thy trick of exaggerating," rebukefully said he. "One hour, and barely, for the clock has already struck seven—it may be sooner—"
"Yes, indeed," briskly interrupted she, "and I am not for going to sleep at sunset, with the little chits of sparrows—"
Cross-questioning.
"And magpies! You grow pert, mistress. Come!" sternly added Rumbold, "I'll have no more of the May-day wantonness we wot of. Do as I bid you."
"But, father—"
"Do you hear me?" thundered the maltster. "I desire to be alone. That is—I need not your company."
"'Twill be so lonesome for you," said Ruth; "I think it would have cheered you in this twilight time if—"
"I need it not, I tell you," quickly interrupted Rumbold. "I expect—visitors," and he coughed huskily.
"Visitors!"
"Ay; that is to say," stammered Rumbold, "it—it is possible."
"Visitors! and nothing prepared for them to eat!" cried the little housemistress aghast.
"They are not of the sort who set store by rich meats and costly wine-bibbing. They come—to confer with me, on—on important questions."
"Is it the price of grain, father? I heard Parson Alsides saying to Master Lockit only this very morning that it was at a most ruinous price—seventy shillings a quarter, he said; and that if the farmers and the employers—such as you, father, dear, and Lawrence Lee, I suppose, would but put their heads together to devise how it could be cheapened for the poor, 'twould be, he said, a right blessed day's work, and a vast deal better than the hatching of all sorts of plots, and—"
"Eh! eh! eh! Parson Alsides is a chattering old sycophant, who is always prating for the pensions he gets out of the king's own privy purse. Though, mind you, child, I don't say I would not spare the matter consideration when more serious concerns allow me leisure."
"I hoped you had done with those for ever, father," said Ruth gravely; "'twas a serious concern, indeed, when poor King Charles was killed, and you—"
"I! how now?" cried Rumbold, turning sharply upon her. "What had I to do with that?"
"What had you not, father?" said Ruth, in tones of sturdy reproach. "Why, many's the time Maudlin has told me how you stood by and saw it done."
A bitter-sweet story.
"And beshrew her chattering old tongue for her pains! I'd have had it cut out, had I caught her at her tales. 'Tis no fit one for your ears, Ruth," he added, in sad slow tones.
"Indeed, father; I could always stop them with my fingers when she begins about it; and yet still I must listen. 'Tis such a bitter-sweet story—poor king!"
"And yet," went on Rumbold, changing his mood, "after all, why should I be sorry to think that you know your father can look his duty in the face."
"Oh, father!" she began reproachfully.
"Let be, child," he interrupted, turning away, and thrusting his hands gloomily down into his pockets, "'Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do,' saith the Scripture, 'do it with all thy might.' 'Tis enough."
"Indeed, indeed enough," said Ruth, stealing beside him, "and you will meddle no more in such things, eh, father?"
"And who told you I dreamed of doing so?" he demanded in unsteady and excited tones.
"You must rest and be comfortable," went on Ruth, twining her arms about his neck, and stroking his rugged face; "so snug here, isn't it, in our beautiful old Rye House? And you must be content to rest now, and have your little Ruth take care of you, and sing—for you say I have a tuneful voice, eh, dear—of the Land 'where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest,' and the gentle green pastures, and the godly hymns you taught me when I was a small thing you could dandle on your knee. Promise me, dear heart," she went on coaxingly, when Rumbold's only answer was an attempt to shake her off, "never to meddle more. Let the bad cruel-hearted men make their plots, for 'tis all their wits can reach to, I doubt. But for one like you, who can make such malt as is not to be found besides in all Hertfordshire, oh, I'd stick to it."
Rumbold's changes of mood.
"And stick you to your churn and your wheel, Mistress Oracle," said the maltster, fondly stroking her soft brown hair, "and discourse not so glibly of what you do not understand a whit more than your own frisky Tab there, who is tearing up your fine chap-books with her claws. What should kings, and such kittle cattle's doings be to you?"
Words about majesty.
"Nay, little enough," said Ruth, turning to rescue her precious books, and taking the destructive Tab in her arms, "though in truth sometimes I think I should like to see our King Charles," she went on, dreamily twiddling the kitten's ears.
"Have you not seen him many a time, silly child?" said Rumbold.
"In a fashion, ay, yes, as he has ridden by yonder in his coach, and his Grace of York too of course, but 'tis such a glimpse; just enough to set one caring to look him face to face. Have you ever done that, father?"
"No—yes—I scarcely know," frowned Rumbold.
"'Tis a right kind merry face, isn't it?"
"I see no such things in it," growled Rumbold; "an ordinary swarthy one enough to my thinking."
"Yet Goodman Speedwell, when he went up to London last year to sell his pigs, said 'twas a rare and gracious one, and a pure fine sight to see him playing with his little dogs in Saint James's Park, and feeding the ducks in the canal with his own royal hands. Oh, he must be a pleasant-humoured gentleman!"
"He's just a mortal man, I take it, very mortal, and when he's angered spares none, for all his fine forgetting and forgiving talk."
"There it is," said Ruth, "'tis scarce to be expected that he who has been so wronged, should be so forgiving as the Bible would have us. Nowadays, if a man sin against his brother, and kings are our brothers, eh, father? in a fashion of speaking they are our elder brothers, eh, father, dear?"
"Beshrew thee, child," impatiently frowned the maltster, "what has come to you?"
"I say 'tis a stretch if that man shall be forgiven twice, that is what I am thinking of; and those who plotted the killing of Charles the First, and were pardoned, would scarce be let go a second time, if—if—" she faltered, and coloured deeply.
"If what, mistress?" sternly challenged Rumbold.
"If they should harbour ill thoughts against Charles the Second."
It was the maltster's turn to look aside, as she lifted her appealing eyes to his face. "Come, come," he said, "a truce to this silly chatter. Good-night; and hark you, give me the key of the communicating door between your chamber and the Warder's Room. Have it you about you?"
The key of the warder's room.
"Yes, father; here," and she disengaged one of the keys from the bunch hanging at her girdle, and handed it to him, wonderingly.
"Very good," he said, taking it from her and pocketing it, "'tis your own fault, for your carelessness, Ruth," he went on; "this morning was the second time I found that door ajar. If I find it so ever again, I'll have it walled up. For the present I'll hold the key in my keeping."
"But, father," protested Ruth, "Adam Lockit—"
"Adam Lockit grows stupid and deaf, and Diggles is but one remove from an idiot, and the arrantest coward breathing."
"Only about ghosts, father; you should see him lay about him with the cudgels on double his size in flesh and blood. And he's keen as any hare for the slightest sound or stir."
An abrumpt "good-night."
"Humph!" said the maltster, "flibbertigibbets, all should be abed and snoring by nine o' the clock. So good-night, child, and pleasant dreams." And with another kiss, Rumbold dismissed his daughter.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE SLIDING PANEL.
The Warder's Room was an excellent example of the famous rule that no stronghold is stronger than its weakest part. Its three outer walls, the one namely terminating the wing, the blind one giving upon the pleasaunce, and the one overlooking the moat, seemed stout enough to defy the teeth of Old Time himself; but the partition wall dividing it from Ruth's chamber beyond, was by comparison a mere piece of pie-crust, though pie-crust of perhaps rather a tough sort, inasmuch as its panellings were composed of oak of no mean thickness.
Here and there, however, whether simply from age, or whether the water-rats infesting the moat below were answerable for any share in the mischief, it was certain the wood showed signs of decay; and one day when Ruth was dusting and polishing the richly carved panels, as it was her pride to do, one large square of them fairly gave way, and fell inwards behind the skirting board.
A hiding place.
Groping with both hands to recover it, Ruth found to her astonishment, that, instead of coming, as she expected, into contact with the corresponding panelling of the room beyond, they strayed off into space, and on closer examination of the framework of the fallen panel, she found that it was grooved. Surely it looked vastly as if she had come upon one of the sliding panels old Adam Lockit declared the house was full of! Very like it indeed, Ruth thought as she kindled a light with her tinder-box, and stepping with it into the pitch-dark cavity, looked round.
Barely high enough for her to stand upright in, it evidently extended on each side of the opening, to the stone and brickwork supports of the arched communicating door, of which as we have already seen Richard Rumbold secured the key into his own keeping. Thus the opening formed a dark passage of nearly a couple of feet wide, and six or seven feet long.
While she was occupied in these investigations a sudden hustling, shuffling sound in the room beyond, ordinarily as still as the very vaults of Stanstead Church, nearly startled her out of her senses. The next instant, however, her own merry laugh at her own terrors broke the echoes, for what was the disturbance but the scratching of the rats, whom her tour of discovery had sent stampeding willy nilly, like bad Bishop Hatto's long-tailed visitors:
"From the right and the left, from behind and before,
From within and without, from above and below."
Up by the chimney, down by the open windows plump into the moat.
Ruth's secret.
"Now," smiled Ruth to herself, in the dead silence that ensued, "now I have a secret! and never a creature shall be told of it. Not even Maudlin, nor Lawrence—Lawrence indeed! certainly not! A rare fine place to hide in when next Lettice Larkspur and Dorothy Dingle come to spend the day. Why, if they'd search till midnight, they'd not find me. I should be shut in safe—," here a sneeze, caused by the cloud of dust her movements had raised, interrupted her, "safe as the 'mistleto bough' bride. Almost, that is to say," she went on, brushing away the cobwebs festooning her skirts, as she stepped back over the skirting-board, and kneeling down to replace the panel, she discovered that by the merest touch of her finger she could work it backwards and forwards in its grooves. Not so hard to open as the old oak chest was, certainly; though in every probability it had been so once upon a time, before the dry-rot had shrivelled the wood in its sockets, and the fragments of iron bolts, some strewing the floor, some still hanging, had rusted and given way. A pasteboard sort of protection now the place would have been, though it was no doubt safe enough in those war times of the Roses, when it was built.
And carefully indeed Ruth had kept her secret, though there were times when it grew to be rather a burden to her. When, for instance, she lay in her bed and thought what dismal straits those poor people must have been driven to, before they should have sought such a refuge.
The very existence of the place is, however, forgotten now in this other mystery that haunts her sleeping and waking.
She does not find it at all true, as she sits uncoiling her hair, and absently brushing out its brown waves, that sharing her load of care makes it lighter, as people are so fond of telling you that it does. The weight, on the contrary, seems to have grown heavier, especially within these last hours; and oblivious of everything beyond her troubled reflections, she is only recalled to a sense of realities by Maudlin Sweetapple's voice querulously clamouring for the lamp to be extinguished. "Beshrew the thing!" piped she; "how many more times am I to shut my eyes, and open 'em again, to see all these ghosts about the place?"
"Ghosts?" queried Ruth, escaping to Maudlin's door, and peeping gingerly in.
Shadows on the wall.
"Ay, marry, ghosts; black-sheeted ghosts all over the walls," said Maudlin, pointing to the restless shadows cast by the quivering flame of Ruth's lamp. "Look at 'em bobbin' about, and a draught to cut a body's head off! Have you got a pane open in there, child?"
Doubtless that explained the inconvenience; for Ruth had opened the pane in order to catch the faintest sound that might disturb the silence of the night.
"Then shut it," went on Maudlin, as Ruth owned to the fact, "shut it, if you don't want your poor old nurse to catch her death o' rheumatics. A mighty fine sort of a night to be havin' casements open, this! What's gone, I wonder, of all yesterday's sunshine? 'Tis as cold as Candlemas. Well they may say:—
"'Cast ne'er a clout
Till May be out.'
If—hark! what's that, child?"
"I heard nothing," answered Ruth, listening with all her ears, "nothing but the rain," she added, as a smart sleety shower rattled against the glass.
The creak of the drawbridge.
"So 'tis—at last. There wasn't a joint of all my poor old bones that didn't tell me that was comin'. But 'twasn't that I heard. 'Twas—hush! There 'tis again! The clank o' the draw-bridge chains! or I'll eat my head off."
"Don't make rash vows, you silly old dear!" rejoined Ruth, with an uneasy little laugh. "Wasn't the drawbridge let up at sunset, as it always is? What fancies you do take into your head, Maudlin!"
"Oh, ay; 'tis as full of 'em, I daresay, as an egg's full o' meat," grumbled on the old lady. "'Tis only the young ones that are the wise ones nowadays. Good lack! good lack! and how they do like too sittin' up disturbin' the rest o' them that's no mind for moonin' and star-gazin'."
"There's neither moon nor star to be seen," said Ruth, glancing towards the outside obscurity. "'Tis a pitch-dark night."
"And ten, as I live, by the tower clock! For shame on thee, Ruth," continued the old woman, as the strokes fell; "put out thy light this instant, and grope to bed as thou canst; or I'll warrant we shall never be hearin' the last o't from the master to-morrow. His one eye's sharper than a dozen folk's two, and if it did catch sight of a gleam—What do you say?"
"I did not speak."
"I fancied I heard you mumblin' somethin'. For the merciful powers' sake put out the light, I say."
"Good-night, Maudlin," said Ruth, obeying the injunction at last, but not without reluctance.
A smothered sound, which might have been a reciprocal good-night, but still more resembled a snore, witnessed that the darkness had speedily worked its slumberous effects on Maudlin. Poor Ruth, however, deprived of her lamp's companionship, and too wakeful for bed, groped her way back to her old seat, and sat, every nerve sharpened, to catch the faintest echo.
A wild night.
Save the driving rain, however, and the sweeping of the wind in low sullen gusts round the walls, and its jerking of the tall vane on the tower-top, till the thing complained direfully, not a sound was to be heard. A likely night, truly, for folks to choose to be abroad, especially thereabouts, where there was scarce so much as a tree to shelter you. Anyhow it was plain these expected visitors of her father's had not been so eager to be getting themselves dripping to the skin; and the maltster had no doubt given them up ever so long ago, and gone to bed.
Sidenote: The striking of the hour.]
With cramped limbs, but a lightened heart, Ruth rose and once more approached to close the pane, which she had again unfastened, after first noiselessly closing Maudlin's door. Well, bed was after all no such uncomfortable place, she thought, as the dank air blew in on her face, "when the clock must be close on—hark! yes: ding-dang! ding-dang! ding-dang! Absolutely but wanting one hour—ding-dang—to midnight! Such an unearthly ding—terrible—dang."—
CHAPTER XIV.
IN THE WARDER'S ROOM.
Ding! Like some guilt-stricken creature Ruth stood with her hands upon the half-closed pane.
Lingeringly and drearily the sound died in a low angry growl of wind, that came sweeping up muffled and sullen as some vexed human voice. Hark! hark! surely that is a human voice!—voices! And that? No steady drip-drip of the rain from the mullions of the casement, but footsteps stealthily passing along the arched way below, and beginning to ascend the stair winding to the Warder's Room!
Impossible! Sure she must be growing more fanciful than old Maudlin's self? No, no; 'tis but the tiresome rats again, holding their witches' sabbath? What else can it be?
The sudden flash of a torch full across her window illumines the pitchy blackness below; and then, as if hurled by some violent and angry hand, the torch falls into the water and is extinguished.
Ruth on the watch.
Not quickly enough, however, to conceal from Ruth the gigantic outlines of the drawbridge, gliding higher and closer, till it is lost in the shadow of the wall, and at the same time the clank of its chains, more felt than heard, with their dull familiar vibrating, ceases.
Who can have been tampering with them? Surely not Adam Lockit. Rather than be unfaithful to his trust, and let down his bridge after sunset, he would dispute every ounce of it with his life's blood. But what about Barnaby? Barnaby! and even at that moment Ruth cannot forbear a smile at the bare notion of Master Diggles' Dutch courage displaying its mettle within six hours of either side of midnight. Even supposing he could have performed the miracle of stealing a march on Lockit, and getting possession of the gatehouse keys.
No. One alone, beside Adam Lockit, has the means of working those chains—the master of the Rye House himself.
Spell-bound and breathless, Ruth stands listening to the stealthy but heavy tramp tramp of those feet mounting the stone stair which leads from the arched door in the wall of the gateway to the Warder's Room.
Soon the sounds cease; to be quickly broken again by hurried whispers and the low hum of voices. Muffled and indistinctly as they reach her ear, the tones seem familiar to Ruth, and her heart stands still. What—what if Lawrence—?
Hardly has his name escaped her pale parted lips before with swift noiseless tread she has stolen to the wall, and falling on her knees before the sliding panel, slips it back, and stepping into the darkness beyond, crouches down.
Not an instant too soon, if movements so cautious and catlike as hers could have betrayed her; and that was possible, judging by the distinctness with which she on her part can catch every syllable that is being uttered in the Warder's Room by the party of men gathering, as she can plainly see through a long crack in the wood, about the long table.
A cold welcome.
"All right, Master Hannibal," says a voice she does not know. "We wait your pleasure."
"Nay," objected another, which Ruth at once recognized for one of those she had heard upon the bridge, "your commands, Master Rumbold."
"By my faith! there you speak by the book, colonel, like the good soldier you are," shiveringly said a voice, whose delicate tones were also not strange to Ruth. "Pleasure's a fish that I for one should be for angling after in other preserves than the slush and bog of the Rye. Hu! hu!" shuddered the speaker. "And not so much as a stick of a blaze on your sepulchre of a hearth here, Master Hannibal! A merry welcome truly to bid your boys! and all of us as wringing wet as any of the rat vermin in your styx of a moat below there. I'm drenched to my skin."
"Had I imagined it to be so thin," dryly returned the deep tones of the maltster, "I would never have invited your lordship to join our company."
"And the place smells as mouldy as a vault," fretfully continued the nobleman. "I can tell you, had I known it was such a stretch from my house I'd in any case have spared you my company to-night."
A wrangle.
"We could have dispensed with such fine-weather friends," began a gruff surly voice, "if—"
"Hold thy peace," interrupted Rumbold, "and save your wit, Master West, till my Lord of Escrick here can find his own to measure with it."
"Of a truth, I confess my brains seem all washed out," said Howard more good-temperedly, "by that last slush hole I floundered into, when I set off in pursuit of the jack-o'-lanthorn, some idiot among you said was a light in the Rye House."
"My Lord of Escrick makes a rare pother about a sprinkle of rain," said the voice which was strange to Ruth; "if he'd been jolted all the way from Fleet Street, as I have been, atop of the raw bones of a pack-horse like a sack of husks—"
"Hush! by your leave, Master West," for the remembrance of his sufferings warmed the speaker's eloquence. "Not so loud. Some one sleeps in the adjoining chamber."
"Marry! 'twould have been as well then," rejoined West, in sour, but considerably lowered tones, "if you had thought fit to entertain us in some other part of your ramshackle house here, less conveniently adapted for eavesdropping—"
"And for getting off if we should be surprised," said Rumbold quietly. "Have I not explained often enough, that this chamber is in direct communication with the subterranean way to Nether Hall? You shall judge it for yourself presently, as I promised you."
"And besides," put in Walcot, "we are safe, Master Rumbold said, from being overlooked on this side."
"The place seems Scylla or Charybdis," said Howard laughing, "and a veritable vermin trap to boot—if one may judge by the snuffling in there," and he pointed to the wainscot, "eh, Master Hannibal?"
"The four-legged pests do somewhat overabound here, my lord," answered Rumbold; "but my own friends are safe enough, I pledge you my word. I did but entreat Master West to be a bit careful. His voice is scarce so still and small as caution behoves."
"Liken it rather unto that of a trumpet," piped the shrill tones of Ferguson, "which shall blare to the uttermost walls—"
Walls have ears.
"All in its good time, Master Ferguson," interrupted Walcot; "meanwhile remember walls have ears."
"And so have listeners," growled West, still sorely put about with himself for his own forgetfulness, "long as asses' ones."
"Nay," said Rumbold, "they'd have to be longer and sharper too, to pierce these walls. More than three feet and a half thick I know them to be."
"And all of pure stone?" inquired a voice.
"No, of oak, Master Sheriff, which is at least as trustworthy."
"It is a strange omen," said Walcot ruminatively,
"A what?" derisively chorused half a dozen voices.
"'Tis not the first time oak has served Charles a good turn in his evil hour."
"What's the man maundering about?" said West.
"I know not," growled Rumsey. "Unless it be of that accursed Boscobel oak-tree. Well, well, I'll warrant root and branch shall be lopped this time close enough, eh, Master Rumbold? and we'll bring its fine acorns into the mud. Come, to business. Are we all here?"
"I do not see my friend of the other night," said Howard looking round. "The young gentleman who so deftly rendered my hand that surgeon's service."
"Lawrence Lee, you mean, my lord?"
"Ay, that was his name. A likely young fellow he seemed. A neighbour of yours, I think you said, Master Hannibal?"
"He should have been here," said the maltster; "but 'tis no matter, we can do without him. He is—"
Noisy rats.
"To be trusted, let us hope," growled West. "I swear, Master Rumbold," and he glowered towards the wainscot, "your rats are the noisiest I ever heard."
Poor Ruth shivered with terror. She had but stirred to avert the worse crash of a slip she had nearly made in that cramped space.
"The vane atop of this roof, creaking in the wind," said Rumbold carelessly.
"If we should find these Rye House rats of the spy genus, we'll spit them on it," said West.
"And you along with them, Master Rumbold," said a voice which had not yet spoken.
A chest of tools.
"Your insinuations waste precious time, Sir Thomas Armstrong," said Rumbold, a frown of offended dignity puckering his brows as he turned and, crossing to the great oaken chest standing between the windows, raised its ponderous lid with both hands. "I would not be held a boaster; but those who have known Richard Rumbold longer than you have, will tell you that he is not the man to put his hand to the plough and draw it back. See," he went on, addressing the rest, who greeted his last words with a low murmur of applause, "here lie our tools," and he pointed into the open chest, "all in order; not forgetting the last cargo—muskets, bayonets, blunderbusses, and all."
CHAPTER XV.
THE PLOT THICKENS.
"Blunderbusses!" shrieked a voice, which seemed to retreat, as it spoke, into the room's remotest corners; "the gracious powers above! Mind, for mercy's sake, be careful. Not loaded?" piteously went on the speaker. "Say they're not loaded, Master Rumbold."
"Not yet, Master Sheriff," grimly smiled Rumbold.
"But whatever can we be wanting of such fearful things?" insisted Goodenough.
"That remains to be seen," laughed West, approaching the chest; and selecting a weapon from its gleaming contents, he placed it in Rumbold's hands. "Here, Master Hannibal, is the one I promised you for your special use. A jewel of a thing. Be careful of it."
"Ay, yes, yes, do," entreated Goodenough; "hear what Master West says about it himself."
"A sacred trust indeed," murmured Rumbold, thoughtfully handling the weapon, "and wielding a mighty power, for good or for ill. Come, Parson Ferguson," he went on, suddenly changing his mood, and turning to the tall, lean, sable-clad individual standing on his right "What say you? Will you consecrate it?"
Foul play.
"Of a surety it has my blessing," answered Ferguson, displaying his ugly yellow fangs of teeth in a broad grin.
"Well, well, to business then," continued the maltster, carefully restoring the blunderbuss to its place and closing the chest. "Come, have we our parts by heart? You, and you," he went on, singling out three of the company, "and you."
"Oy, oy! sartain sure enough we be o' ourn," said the foremost of the trio, slouching to the front, and elbowing his two comrades forward along with him, so that Ruth could plainly discern their features, and recognized them for the foreman of the malting-yard, one of his subordinates, and a man who worked in the corn-chambers. "Roight enough we be, an't us?" he went on, appealing to the sheepish, hangdog looking couple beside him. "'Tes for we to be trampin' out Stanstead way, an' hidin' us among the hedges and ditches till us catches soight o' the king's coach an six; an' then 'tes for we to be turnin' tail in a twinklin', and run as quick—as quick as—"
"Twice as quick anyhow, friend, as the twenty-four legs of his majesty's Flanders mares," said Howard with a slight yawn.
"Back agin to the Rye House here," continued the spokesman, "an' be tellin' the rest o' yer which coach the king's a-ridin' in—"
"And how many—"
"I'm a comin' to that, an't I? an' how many's a follerin' after 'em in coaches too, an' how many guards a 'orseback—"
"Six at the outside," said Rumbold. "'Tis never more. You, colonel," he went on, addressing Walcot, "undertake to attack them."
"As a soldier, I claim that privilege," answered Walcot.
"If report speaks truth, you're not wanting in bravery," said Rumsey, measuring the stately and graceful figure of Walcot with rather jealous eyes; "but six is a biggish handful for one man to tackle; and if," he went on with a sneer, "your gift of second sight should chance to be making twelve of it—"
"Or if in fact there should happen to be so many," quietly interrupted Walcot, "I trust I may not be found wanting—nor tripping neither."
"As to the beasts," said Rumbold quickly, "we shall have little trouble with them. They'll all be spent and weak as water with the long stage."
"They change at Hoddesdon, do they not?" said Howard.
Preparations for treason.
"If they were foreordained to reach there, they would, my lord," rebukefully replied Rumbold. "And now, what about the disguises?" he continued, addressing his foreman.
The son of the soil scratched his carroty poll, and gazed round with lack-lustre eyes. "The what, maaster?" he said at last.
"The labourers' clothes, man, that you promised to furnish my Lord Howard here with, and the other gentlemen."
The disguises.
"Oy, oy," and a gleam of intelligence broke over the stolid face. "Now you speak English, Maaster Rumbold. Yes, they be all roight enough; leastways they will be. But 'tes jest a bit of a job loike, doant'e see, Master Rumbold. Stands to reason as 'tes, doant it? Gettin' tagether o' poor folks' togs. The quality's got any quantity o' coats an' britches, silk and satin', an' velvet an' double broadcloth into the bargain; but 'taint every day an' ollis, as yer poor man's gotten his one decent smock. But, never ya fret, my lord. Me an' these here," and he jerked his thumb at his two comrades, "a doin' our main best; an' the blame woan't be to our door, if us doant make such clod poles and scares o' ya, an' these here other dandy gen'lemen, as the very crows sha'ant be able to make up their minds whether to fly away from ya for freight, or peck yer eyes out as ya walk along."
"That is satisfactory," said Rumbold. "The next question," he went on, letting his gaze rest on the elegant proportions of Howard, who had thrown himself in a careless lounging attitude into a tall-backed Cordovan leather chair, "the next question is"—
"So it be," interrupted the foreman of the malt-yard; "so it be, maaster, an' 'twas no more than us was a sayin' of as we coomed along here. Warn't us?" and again he appealed to his mates, who nodded stolidly. "'Tes sartin as our cat's got a tail, there's not one o' the lot o' ya as looks to be trusted loike."
"Fellow!" fiercely demanded Howard, springing to his feet, "what do you mean?"
How to stop the King's coach.
"The wagon is a main heavy one," continued the man, unheeding the angry frowns of Howard and the rest, "and'll need a power of elbergrease afore't can be turned over; an' we can't be lendin' you fine gen'lemen that, along with our britches an' smocks. You'd best have the cart overturned by we first," and he pointed to his companions, "afore we start away, doant ya know?"
"Certainly not," said Howard haughtily; "I hope we're not such idiots that we can't do carter's work."
"Carter's work! Why! 'tes carter's work to be keepin' of his wheels from gettin' bottom uppermost. Noa, noa, ye'll never be but gimcrack soarts o' carters, take ya at ya best, an' if ye're for doing of the upset yerselves, there should be six o' ye to the work, my lord, or ye'll make a mess o't, be shure."
"Then," said Howard, "it remains for you to supply us with the six needful pairs of breeches, and hobnailed shoes."
"I'll swear for the britches, an' the shoes ye'll have to make stretch as far as they'll go."
"And you," said Rumbold, turning to West and a group near.
"Ay, we engage for the coachman, the postilion, and the horses," nodded West. "We're quite content, Master Hannibal, to leave you to bring down the Blackbird and the Chaffinch. You're a fine shot, and ought to do it at one priming, with such tools as you've got for it; tho' 'tis true you'll be two to one, and your birds have got some blood in them."
"Ay, but their claws will be blunt," laughed Rumsey. "'Tis scarce probable, I mean, that they'll carry so much as a sword between them. They never do."
"Still assistance should be at hand, and close too," said Sir Thomas Armstrong.
Lawrence Lee in the toils.
"Among the whole twoscore names written here," said Rumbold, drawing a large roll of parchment from his pocket, and unrolling it, he glanced over its contents, "there is not a steadier hand, nor a stouter heart, than my young neighbour's here of Nether Hall, Lawrence Lee."
"Lawrence Lee!" echoed Walcot, casting an involuntary glance behind him ere the words had well left his lips. Could he be such a prey to strange fancies, or had he in very deed and truth heard a low gasping breath break from the wall? "You're certain he's to be trusted?"
"I flatter myself," replied the maltster, a faint smile curling his lips, "that Master Lawrence Lee would think twice before he refused to comply with the slightest wish of Richard Rumbold."
"Wasn't his father a Royalist?" said Howard.
"And what if he were, my lord?" rejoined Rumbold. "Lee is a lad of spirit, and exercises his right of private judgment."
"Exactly," said Howard, with a dubious shrug. "He takes leave to call his soul his own. And that, of course, is all in this business. But how about his heart? You have a daughter, have you not, Master Hannibal?"
"And what if I have, my lord?" said the maltster coldly.
"Oh, no offence," carelessly returned Howard; "but she is a comely lass, they say. Quite a rustic beauty."
"Beauty is skindeep, my lord. She is a good child."
"And minds her doll," broke out Rumsey in a hoarse laugh.
"Nay," said Rumbold in displeased tones, "my Ruth's doll-days are about over. But she minds her wheel; and meddles not in such matters as we are discussing—or should be discussing," he added, as the clock over their heads struck midnight. "Moments are precious."
"And for my part," said Howard, this time with an unmistakable yawn, "I think we are misusing them odiously. There is a fortnight still before the king comes back from Newmarket; and between this and then all sorts of things may occur to change his plans."
"What is to be, will be," said Rumbold solemnly.
A deep snore.
"Oh! that I grant you," said Lord Howard with a portentous yawn, glancing at the same time towards one of the window embrasures, whence issued a prolonged deep sound, not unlike the smothered growl of a wild beast, but which in fact emanated from the nose of Sheriff Goodenough, who lay back, lost in the enjoyment of a snatched forty winks. "That I grant you, and so seemingly does our good sheriff here; for he has yielded to the inevitable, and is snoring like a trooper. Shake him up, colonel," he added to Walcot, who stood close by, leaning against the panes, and gazing thoughtfully out into the night. "If you're not asleep yourself, that is."
"Very far from it, my lord," answered Walcot, rousing up and approaching the table; "I was thinking that all being said and done, it is time to consider the measures for our safety. We don't want to be run down inside these four walls like a pack of weasels."
The subterranean way.
"By no means," said West; "we're going to burrow underground before we part to-night, for a good mile and a half through Master Hannibal's subterranean way. Aren't we captain? So as to make sure we don't blunder our heads into any wrong holes, when the time comes."
"An excellent notion," said Howard with animation. "And a better night than this abominable Noah's deluge of a one could not be. 'Twill spare us wading like a flock of geese to—. By the way, where did you say it brings us out, captain?"
"Into a large vault that lies under the right-hand tower of the ruined gatehouse of Nether Hall."
"And near the river?"
"Within a hundred yards of it."
"And then 'Sauve qui peut,' I suppose."
Rumbold inclined his head gravely.
"And Nether Hall," continued Howard, "belongs to our young friend Farmer Lee. I perceive now. You're a clever man, Captain Hannibal. You did well indeed to win the fellow to our cause, since his premises appear to be indispensable to our precious lives. But how is it we do not see him here to bid us welcome to his dungeons?"
"We may find him below. But if not, 'tis no matter; and if he should have stolen a leaf from Master Goodenough's book there, and gone to bed, I have the duplicate keys. He has made them over to me;" and the maltster, kindling his extinguished torch, signed to his companions to do the same. "'Tis pretty well pitch dark," he added warningly, "even in broad daylight, every step of the way. Ho there, Sheriff! Wake up! And a murrain on you for a sleepy-head. Give him a pinch, colonel," he added to Rumsey, who chanced to be seated nearest the sleeper.
Two left behind.
"I couldn't be so barbarous," replied Rumsey, with a peculiar sneering smile. "Hark!" he went on, as a thunderous snort was all the comment on Rumbold's adjuration. "Let him be."
"Oy, oy. Let 'm bide, cap'n," said the foreman. "They narrer cellars an't for the loikes of a hogshead like he. He'd be stickin' fast in the middle o' them like a dodnum in a duck's weasand. Let 'un sleep his sleep out."
"Nonsense, man!" said Walcot. "We can't leave him here all alone."
"He won't be alone if I'm with him, I suppose," said Rumsey with a snarl; "and I shall remain here. You won't catch me coming down to break my shins in your pitch-dark vaults at this time of night; as if I wasn't lamed enough already with that confounded stumble I made on Monday night. Time enough when I've got to run for it."
"Do as you please," said Rumbold; "I shall be back in a couple of hours or so."
"Ay, ay. Don't hurry. 'Twill be right enough if you leave us here."
"Like doves in a cage. Ha! ha! Or a couple of fighting cocks," said Howard, with a laugh that was echoed a little dubiously by all present, for it was no secret among them that Rumsey and Goodenough did not love each other. "Well, well; slumber, my darling! eh colonel? ha, ha, ha! and peace be with you."
The conspirators' stair.
And Howard, lighting his torch as he spoke, followed the rest, who, preceded by Rumbold, were beginning to file down the winding stair through the door by which they had entered.
CHAPTER XVI.
A LITTLE DIFFERENCE OF OPINION.
When the shuffling of the footsteps of the conspirators had died away far down below, not a sound was to be heard, save the rain, now fallen to a gentle patter, and ever and anon the wind spending itself in low fitful moans round the old mansion. From time to time, however, this monotony was varied by the obbligato which Sheriff Goodenough's nose continued to trumpet forth.
One more than ordinarily prolonged and loud snort afforded Ruth an opportunity of changing her cramped position, and at the same time of obtaining a clearer view of the scene before her.
Almost immediately facing her, at the corner of the table, sat Rumsey, staring with such a fixed steady gaze straight before him, through the lamp's thin flickering flame, that she trembled and sank crouching to the floor. Could he have caught sight of her?
Never a fear of that. For even if he had chanced to notice the long straggling crack in the wainscot, and that tiny hole caused by the displacement of a little knot in the wood, you had but to look at his moody face a second time, to be sure that his thoughts were blinding his outward senses to all around him; save when from time to time he turned his head on his sleeping companion with an ugly look of mingled mistrust and contempt.
Rumsey draws cold steel.
"Clod! idiot!" he growled at last through his clenched teeth, at the same time drawing a short poignard from a sheath in his buff leathern belt, and throwing it on the table with such a clatter that it woke the sheriff, who sat up with a start of terror.
"Ha; thieves!" he shouted. "Murder! Call the watch!"
"Come, come, sheriff; what's the matter?" laughed Rumsey. "Are you dreaming still? don't you know where you are? Hey! look about you, man."
Goodenough obeyed mechanically; and his dazed eyes, as fate would have it, fell first upon the naked dagger, glittering in the lamplight—"What's that? what's that?" he shrieked again, startled into all his senses at the sight of the thing. "Take it away! For mercy's sake, take it away," he entreated piteously. "It—it's just what I've been dreaming about! Put it up, Master Rumsey; dear Master Rumsey, put it away in its proper place."
"When I am quite sure where that is, I will," coolly answered Rumsey. "In the meantime you and I, sheriff, will just have a little bit of gossip together. There couldn't be a nicer opportunity for it, while we've got the place all snug to ourselves; 'under four eyes,' as they used to call it when I served in Italy."
The sheriff and his enemy,
"But where are they all?" said Goodenough, staring round into the darkness visible, with eyes now thoroughly wide-awake. "And how the plague came I to fall asleep?"
"I suppose only Sheriff Goodenough can solve that problem," answered Rumsey with a shrug.
"But where are they all?" persisted Goodenough.
"Ah!" impatiently said Rumsey, "down below."
"Down below!" gasped Goodenough. "Oughtn't we to be there along with them, colonel? They'd no business to go leaving us all alone;" and the sheriff shivered—"Eh, ought they now? Let's be going too, shall we?" and Goodenough rose to his feet, and began stumbling in his haste to reach the door, over the disorder of chairs and footstools. "I'd rather, I would indeed."
"Too late," said Rumsey. "They're ever so far by now. Serves you right, sheriff. Who ever heard of being caught napping when there's work of this sort on hand? Come, now—steady there—come. It's of no earthly use your rattling the bolts about like that. The captain's locked us in."
"No, no, he hasn't," said Goodenough frantically, wrenching at the ponderous door till he dragged it half open. "See!"
"The mischief seize you!" savagely returned Rumsey, snatching off Goodenough's hands, and banging to the door again with a kick "Not that one. The door, I mean, down at the stairfoot. 'Tis locked, I tell you. Double, triple locked; and you can't get out if you tore your arms off trying."
"But never mind," he went on, as Goodenough fell back despairingly against the wall, "don't look so down in the mouth, man; ain't I here?" and with a low chuckle of amusement at the poor man's discomfiture, he flung himself into a chair, and thrusting his hands deep into his pockets, sat watching through his half-closed eyelids every movement of his companion, who retreated slowly to a chair standing farthermost from Rumsey, and sat down on its edge, looking the very picture of wretchedness and despondency. "'Tis too bad," he said shiveringly, "I wish I hadn't come. I wish I'd never—" Then he stopped short.
"Well?" sharply interrogated Rumsey, fixing the unfortunate man's wandering glances with the steady, piercing, snakelike glitter of his own. "Say on, sheriff, out with it; you wish you'd never—joined this conspir—this society; is that it?"
A faltering tongue.
"I said nothing of the sort, Master Rumsey," faltered Goodenough. "But I—I—I do say—h'm. No matter;" and as his eyes followed Rumsey's, which were fixed on the dagger upon the table, he relapsed into silence.
"On the contrary," said Rumsey in calm hard tones, "'tis very great matter. Our noble association brooks no sticklers, nor cowards neither. What were you going to say?"
"That I hope there's not going to be any—any blood-spilling," said Goodenough in a steadier voice.
"Whose blood?" laughed Rumsey. "Charles's, do you mean?"
"Ah, heaven forbid!" fervently ejaculated Goodenough, "and forgive us the bare thought. Of the guards, I meant, or of any with him."
"That they must take their risk of, pretty dears," sneered Rumsey, "so long only as we secure our Blackbird, and our Chaffinch."
Murderous plans.
"Ay, ay," sighed Goodenough. "Well, 'tmust be chanced, I suppose, as you say, colonel; and perhaps if it comes to't, the sacrifice of a man's life will be forgiven by Providence, so only as we can succeed in bringing his majesty to our way of thinking, and make our Protestant religion safe from these popish scoundrels; and bind him to appoint a real true Church of England king to come after him."
"Instead of the Chaffinch."
"The Duke of York must certainly be set aside, if it be true indeed that he is a Papist at heart."
"If!" cried Rumsey in tones that might have been crook-backed Richard's own.
"But I never dreamed," continued Goodenough, "that 'twould come to blood-spilling, I protest, even of so much as a poor horse's."
"Bluer blood than a wretched Flanders mare's, or a handful of red coats', will be staining yonder road before this moon's out, I take it," muttered Rumsey. "You're a fool, Master Goodenough," he added in a louder key, and turning contemptuously on Goodenough; "a cowardly fool."
"No," said Goodenough, and he rose to his feet, a sudden light of indignation in his eyes; "but you are a traitor, Richard Rumsey! and 'tis not now for the first time I read your murderous thoughts." A low laugh was all Rumsey's comment. "Master Rumbold," hurried on Goodenough, "and Colonel Walcot—"
"Bah! Walcot!" interrupted Rumsey, snapping his fingers.
A dangerous threat.
"And my Lord of Escrick and the rest know well enough how I have bidden them beware of you."
"Absolutely!" said Rumsey, elevating his brows, and the corners of his mouth quivering about his teeth like some hungry hyena's. "We're as mighty fine as the pot was, when it talked a homily to the kettle. Do you imagine that Charles, once safe in their clutches, our good captain, or my Lord of Escrick, or any man-jack of our forty boys, would let him off alive?"
Goodenough was silent for a moment. "I doubt they would not one of them stain their hands with cold blood," he said then. "And for a certainty I can speak to Walcot—"
"Psha! speak no more of him, the white-livered loon."
"I can speak to Walcot," stoutly persisted Goodenough, "for many times I have heard him say that a fair front-to-front tussle with the guards was what his soul itched for. But for attacking the king he would not do it; for that it was a base thing to kill a naked man."
"Naked!" sneeringly echoed Rumsey as he rose from his chair and sauntered towards the table, on whose edge he seated himself, and began carelessly toying with the handle of the poignard he had thrown there. "Let his purple and fine linen shield him."
The coward speaks up.
"They would stand him in less stead against a bullet or a blade-thrust, than even my good Norwich drugget here would shield me, if any man bore me a grudge," answered Goodenough with a faint smile. "But 'tis no matter; why should it be spoken of? 'Tis quite certain that none of us are for killing the king, nor anybody else."
Rumsey's lips twitched with the old baleful smile. "There I think you are out, Master Sheriff," he said, as he took the poignard into his hand, and began examining its hilt with a half absent attention. "The puling scruples of a mere handful out of all our forty boys would not go for much;" and he fixed his eyes in a covert glare on Goodenough, who stood thoughtfully gazing into the lamp; "and these must be got rid of, for a 'house divided against itself cannot stand.'"
"'Tis the assassins who must be got rid of," sturdily retorted Goodenough. "For they foully blot our cause."
"Ha!" cried Rumsey starting up, with the poignard clutched fast in his hand. "Do you forget who—what I am?"
An assassin.
"Nay. But I think you do," answered Goodenough calmly. "You should be a soldier, but it looks much as if you would have me take you for a scoundrel, and a craven-hearted assassin!"
The last word was lost in a sudden sharp shriek of agony; and swaying round, Goodenough clutched convulsively at the poignard which lay plunged to the hilt in his breast, and fell heavily to the floor.
CHAPTER XVII.
"DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES."
"So, Master Sheriff," muttered Rumsey, as he stood coolly watching the thin stream of blood trickling slowly from the prostrate body of his victim, "that is one of you ticked off, at all events. It was such a pity you should be calling names for nothing, wasn't it? and wasps like you are mightily troublesome, not to say dangerous; for who's to guess where you mightn't go buzzing our plans? Not dead yet, aren't you?" he went on scowlingly, as a low groan broke from Goodenough's lips. "Why, you yelled out loud enough for a dozen men. I swear I could almost have fancied 'twas a woman's screech, 'twas so shrill;" and he looked round as he spoke. "But then one might fancy anything in this charnel hole of a place;" and again he cast covert glances at the shadows thrown upon the wainscotting by the flicker of the expiring lamp; and crossing to one of the windows, he looked out through the murky darkness, towards a light gleaming steadily in the far distance. "Cold as charity it is too. I'd give a gold piece to be out of this, and drying before the kitchen fire over at the Thatched House at Hoddesdon yonder, with a cup of mulled sack and a tender cut.—The mischief seize you!" he growled on, as a deep groan from the wounded man arrested his speculations, and turning sharply on him he saw Goodenough feebly move his right hand towards his breast. "Not still yet? Hang it! Richard Rumsey never pinned a jerkin so clumsily before. Want it pulled out, do you?" he continued, with a brutal laugh, as he came close up beside his victim, and stooping over him, plucked the poignard from his breast. "Have your way, then. But don't be saying it's my fault, if your last gasp comes with it." Then with savage indifference he saw the ebbing thread of life-blood swell into a stream let loose by the removal of the weapon, and the limbs relax, while the face grows gray and fixed. "So, I thought as much. Well, go your ways friend, to your journey's end, and keep yourself ready when you get there, to welcome the Blackbird and the Chaffinch when they knock. And now I think I'll be going my road;" and Rumsey glanced meditatively towards the window. "Another time will serve to explain to Captain Hannibal how you got yourself into this coil. Stay," and he slowly lifted the blood-stained poignard still dangling in his fingers. "A mighty excellent notion!"
The assassin.
Kneeling down by the wounded man's side, he wrenched open the clenched fingers of his right hand, and thrust the hilt of the dagger between them. "Yes," he muttered; "that will tell its own tale. And now for the Thatched House."
Returning to the window, and craning out his neck, Rumsey spent several minutes, first in consideration of the projecting corbels and cornices, and the stout web work of ivy covering the walls; then drawing his head back again, he fell to scowling contemplation of his lamed foot. Once on terra firma, nothing, he knew, was easier than to find the postern; and if by ill luck it should be locked, the trees bordering the walls on their inner side would assist him to scale them, and so away across the Rye by the bridges.
Only the first step was the hard one; but the guilty man knew there was no choice for him but to grapple with it; and after one or two clumsy failures, he succeeded in at last obtaining a firm footing on the window ledge.
An unexpected appearance.
Scarcely had he accomplished this feat, than a flash of light broke across his eyes, with such startling suddenness that it caused him to sway forward, and he would have dropped headlong into the moat, had he not stretched out both hands, clinging for dear life to the stout old ivy trails; and by a wrench and a twist that for some hours afterward he did not forget, held on by the jutting stone-work of the window, staring helplessly into the room at the figure of a man, who stood lantern in hand, in the arch of the door facing him. "Hullo!" he cried.
"The same to you, colonel," laughingly returned the voice of Lawrence Lee. "What in the name of Fortune are you about there? Marry! 'Tis an odd time of night to be practising gymnastics!"
"Lend me a hand for mercy's sake!" gasped Rumsey, "or I shall fall and break my neck."
"And it would be such a pity that, eh, colonel?" laughed Lee, as he ran forward. "Have with you then."
"Great heaven!" he cried, stumbling in his haste head foremost across the body of Goodenough; "what have we here? Sheriff Goodenough!" he continued in horrified amazement, as he turned his lantern light on the pale still face, and perceived the pool of blood it lay weltering in. "Dead? Murdered?"
Rumsey shrugged his shoulders with an air of cool indifference.
"Man!" shouted Lee, turning on Rumsey. "What is the meaning of this?"
"Pooh! nonsense!" replied Rumsey, as well as his almost spent breath permitted him. "Dead! Well, like enough; but murdered—Here, hi! lend a hand, can't you?"
Saved for the gallows.
Lawrence complied; but the hand he placed at Rumsey's disposal was no very gentle one, and he hauled him to the floor like a sack of bones. "Speak, man!" he cried.
"Well, give me breathing time," answered Rumsey, shaking himself; and then, glancing askance at the dark mass upon the floor, he growled sulkily, "What is it? What do you want to know? Murdered? Well, killing's no murder, I take it, when a man is driven to it in self-defence."
"Self-defence!"
"Ay. There's no telling where I mightn't be now, if this quarrelsome fellow here, had got the best of me. Don't you see the dagger there in his hand?"
"Where are you hurt?" asked Lawrence, looking from the dagger to Rumsey.
"I?—I?—Oh!" stammered Rumsey confusedly; "well, well, 'tis nothing to speak of. A scratch; hardly a mere scratch."
"Who's dagger is this?" demanded Lee, stooping down, and closely inspecting the weapon in Goodenough's grasp.
"Whose should it be?" rejoined Rumsey, letting his eyes fall shiftily beneath the penetrating glance of Lee, as it fell on him.
"Faith! well, only I never knew him to carry so much as a bare bodkin about him," said Lawrence.
The traitor's tale.
"Then that shows how little you do know him," retorted Rumsey. "A more bloodthirsty, cantankerous fellow than he is, isn't to be found among the lot of us. Why, he's for lopping everybody who doesn't say 'snap' to his 'snip.'"
"'Tis very strange," said Lee thoughtfully.
"A nice thing," grumbled on Rumsey, letting his eyes rest on Lee's left hand, which hung straight down beside him. "A nice thing to attack a man in this fashion, as if he was a viper in a rut. And it's preciously fortunate I'm always prepared for any surprise. You'd find it a hard matter to catch Richard Rumsey on the hip;" and he smiled a smile of infinite self-complacency. "What's that dangling in your fingers there?"
The key.
"Only the key of the tower door," absently replied Lee. "But," he went on, again keenly glancing over Rumsey's figure: "it takes two to a fair fight—and a pair of weapons. Where is yours?"
"Hadn't I my choice of twoscore at least out of the toys there?" said Rumsey after an instant's silence, and pointing to the oaken chest. "If you doubt it look for yourself. A real embarrassment of riches, eh?" he went on, watching Lee's face, as he lifted the lid of the chest and stood gazing at its gleaming contents. "Enough to do for a score of lives if one had 'em. But the best of us has but one in this bad world," he continued, piously turning up his eyes; "and Providence has spared me, as you see, from the sword of the ungodly. I'd have given my best firelock, though, it had not happened;" and for once Rumsey spoke pure and simple truth. "The fellow had his faults, but I had a great respect for him."
"And is that what sent you clearing off in such a hurry?" asked Lawrence, turning contemptuously from Rumsey, and kneeling down beside Goodenough's motionless body he set his lantern on the floor, and the key beside it, and raised the wounded man's head; "and leaving him in this state?"