"GOD SAVE THE KING!"
"Come back!" he shouted.
He might more effectually have summoned back the wind, as it swept
past with a low snarling hiss, as if in mockery of his indignation;
and before he had time to repeat the words, the last echo of Rumsey's
footsteps had died on the lowermost stair, and Lawrence Lee heard the
scraping of the key in the lock of the tower door.
"Coward!" he cried aloud, "will you have me fetch you back?" and
gently replacing the wounded man upon the ground, he rose to his
feet, and with a couple of strides reached the door; but scarcely had
he done, so than a deep groan from Goodenough brought him to a halt,
and he turned, dizzy with perplexity. "To allow this fellow to get
clear off was not to be thought of; and yet, to give chase to him and
leave the unfortunate Goodenough?--"
"Lawrence! Lawrence!" imploringly cried a voice which seemed to him
to proceed from the wainscot to his right. He started and looked
towards the spot.
"Lawrence!"
[Sidenote: Ruth to the rescue.]
"Ruth!" cried the young man in amazement, "is that you?"
"Yes, yes. For the pitying heaven's sake stay! See here, I am
getting a light."
He waited, stock-still, listening to the scratching sound of the
tinder-box, perfectly audible through the panel's rotten wood; and
then, as the thin yellow streak of light broke through the crack, he
flew to the spot. "Out of the way, Ruth!" he cried; and as he spoke
he raised his clenched fist and struck the panel such a sledge-hammer
blow as sent it splintering in all directions, revealing the figure
of Ruth by the light of the candle she held in her hand, enframed by
the woodwork, like some cunningly painted picture.
The illusion, was however, instantly dispelled, as she stepped eager
and breathless to the floor; and hastening to Goodenough, and falling
on her knees beside him, she carefully opened his coat. Then tearing
her linen kerchief from her neck, she bound it gently but firmly over
the wound in such a manner as to staunch it and stay the rushing
blood, which, had it continued but a few moments more, must have
drained his life away.
[Illustration: RUTH AND LAWRENCE SUCCOUR SHERIFF GOODENOUGH]
Then having bathed the unfortunate man's face with some water from a
small pitcher which she motioned to Lawrence to bring her from the
table, she gave a deep and long pent-up sigh, as she perceived a
faint flicker of returning animation overspread the ashen features.
"So," she murmured.
"Ruth, my poor Ruth," said Lawrence. "This is a cruel sight for
you." She shuddered, and gazed momentarily from Goodenough's face to
his.
[Sidenote: A terrible sight.]
"I'd have given all that's mine, child," he went on, "to have spared
you the sight of it."
"Ay," murmured Ruth. "'Twas terrible, very very terrible."
"Still, my dear," went on Lee philosophically, "don't take it to
heart too much. One of the two must always get the worst of it in a
fair stand-up fight. Eh, mustn't one?
"But 'twas no such thing," flashed Ruth. "The coward lied,
Lawrence--lied to you. I saw it all," she went on shudderingly,
"from the hole in the panel there. And he--that man Rumsey--struck
him unawares. Think of it, Lawrence; an unarmed man!"
"Nay, hardly that," said Lee, extricating the poignard from
Goodenough's fingers, and examining it by the light of Ruth's lamp.
"For he must have struck Rumsey. See, there is blood upon this. It
is stained to the very hilt."
"And did not Rumsey himself tell you that he had been barely so much
as scratched?" she said. "Lawrence, that witnesses against him.
These very words, that he intended to screen his guilt, would tell
the truth against him, even if there were no tongue to tell what eye
has seen."
"No, Ruth," said Lee, slowly shaking his head, and gazing
distressfully into the fiery brilliancy of her eyes and on her pale
face, flushed on either cheek with two spots of burning red. "You
did not see it. You must have been dreaming, child. It was some
hideous nightmare. Such a double-dyed treacherous villain as that,
no man could be. No, Ruth, no. Say he did not do it," he added
imploringly.
[Sidenote: Bad company.]
But she shook her head silently.
"It is not possible," he went on. "He--Ruth--that man and I have
touched hands, in--well, in token of good fellowship."
"And God forgive you then, Lawrence," she replied. "As indeed I
think he will. Because you do not know all. I am sure you do not
know-- But hush!" she went on, interrupting herself; "hush, we must
not be found here. My father will be back--"
"Ay, but not yet awhile. I left them all deep in--in their
conversation, in the octagon vault."
"And did not their conversation interest you, Lawrence?" demanded
she, gazing keenly into his face.
"Why, to confess the truth, not so very much," he replied, evading
her look. "And your father--"
"Ay," she said eagerly, as he hesitated.
"He said I should mayhap do better to be coming on, and joining
company with Colonel Rumsey and Master Goodenough here. I doubt," he
continued ruminatively, "he suspected they might be falling to
loggerheads; for I never knew them meet, but what they did always set
to sparring like a pair of Kilkenny cats."
"That may be so," answered Ruth; "but this I am positive of, that
those dreadful men wanted to be rid of you, for they would not have
you know of the shameful deeds they are plotting. They make but a
tool and a cat's-paw of you, Lawrence. Ay, but they do," she
insisted, in no way daunted by the wave of offended dignity Lee's
hand made. "For they know well enough that your heart is too
honourable to stoop to baseness like theirs."
"Tut! tut!--"
"They think you but a fool, and right proud I am they do; for they
are knaves and murderers. Their whole talk to-night was of the best
way of killing the king."
"Killing the king?!!"
"And the Duke of York When they should come back next week from
Newmarket."
"But--but your father?!" gasped Lee. "He--"
[Sidenote: A child's grief.]
"Oh do not--do not speak of him," implored she, clasping her hands in
agony. "My good, dear father, Lawrence. How can we save him?" she
went on in calmer tones.
"Save your father?" said Lawrence, gazing in helpless dejection into
the misery of her face.
"The king; the king; for to save him, is to save my father
from--from--sure, Lawrence, he must be mad; he must be saved from
himself. And I--you must do it. Do you hear? Do you understand?"
Understanding, Lawrence felt, might come in time. For the present,
only his ears fully mastered what Ruth had said, and, helplessly
shrugging his shoulders, he continued to stand gazing vacantly at the
prostrate form of Rumsey's victim.
"Yes, yes," she said, her eyes following his, "you are quite right.
He must not be found here."
[Sidenote: The secret kept.]
"But," began Lawrence, "how can we hide him?" and he glanced towards
the door communicating with hers. She shook her head. "'Tis locked;
my father has the key. He took it this morning. There is but one
way;" and she pointed to the broken panel--"this."
Half an hour later, had any of the conspirators returned to the
Warder's Room, they would have found no trace of what had occurred
there since their departure.
First, as gently as he was able, Lawrence, with Ruth's assistance,
carried the wounded man to the secret passage, and laid him on the
bed which she hastily prepared for him from the pillows and coverings
of her own bed. That done, he stepped back into the Warder's Room,
and having, with the aid of the pitcher of water, succeeded in
effacing the worst of the ugly tell-tale stain upon the floor, he set
the chairs overturned in the fray upon their legs again, and then
busied himself in collecting the scattered pieces and splinters of
the broken panel. Finally, after no small labour, not lessened by
having to reach across the space occupied by the body of the
unconscious Goodenough, he pieced the panel together, so that it
looked, as he said, keenly surveying it when he had done, "as if
catapults could have made no impression on it."
"I doubt," said Ruth with a faint smile, "one must not, however,
breathe on it too roughly lest it fall to pieces."
"Hark! what's that?" whispered Lawrence in alarm, as a low curious
burring, purring sound in the room beyond made itself audible.
Placing her finger warningly on her lip, Ruth crossed the floor, and,
lifting a piece of tapestry half-covering one of the walls, she
disappeared; returning, however, almost immediately with a bottle of
cordial in her hand, and a look of relief on her face.
"Maudlin is sleeping as fast as a dormouse," she said, pouring a few
drops of the bottle's contents into a cup, and moistening the wounded
man's lips.
"But if she should waken?" said Lawrence.
"We will take difficulties only as they come," answered Ruth. "'Tis
scarce likely to happen before daybreak. And long before then,
Lawrence, you must be upon the road."
"Upon the road! To where?" demanded Lawrence aghast.
"Newmarket."
[Sidenote: The warning to the King.]
"The king," she went on, as he continued to stare at her in
speechless astonishment, "must be warned of this danger that
threatens him. And 'tis you must warn him."
"I!" flashed the young man. "Ruth, what do you take me for? I play
traitor? I be a turncoat?"
"It is because you are not one," she answered calmly, "that you will
do this. It is because you are loyal and true that you will not
stand by and see this crime done."
"Betray my oath?"
"You never swore to taking the life of a fellow-creature; least of
all your king's."
He was silent. She had indeed spoken the truth; yet how could he
bring himself to acknowledge to her, what he shrank from admitting to
his own heart, the weakness of that easy nature of his, which had
brought him to this terrible pass? His one thought had been to "keep
neighbourly," as he called it, with difficult Master Rumbold. To
give the maltster offence, was never to see Ruth again, and that was
an unendurable thought. And so, hardly conscious whither he was
drifting, he suddenly found himself on the edge of this abyss of
crime, from which the soft, sweet, but resolute voice at his side now
warned him back ere it was too late. "Choose," she said.
[Sidenote: Lawrence decides.]
"I cannot," he answered, turning and gazing sadly down on the pale
agonized face which had never before seemed so dear to him. "There
is no choice for me, Ruth, but to go."
"And Heaven reward you!" she said, a ray of gladness breaking into
her tearful eyes as she laid her hand on his arm.
"Farewell then, Ruth!" he said with an almost imperceptible shrug;
"and if we should never meet again--." He paused. "Farewell then,
Ruth."
[Sidenote: Gone.]
And turning away his face, as if he dared not again meet the sight of
hers, he took her little hand in his and wrung it fast. Then
springing to the window ledge, he flung the pane wide open, and
planting one foot firmly on the fretted stonework outside, was lost
in the darkness.