In the stillness of the court Ralph could almost hear the woman breathe.

"They were quarrelling, the two men; you heard what they said?" said counsel, breaking silence.

"It's not true," cried the witness, in a hurried manner, "I heard nothing."

"This is no suborned witness, my lords," said counsel in a cold voice, and with a freezing smile. "Well, woman?"

"The tall man leapt off his horse, and there was a struggle. The little man was swearing. There was a heavy fall, and all was quiet once more."

As she spoke the woman recoiled to the back of the box, and covered her face in her hands.

"What manner of man was the taller one?" "He had a strong face with big features and large eyes. I saw him indistinctly."

"Do you see him now?".

"I cannot swear; but—but I think I do."

"Is the prisoner who stands to the left the man you saw that night?"

"The voice is the same, the face is similar, and he wears the same habit—a long dark coat lined with light flannel."

"Is that all you know of the matter?"

"I knew that a crime had been committed in my sight. I felt that a dead body lay close beside me. I was about to turn away, when I heard a third man come up and speak to the man on the horse."

"You knew the voice?"

"It was the cottager who had given us shelter. I ran back to the barn, snatched up my two children in their sleep, and fled away across the fields—I know not where."

Justice Hide asked the witness why she had not spoken of this before; three months had elapsed since then.

She replied that she had meant to do so, but it came into her mind that perhaps the cottager was somehow concerned in the crime, and she remembered how good he and his daughter had been to her.

"How had she come to make the disclosures now?"

The witness explained that when she crushed her way into the court a week ago it was with the idea that the prisoner might be her husband. He was not her husband, but when she saw his face she remembered that she had seen him before. A man in the body of the court had followed her out and asked her questions.

"Who was the man?" asked the judge, turning to the sheriff.

The gentleman addressed pointed to a man near at hand, who rose at this reference, with a smile of mingled pride and cunning, as though he felt honored by this public disclosure of his astuteness. He was a small man with a wrinkled face, and a sinister cast in one of his eyes, which lay deep under shaggy brows. We have met him before.

The judge looked steadily at him as he rose in his place. After a minute or two he turned again to look at him. Then he made some note on a paper in his hand.

The witness looked jaded and worn with the excitement. During her examination Sim had never for an instant upraised his eyes from the ground. The eagerness with which Ralph had watched her was written in every muscle of his face. When liberty was given him to question her, he asked in a soft and tender voice if she knew what time of the night it might be when she had seen what she had described.

Between nine and ten o'clock as near as she could say, perhaps fully ten.

Was she sure which side of the bridge she was on—north or south?

"Sure; it was north of the bridge."

Ralph asked if the records of the coroner's inquiry were at hand. They were not. Could he have them examined? It was needless. But why?

"Because," said Ralph, "it was sworn before the coroner that the body was found to the south of the bridge—fifty yards to the south of it."

The point was treated with contempt and some derisive laughter. When Ralph pressed it, there was humming and hissing in the court.

"We must not expect that we can have exact and positive proof," said Justice Millet; "we would come as near as we can to circumstances by which a fact of this dark nature can be proved. It is easy for a witness to be mistaken on such a point."

The young woman Margaret Rushton was being dismissed.

"One word," said Justice Hide. "You say you have heard your husband speak of the prisoner Ray; how has he spoken of him?"

"How?—as the bravest gentleman in all England!" said the woman eagerly.

Sim lifted his head, and clutched the rail. "God—it's true, it's true!" he cried hysterically, in a voice that ran through the court.

"My lords," said counsel, "you have heard the truth wrung from a reluctant witness, but you have not heard all the circumstances of this horrid fact. The next witness will prove the motive of the crime."

A burly Cumbrian came into the box, and gave the name of Thomas Scroope. He was an agent to the King's counsel. Ralph glanced at him. He was the man who insulted the girl in Lancaster.

He said he remembered the defendant Ray as a captain in the trained bands of the late Parliament. Ray was always proud and arrogant. He had supplanted the captain whose captaincy he afterwards held.

"When was that?"

"About seven years agone," rejoined the witness; adding in an undertone, and as though chuckling to himself, "he's paid dear enough for that sin' then."

Ralph interrupted.

"Who was the man I supplanted, as you say—the man who has made me pay dear for it, as you think?"

No answer.

"Who?"

"No matter that," grumbled the witness. His facetiousness was gone.

There was some slight stir beneath the jurors' box.

"Tell the court the name of the man you mean."

Counsel objected to the time of the court being wasted with such questions.

Justice Hide overruled the objection.

Amid much sensation, the witness gave the name of the sheriff of Cumberland, Wilfrey Lawson.

Continuing his evidence in a defiant manner, the witness said he remembered the deceased agent, James Wilson. He saw him last the day before his death. It was in Carlisle they met. Wilson showed witness a warrant with which he was charged for Ray's arrest, and told him that Ray had often threatened him in years past, and that he believed he meant to take his life. Wilson had said that he intended to be beforehand, for the warrant was a sure preventive. He also said that the Rays were an evil family; the father was a hard, ungrateful brute, who had ill repaid him for six years' labor. The mother was best; but then she was only a poor simple fool. The worst of the gang was this Ralph, who in the days of the Parliament had more than once threatened to deliver him—Wilson—to the sheriff—the other so-called sheriff, not the present good gentleman.

Ralph asked the witness three questions.

"Have we ever met before?"

"Ey, but we'll never meet again, I reckon," said the man, with a knowing wink.

"Did you serve under me in the army of the Parliament?"

"Nowt o' t' sort," with a growl.

"Were you captured by the King's soldiers, and branded with a hot iron, as a spy of their own who was suspected of betraying them?"

"It's a' a lie. I were never brandet."

"Pull up the right sleeves of your jerkin and sark."

The witness refused.

Justice Hide called on the keeper to do so.

The witness resisted, but the sleeves were drawn up to the armpit. The flesh showed three clear marks as of an iron band.

The man was hurried away, amid hissing in the court.

The next witness was the constable, Jonathan Briscoe. He described being sent after Wilson early on the day following that agent's departure from Carlisle. His errand was to bring back the prisoner. He arrived at Wythburn in time to be present at the inquest. The prisoner Stagg was then brought up and discharged.

Ralph asked if it was legal to accuse a man a second time of the same offence.

Justice Millet ruled that the discharge of a coroner (even though he were a resident justice as well) was no acquittal.

The witness remembered how at the inquiry the defendant Ray had defended his accomplice. He had argued that it was absurd to suppose that a man of Stagg's strength could have killed Wilson by a fall. Only a more powerful man could have done so.

"Had you any doubt as to who that more powerful man might be?"

"None, not I. I knew that the man whose game it was to have the warrant was the likest man to have grabbed it. It warn't on the body. There was not a scrap of evidence against Ray, or I should have taken him then and there."

"You tried to take him afterwards, and failed."

"That's true enough. The man has the muscles of an ox."

The next two witnesses were a laborer from Wythburn, who spoke again to passing Sim on the road on the night of the murder, and meeting Wilson a mile farther north, and Sim's landlord, who repeated his former evidence.

There was a stir in the court as counsel announced his last witness. A woman among the spectators was muttering something that was inaudible except to the few around her. The woman was Mrs. Garth. Willy Ray stood near her, but could not catch her words.

The witness stepped into the box. There was no expression of surprise on Ralph's face when he saw who stood there to give evidence against him. It was the man who had been known in Lancaster as his "Shadow"; the same that had (with an earlier witness) been Robbie Anderson's companion in his night journey on the coach; the same that passed Robbie as he lay unconscious in Reuben Thwaite's wagon; the same that had sat in the bookseller's snug a week ago; the same that Mrs. Garth had recognized in the corridor that morning; the same that Justice Hide had narrowly scrutinized when he rose in the court to claim the honor of ferreting the facts out of the woman Rushton.

He gave the name of Mark Wilson.

"Your name again?" said Justice Hide, glancing at a paper in his hand.

"Mark Wilson."

Justice Hide beckoned the sheriff and whispered something. The sheriff crushed his way into an inner room.

"The deceased James Wilson was your brother?"

"He was."

"Tell my lords and the jury what you know of this matter."

"My brother was a zealous agent of our gracious King," said the witness, speaking in a tone of great humility. "He even left his home—his wife and family—in the King's good cause."

At this moment Sim was overtaken by faintness. He staggered, and would have fallen. Ralph held him up, and appealed to the judges for a seat and some water to be given to his friend. The request was granted, and the examination continued.

The witness was on the point of being dismissed when the sheriff re-entered, and, making his way to the bench, handed a book to Justice Hide. At the same instant Sim's attention seemed to be arrested to the most feverish alertness. Jumping up from the seat on which Ralph had placed him, he cried out in a thin shrill voice, calling on the witness to remain. There was breathless silence in the court.

"You say that your brother," cried Sim,—"God in heaven, what a monster he was!—you say that he left his wife and family. Tell us, did he ever go back to them?"

"No."

"Did you ever hear of money that your brother's wife came into after he'd deserted her—that was what he did, your lordships, deserted her and her poor babby—did you ever hear of it?"

"What if I did?" replied the witness, who was apparently too much taken by surprise to fabricate a politic falsehood.

"Did you know that the waistrel tried to get hands on the money for himself?"

Sim was screaming out his questions, the sweat standing in round drops on his brow. The judges seemed too much amazed to remonstrate.

"Tell us, quick. Did he try to get hands on it?"

"Perhaps; what then?"

"And did he get it?"

"No."

"And why not—why not?"

The anger of the witness threw him off his guard.

"Because a cursed scoundrel stepped in and threatened to hang him if he touched the woman's money."

"Aye, aye! and who was that cursed scoundrel?"

No answer.

"Who, quick, who?"

"That man there!" pointing to Ralph.

Loud murmurs came from the people in the court. In the midst of them a woman was creating a commotion. She insisted on going out. She cried aloud that she would faint. It was Mrs. Garth again. The sheriff leaned over the table to ask if these questions concerned the inquiry, but Sim gave no time for protest. He never paused to think if his inquiries had any bearing on the issue.

"And now tell the court your name."

"I have told it."

"Your true name, and your brother's."

Justice Hide looked steadily at the witness. He held an open book in his hand.

"Your true name," he said, repeating Sim's inquiry.

"Mark Garth!" mumbled the witness. The judge appeared to expect that reply.

"And your brother's?"

"Wilson Garth."

"Remove the perjurer in charge."

Sim sank back exhausted, and looked about him as one who had been newly awakened from a dream.

The feeling among the spectators, as also among the jurors, wavered between sympathy for the accused and certainty of the truth of the accusation, when the sheriff was seen to step uneasily forward and hand a paper to counsel. Glancing hastily at the document, the lawyer rose with a smile of secure triumph and said that, circumstantial as the evidence on all essential points had hitherto been, he was now in a position to render it conclusive.

Then handing the paper to Ralph, he asked him to say if he had ever seen it before. Ralph was overcome; gasping as if for breath, he raised one hand involuntarily to his breast.

"Tell the court how you came by the instrument in your hand."

There was no reply. Ralph had turned to Sim, and was looking into his face with what appeared to be equal pity and contrition.

The paper was worn, and had clearly been much and long folded. It was charred at one corner as if at some moment it had narrowly escaped the flames.

"My lords," said counsel, "this is the very warrant which the deceased Wilson carried from Carlisle for the arrest of the prisoner who now holds it; this is the very warrant which has been missing since the night of the murder of Wilson; and where, think you, my lords, it was found? It was found—you have heard how foolish be the wise—look now how childishly a cunning man can sometimes act, how blundering are clever rogues!—it was found this morning on the defendant Ray's person while he slept, in an inner breast pocket, which was stitched up, and seemed to have been rarely used."

"That is direct proof," said Justice Millet, with a glance at his brother on the bench. "After this there can be no doubt in any mind."

"Peradventure the prisoner can explain how he came by the document," said Justice Hide.

"Have you anything to say as to how you became possessed of it?"

"Nothing."

"Will you offer the court no explanation?"

"None."

"Would the answer criminate you?"

No reply.

For Ralph the anguish of years was concentrated in that moment. He might say where he was on the night of the murder, but then he had Sim only for witness. He thought of Robbie Anderson—why was he not here? But no, Robbie was better away; he could only clear him of this guilt by involving his father. And what evidence would avail against the tangible witness of the warrant? He had preserved that document with some vague hope of serving Sim, but here it was the serpent in the breast of both.

"This old man," he said,—his altered tone startled the listeners,—"this old man," he said, pointing to Sim at his side, "is as innocent of the crime as the purest soul that stands before the White Throne."

"And what of yourself?"

"As for me, as for me," he added, struggling with the emotion that surged in his voice, "in the sight of Him that searcheth all hearts I have acquittal. I have sought it long and with tears of Him before whom we are all as chaff."

"Away with him, the blasphemer!" cried Justice Millet. "Know where you are, sir. This is an assembly of Christians. Dare you call God to acquit you of your barbarous crimes?"

The people in the court took up the judge's word and broke out into a tempest of irrepressible groans. They were the very people who had cheered a week ago.

Sim cowered in a corner of the box, with his lank fingers in his long hair.

Ralph looked calmly on. He was not to be shaken now. There was one way in which he could quell that clamor and turn it into a tumult of applause, but that way should not be taken. He could extricate himself by criminating his dead father, but that he should never do. And had he not come to die? Was not this the atonement he had meant to make? It was right, it was right, and it was best. But what of Sim; must he be the cause of Sim's death also? "This poor old man," he repeated, when the popular clamor had subsided, "he is innocent."

Sim would have risen, but Ralph guessed his purpose and kept him to his seat. At the same moment Willy Ray among the people was seen struggling towards the witness-bar. Ralph guessed his purpose and checked him, too, with a look. Willy stood as one petrified. He saw only one of two men for the murderer—Ralph or his father.

"Let us go together," whispered Sim; and in another moment the judge (Justice Millet) was summing up. He was brief; the evidence of the woman Rushton and of the recovered warrant proved everything. The case was as clear as noonday. The jurors need not leave the box.

Without retiring, the jury found a verdict of guilty against both prisoners.

The crier made proclamation of silence, and the awful sentence of death was pronounced.

It was remarked that Justice Hide muttered something about a "writ of error," and that when he rose from the bench he motioned the sheriff to follow him.



CHAPTER XLIII. LOVE KNOWN AT LAST.

Early next morning Willy Ray arrived at Shoulthwaite, splashed from head to foot, worn and torn. He had ridden hard from Carlisle, but not so fast but that two unwelcome visitors were less than half an hour's ride behind him.

"Home again," he said, in a dejected tone, throwing down his whip as he entered the kitchen, "yet home no longer."

Rotha struggled to speak. "Ralph, where is he? Is he on the way?" These questions were on her lips, but a great gulp was in her throat, and not a word would come.

"Ralph's a dead man," said Willy with affected deliberation, pushing off his long boots.

Rotha fell back apace. Willy glanced up at her.

"As good as dead," he added, perceiving that she had taken his words too literally. "Ah, well, it's over now, it's over; and if you had a hand in it, girl, may God forgive you!"

Willy said this with the air of a man who reconciles himself to an injury, and is persuading his conscience that he pardons it. "Could you not give me something to eat?" he asked, after a pause.

"Is that all you have to say to me?" said Rotha, in a voice as husky as the raven's.

Willie glanced at her again. He felt a passing pang of remorse.

"I had forgotten, Rotha; your father, he is in the same case with Ralph."

Then he told her all; told her in a simple way, such as he believed would appeal to what he thought her simple nature; told her of the two trials and final conviction, and counselled her to bear her trouble with as stout a heart as might be.

"It will be ended in a week," he said, in closing his narrative; "and then, Heaven knows what next." Rotha stood speechless by the chair of the unconscious invalid, with a face more pale than ashes, and fingers clinched in front of her.

"It comes as a shock to you, Rotha, for you seemed somehow to love your poor father."

Still the girl was silent. Then Willy's sympathies, which had for two minutes been as unselfish as short-sighted, began to revolve afresh about his own sorrows.

"I can scarce blame you for what you did," he said; "no, I can scarce blame you, when I think of it. He was not your brother, as he was mine. You could know nothing of a brother's love; no, you could know nothing of that."

"What is the love of a brother?" said Rotha.

Willy started at the unfamiliar voice.

"What would be the love of a world of brothers to such a love as mine?"

Then stepping with great glassy eyes to where Willy sat, the girl clutched him nervously and said, "I loved him."

Willy looked up with wonder in his face.

"Yes, I! You talk your love; it is but a drop to the ocean I bear him. It is but a grain to the desert of love in my heart that shall never, never blossom."

"Rotha!" cried Willy, in amazement.

"Your love! Why look you, under the wing of death—now that I may never hope to win him—I tell you that I love Ralph."

"Rotha!" repeated Willy, rising to his feet.

"Yes, and shall love him when the grass is over him, or me, or both!"

"Love him?"

"To the last drop of my blood, to the last hour of my life, until Death's cold hand lies chill on this heart, until we stand together where God is, and all is love for ever and ever, I tell you I love him, and shall love him, as God Himself is my witness."

The girl glowed with passion. Her face quivered with emotion, and her upturned eyes were not more full of inspiration than of tears.

Willy sank back into his seat with a feeling akin to awe.

"Let it be so, Rotha," he said a moment later; "but Ralph is doomed. Your love is barren; it comes too late. Remember what you once said, that death comes to all." "But there is something higher than death and stronger," cried Rotha, "or heaven itself is a lie and God a mockery. No, they shall not die, for they are innocent."

"Innocence is a poor shield from death. It was either father or Ralph," replied Willy, "and for myself I care not which."

Then at a calmer moment he repeated to her afresh the evidence of the young woman Rushton, whom she and her father had housed at Fornside.

"You are sure she said 'fifty yards to the north of the bridge'?" interrupted Rotha.

"Sure," said Willy; "Ralph raised a question on the point, but they flung it aside with contempt."

"Robbie Anderson," thought Rotha. "What does Robbie know of this that he was forever saying the same in his delirium? Something he must know. I shall run over to him at once."

But just then the two officers of the sheriff's court arrived again at Shoulthwaite, and signified by various forms of freedom and familiarity that it was a part of their purpose to settle there until such time as judgment should have taken its course, and left them the duty of appropriating the estate of a felon in the name of the crown.

"Come, young mistress, lead us up to our room, and mind you see smartly to that breakfast. Alack-a-day; we're as hungry as hawks."

"You come to do hawks' business, sir," said Rotha, "in spoiling another's nest."

"Ha! ha! ha! happy conceit, forsooth! But there's no need to glare at us like that, my sharp-witted wench. Come, lead on, but go slowly, there. This leg of mine has never mended, bating the scar, since yonder unlucky big brother of yours tumbled me on the mountains."

"He's not my brother."

"Sweetheart, then, ey? Why, these passages are as dark as the grave."

"I wish they were as silent, and as deep too, for those who enter them."

"Ay, what, Jonathan? Grave, silent, deep—but then you would be buried with us, my pretty lassie."

"And what of that? Here's your room, sirs. Peradventure it will serve until you take every room." "Remember the breakfast," cried the little man, after Rotha's retreating figure. "We're as hungry as—as—"

"Hold your tongue, and come in, David. Brush the mud from your pantaloons, and leave the girl to herself."

"The brazen young noddle," muttered David.

It was less than an hour later when Rotha, having got through her immediate duties, was hastening with all speed to Mattha Brander's cottage. In her hand, tightly grasped beneath her cloak, was a bunch of keys, and on her lips were the words of the woman's evidence and of Robbie's delirium. "It was fifty yards to the north of the bridge."

This was her sole clew. What could she make of it?



CHAPTER XLIV. THE CLEW DISCOVERED.

An hour before Rotha left Shoulthwaite, Robbie Anderson was lying on a settle before the fire in the old weaver's kitchen. Mattha himself and his wife were abroad, but Liza had generously and courageously undertaken the task of attending to the needs of the convalescent.

"Where's all my hair gone?" asked Robbie, with a puzzled expression. He was rubbing his close-cropped head.

Liza laughed roguishly.

"Maybe it's fifty yards north of the bridge," she said, with her head aside.

Robbie looked at her with blank amazement.

"Why, who told you that, Liza?" he said.

"Told me what?"

"Ey? That!" repeated Robbie, no more explicit.

"Foolish boy! Didn't you tell us yourself fifty times?"

"So I did. Did I though? What am I saying? When did I tell you?"

Robbie's eyes were staring out of his head. His face, not too ruddy at first, was now as pale as ashes.

Liza began to whimper.

"Why do you look like that?" she said.

"Look? Oh, ey, ey! I'm a ruffian, that's what I am. Never mind, lass."

Robbie's eyes regained their accustomed expression, and his features, which had been drawn down, returned to their natural proportions.

Liza's face underwent a corresponding change.

"Robbie, have you 'downed' him—that Garth?"

"Ey?"

The glaring eyes were coming back. Liza, frightened again, began once more to whimper prettily.

"I didn't mean to flayte you, Liza," Robbie said coaxingly. "You're a fair coax when you want something," said Liza, trying to disengage herself from the grasp of Robbie's arm about her waist. He might be an invalid, Liza thought, but he was wonderfully strong, and he was holding her shockingly tight. What was the good of struggling?

Robbie snatched a kiss.

"Oh you—oh you—oh! oh! If I had known that you were so wicked—oh!"

"Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me, or I will never let you go, never," cried Robbie.

"Never?" Liza felt that she must forgive this tyrant.

"Well, if you'll loosen this arm I'll—I'll try."

"Liza, how much do you love me?" inquired Robbie.

"Did you speak to me?"

"Oh, no, to crusty old 'Becca down the road. How much do you love me?"

Robbie's passion was curiously mathematical.

"Me? How much? About as much as you might put in your eye."

Robbie pretended to look deeply depressed. He dropped his head, but kept, nevertheless, an artful look out of the corner of the eye which was alleged to be the measure of his sweetheart's affection.

Thinking herself no longer under the fire of Robbie's glances, Liza's affectation of stern disdain melted into a look of tenderness.

Robbie jerked his head up sharply. The little woman was caught. She revenged herself by assuming a haughty coldness. But it was of no use. Robbie laughed and crowed and bantered.

At this juncture Mattha Branth'et came into the cottage.

The weaver was obviously in a state of profound agitation. He had just had a "fratch" with the Quaker preachers on the subject of election.

"I rub't 'm t' wrang way o' t' hair," said the old man, "when I axt 'em what for they were going aboot preaching if it were all settled aforehand who was to be damned and who was to be saved. 'Ye'r a child of the devil,' says one. 'Mebbee so,' says I, 'and I dunnet know if the devil iver had any other relations; but if so, mebbee yersel's his awn cousin.'"

It was hard on Matthew that, after upholding Quakerism for years against the sneers of the Reverend Nicholas Stevens, he should be thus disowned and discredited by the brotherhood itself.

"Tut! theer's six o' tean an' hofe a duzzen of t' tudder," said the old sage, dismissing the rival theologians from his mind forever.

"Oh, Robbie, lad," said Matthew, as if by a sudden thought, "John Jackson met Willy Ray coming frae Carlisle, and what think ye hes happent?"

"Nay, what?" said Robbie, turning pale again.

"Ralph Ray and Sim Stagg are condemned to death for t' murder of auld Wilson."

Robbie leapt to his feet.

"The devil!"

"Come, dunnet ye tak on like the Quakers," said Matthew.

Robbie had caught up his coat and hat.

"Why, where are you going?" said Liza.

"Going? Aye? Going?"

"Yes, where? You're too weak to go anywhere. You'll have another fever."

A light wagon was running on the road outside. Reuben Thwaite was driving.

Robbie rushed to the door, and hailed him.

"Going off with thread again, Reuben?"

"That's reets on't," answered the little man.

"Let me in with you?"

And Robbie climbed into the cart.

Mattha got up and went out in the road.

* * * * *

The two men had hardly got clear away when Rotha entered the cottage all but breathless.

"Robbie, where is he?"

"Gone, just gone, not above two minutes," replied Liza, still whimpering.

"Where?"

"I scarce know—to Penrith, I think. There was no keeping him back. When father came in and told him what had happened at Carlisle, he flung away and would not be hindered. He has gone off in Reuben's wagon."

"Which way?"

"They took the low road."

"Then I've missed them," said Rotha, sinking into a chair in a listless attitude.

"And he's as weak as water, and he'll take another fever, as I told him, and ramble on same as—"

"Liza," interrupted Rotha, "did you ever tell him—in play I mean—did you ever repeat anything he had said when he was unconscious?"

"Not that about his mammy?"

"No, no; but anything else?"

"I mind I told him what he said over and over again about his fratch with that Garth."

"Nothing else?"

"Why, yes, now I think on't. I mind, too, that I told him he was always running on it that something was fifty yards north of the bridge, and he could swear it, swear it in hea—"

"What did he say to that?" asked Rotha eagerly.

"Say! he said nothing, but he glowered at me till I thought sure he was off again."

"Is that all?"

"All what, Rotha?"

"They said in evidence that Ralph—it was a lie, remember—they said that Wilson was killed fifty yards to the north of the bridge. Now his body was found as far to the south of it. Robbie knows something. I hoped to learn what he knows; but oh, everything is against me—everything, everything."

Rising hastily, she added, "Perhaps Robbie has gone to Carlisle. I must be off, Liza."

In another moment she was hurrying up the road.

* * * * *

Taking the high path, the girl came upon the Quaker preachers, surrounded by a knot of villagers. To avoid them she turned up an unfrequented angle of the road. There, in the recess of a gate, unseen by the worshippers, but commanding a view of them, and within hearing of all that was sung and said, stood Garth, the blacksmith. He wore his leathern apron thrown over one shoulder. This was the hour of mid-day rest. He had not caught the sound of Rotha's light footstep as she came up beside him. He was leaning over the gate and listening intently. There was more intelligence and also more tenderness in his face than Rotha had observed before.

She paused, and seemed prompted to a nearer approach, but for the moment she held back. The worshippers began to sing a simple Quaker hymn. It spoke of pardon and peace:—

Though your sins be red as scarlet, He shall wash them white as wool.

Garth seemed to be touched. His hard face softened; his lips parted, and his eyes began to swim.

When the singing ceased, he repeated the refrain beneath his breath. "What if one could but think it?" he muttered, and dropped his head into his hands.

Rotha stepped up and tapped his shoulder.

"Mr. Garth," she said.

He started, and then struggled to hide his discomposure. There was only one way in which a man of his temperament and resource could hope to do it—he snarled.

"What do you want with me?"

"It was a beautiful hymn," said Rotha, ignoring his question.

"Do you think so?" he growled, and turned his head away.

"What if one could but think it?" she said, as if speaking as much to herself as to him.

Garth faced about, and looked at her with a scowl.

The girl's eyes were as meek as an angel's.

"It's what I was thinking mysel', that is," he mumbled after a pause; then added aloud with an access of irritation, "Think what?"

"That there is pardon for us all, no matter what our sins—pardon and peace."

"Humph!"

"It is beautiful; religion is very beautiful, Mr. Garth."

The blacksmith forced a short laugh.

"You'd best go and hire yourself to the Quakers. They would welcome a woman preacher, no doubt."

She would have bartered away years of her life at this instant for one glimpse of what was going on in that man's heart. If she had found corruption there, sin and crime, she would have thanked God for it as for manna from above. Rotha clutched the keys beneath her cloak and subdued her anger.

"You scarce seem yourself to-day, Mr. Garth," she said.

"All the better," he replied, with a mocking laugh. "I've heard that they say my own sel' is a bad sel'."

The words were hardly off his lips when he turned again sharply and faced Rotha with an inquiring look. He had reminded himself of a common piece of his mother's counsel; but in the first flash of recollection it had almost appeared to him that the words had been Rotha's, not his.

The girl's face was as tender as a Madonna's.

"Maybe I am a little bit out of sorts to-day; maybe so. I've felt daizt this last week end; I have, somehow."

Rotha left him a minute afterwards. Continuing her journey, she drew the bunch of keys from under her cloak and examined them.

They were the same that she had found attached to Wilson's trunk on the night of her own and Mrs. Garth's visit to the deserted cottage at Fornside. There were perhaps twenty keys in all, but two only bore any signs of recent or frequent use. One of these was marked with a cross scratched roughly on the flat of the ring. The other had a piece of white tape wrapped about the shaft. The rest of the keys were worn red with thick encrustation of rust. And now, by the power of love, this girl with the face of an angel in its sweetness and simplicity—this girl, usually as tremulous as a linnet—was about to do what a callous man might shrink from.

She followed the pack-horse road beyond the lonnin that turned up to Shoulthwaite, and stopped at the gate of the cottage that stood by the smithy near the bridge. Without wavering for an instant, without the quivering of a single muscle, she opened the gate and walked up to the door.

"Mrs. Garth," she called.

A young girl came out. She was a neighbor's daughter.

"Why, she's away, Rotha, Mistress Garth is," said the little lassie.

"Away, Bessy?" said Rotha, entering the house and seating herself. "Do you know where she's gone?"

"Nay, that I don't; but she told mother she'd be away three or four days."

"So you're minding house for her," said Rotha vacantly, her eyes meantime busily traversing the kitchen; they came back to the little housekeeper's face in a twinkling.

"Deary me, what a pretty ribbon that is in your hair, Bessy. Do you know it makes you quite smart. But it wants just a little bow like this—there, there."

The guileless child blushed and smiled, and sidled slyly up to where she could catch a sidelong glance at herself in a scratched mirror that hung against the wall.

"Tut, Bessy, you should go and kneel on the river bank just below, and look at yourself in the still water. Go, lass, and come back and tell me what you think now."

The little maiden's vanity prompted her to go, but her pride urged her to remain, lest Rotha should think her too vain. Pride conquered, and Bessy hung down her pretty head and smiled. Rotha turned wearily about and said, "I'm very thirsty, and I can't bear that well water of Mrs. Garth's."

"Why, she's not got a well, Rotha."

"Hasn't she? Now, do you know, I thought she had, but it must be 'Becca Rudd's well I'm thinking of."

Bessy stepped outside for a moment, and came back with a basin of water in her hand.

"What sort of water is this, Bessy—river water?" said Rotha languidly, with eyes riveted on an oak chest that stood at one side of the kitchen.

"Oh, no; spring water," said the little one, with many protestations of her shaking head.

"Now, do you know, Bessy—you'll think it strange, won't you?—do you know, I never care for spring water."

"I'll get you a cup of milk," said Bessy.

"No, no; it's river water I like. Just slip away and get me a cup of it, there's a fine lass, and I'll show you how to tie the ribbon for yourself."

The little one tripped off. Vanity reminded her that she could kill two birds with one stone. Instantly she had gone Rotha rose to her feet and drew out the keys. Taking the one with the tape on it, she stepped to the oak chest and tried it on the padlock that hung in front of it. No; that was not the lock it fitted. There was a corner cupboard that hung above the chest. But, no; neither had the cupboard the lock which fitted the key in Rotha's hand.

There was a bedroom leading out of the kitchen. Rotha entered it and looked around. A linen trunk, a bed, and a chair were all that it contained. She went upstairs. There were two bedrooms there, but no chest, box, cabinet, cupboard, not anything having a lock which a key like this might fit.

Bessy would be back soon. Rotha returned to the kitchen. She went again into the adjoining bedroom. Yes, under the bed was a trunk, a massive plated trunk. She tried to move it, but it would not stir. She went down on her knees to examine it. It had two padlocks, but neither suited the key. Back to the kitchen, she sat down half bewildered and looked around.

At that instant the little one came in, with a dimple in her rosy cheeks and a cup of water in her hand.

Rotha took the water and tried to drink.

She was defeated once more. She put the keys into her pocket. Was she ever to be one step nearer the heart of this mystery?

She rose wearily and walked out, forgetting to show the trick of the bow to the little housekeeper who stood with a rueful pout in the middle of the floor.

There was one thing left to do; with this other key, the key marked with a cross, she could open Wilson's trunk in her father's cottage, look at the papers, and perhaps discover wherein lay their interest for Mrs. Garth. But first she must examine the two places in the road referred to in the evidence at the trial.

In order to do this at once, Rotha turned towards Smeathwaite when she left the blacksmith's cottage, and walked to the bridge.

The river ran in a low bed, and was crossed by the road at a sharp angle. Hence the bridge lay almost out of sight of persons walking towards it.

Fifty yards to the north of it was the spot where the woman Rushton said she saw the murder. Fifty yards to the south of it was the spot where the body was picked up next morning.

Rotha had reached the bridge, and was turning the angle of the road, when she drew hastily back. Stepping behind a bush for further concealment, she waited. Some one was approaching. It was Mrs. Garth. The woman walked on until she came to within fifty paces of where Rotha stood. Then she stopped. The girl observed her movements, herself unseen.

Mrs. Garth looked about her to the north and south of the road and across the fields on either hand. Then she stepped into the dike and prodded the ground for some yards and kicked the stones that lay there.

Rotha's breath came and went like a tempest.

Mrs. Garth stooped to look closely at a huge stone that lay by the highway. Then she picked up a smaller stone and seemed to rub it on the larger one, as if she wished to remove a scratch or stain.

Rotha was sure now.

Mrs. Garth stood on the very spot where the crime was said to have been committed. This woman, then, and her son were at the heart of the mystery. It was even as she had thought.

Rotha could hear the beat of her own heart. She plunged from behind the bush one step into the road. Then she drew back.

The day was cold but dry, and Mrs. Garth heard the step in front of her. She came walking on with apparent unconcern. Rotha thought of her father and Ralph condemned to die as innocent men.

The truth that would set them free lay with seething dregs of falsehood at the bottom of this woman's heart. It should come up; it should come up.

When Mrs. Garth had reached the bridge Rotha stepped out and confronted her. The woman gave a little start and then a short forced titter.

"Deary me, lass, ye mak a ghost of yersel', coming and going sa sudden."

"And you make ghosts of other people." Then, without a moment's warning, Rotha looked close into her eyes and said, "Who killed James Wilson? Tell me quick, quick."

Mrs. Garth flinched, and for the instant looked confused.

"Tell me, woman, tell me; who killed him there—there where you've been beating the ground to conceal the remaining traces of a struggle?"

"Go off and ask thy father," said Mrs. Garth, recovering herself; and then she added, with a sneer, "but mind thou'rt quick, or he'll never tell thee in this world." "Nor will you tell me in the next. Woman, woman!" cried Rotha in another tone, "woman, have you any bowels? You have no heart, I know; but can you stand by and be the death of two men who have never, never done you wrong?"

Rotha clutched Mrs. Garth's dress in the agony of her appeal.

"You have a son, too. Think of him standing where they stand, an innocent man."

Rotha had dropped to her knees in the road, still clinging to Mrs. Garth's dress.

"What's all this to me, girl? Let go yer hod, do you hear? Will ye let go? What wad I know about Wilson—nowt."

"It's a lie," cried Rotha, starting to her feet. "What were you doing in his room at Fornside?"

"Tush, maybe I was only seeking that fine father of thine. Let go your hod, do you hear? Let go, or I'll—I'll—"

Rotha had dropped the woman's dress and grasped her shoulders. In another instant the slight pale-faced girl had pulled this brawny woman to her knees. They were close to the parapet of the bridge, and it was but a few inches high.

"As sure as God's in heaven," cried Rotha with panting breath and flaming eyes, "I'll fling you into this river if you utter that lie again. Woman, give me the truth! Cast away these falsehoods, that would blast the souls of the damned in hell."

"Get off. Wilta not? Nay, then, but I'll mak thee, and quick."

The struggle was short. The girl was flung aside into the road.

Mrs. Garth rose from her knees with a bitter smile on her lips. "I mak na doubt 'at thou wouldn't be ower keen to try the same agen," she said, going off. "Go thy ways to Doomsdale, my lass, and ax yer next batch of questions there. I've just coom't frae it mysel', do you know?"

Late the same evening, as the weary sun went down behind the smithy, Rotha hastened from the cottage at Fornside back to the house on the Moss at Shoulthwaite. She had a bundle of papers beneath her cloak, and the light of hope in her face.

The clew was found.



CHAPTER XLV. THE CONDEMNED IN DOOMSDALE.

When Ralph, accompanied by Sim, arrived at Carlisle and surrendered himself to the high sheriff, Wilfrey Lawson, he was at once taken before the magistrates, and, after a brief examination, was ordered to wait his trial at the forthcoming assizes. He was then committed to the common gaol, which stood in the ruins of the old convent of Black Friars. The cell he occupied was shared by two other prisoners—a man and a woman. It was a room of small dimensions, down a small flight of steps from the courtyard, noisome to the only two senses to which it appealed—gloomy and cold. It was entered from a passage in an outer cell, and the doors to both were narrow, without so much as the ventilation of an eye-hole, strongly bound with iron, and double locked. The floor was the bare earth, and there was no furniture except such as the prisoners themselves provided. A little window near to the ceiling admitted all the light and air and discharged all the foul vapor that found entrance and egress.

The prisoners boarded themselves. For an impost of 7s per week, an under gaoler undertook to provide food for Ralph and to lend him a mattress. His companions in this wretched plight were a miserable pair who were suspected of a barbarous and unnatural murder. They had been paramours, and their victim had been the woman's husband. Once and again they had been before the judges, and though none doubted their guilt, they had been sent back to await more conclusive or more circumstantial evidence. Whatever might hitherto have been the ardor of their guilty passion, their confinement together in this foul cell had resulted in a mutual loathing. Within the narrow limits of these walls neither seemed able to support the barest contact with the other. They glared at each other in the dim light with ghoul-like eyes, and at night they lay down at opposite sides of the floor on bundles of straw for beds. This straw, having served them in their poverty for weeks and even months, had fermented and become filthy and damp.

Such was the place and such the society in which Ralph spent the seven days between the day on which he surrendered and that on which he was indicted for treason.

The little window looked out into the streets, and once or twice daily Simeon Stagg, who discovered the locality of Ralph's confinement, came and exchanged some words of what were meant for solace with his friend. It was small comfort Ralph found in the daily sight of the poor fellow's sorrowful face; but perhaps Ralph's own brighter countenance and cheerier tone did something for the comforter himself.

Though the two unhappy felons were made free of the spacious courtyard for an hour every day, the like privilege was not granted to Ralph, who was kept close prisoner, and, except on the morning of his trial, was even denied water for washing and cleansing.

When he was first to appear before the judges of assize, this prisoner of state, who had voluntarily surrendered himself, after many unsuccessful efforts at capturing him, was bound hand and foot. On the hearing of his case being adjourned, he was taken back to the cell which he had previously shared; but whether he felt that the unhappy company was more than he could any longer support, or whether the foul atmosphere of the stinking room seemed the more noisome from the comparative respite of a crowded court, he determined to endure the place no longer. He asked to be permitted to write to the governor of the city. The request was not granted. Then, hailing Sim from the street, he procured by his assistance a bundle of straw and a candle. The straw, clean and sweet, he exchanged with his fellow-prisoners for that which had served them for beds. Then, gathering the rotten stuff into a heap in the middle of the floor, he put a light to it and stirred it into a fire. This was done partly to clear the foul atmosphere, which was so heavy and dank as to gather into beads of moisture on the walls, and partly to awaken the slugglish interest of the head gaoler, whose rooms, as Ralph had learned, were situated immediately above this cell. The former part of the artifice failed (the filthy straw engendered as much stench as it dissipated), but the latter part of it succeeded effectually. The smoke found its way where the reeking vapor which was natural to the cell could not penetrate.

Ralph was removed forthwith to the outer room. But for the improvement in his lodgings he was punished indirectly. Poor Sim had dislocated a bar of the window in pushing the straw into Ralph's hands, and for this offence he was apprehended and charged with prison breaking. Four days later the paltry subterfuge was abandoned, as we know, for a more serious indictment. Ralph's new abode was brighter and warmer than the old one, and had no other occupant. Here he passed the second week of his confinement. The stone walls of this cell had a melancholy interest. They were carved over nearly every available inch with figures of men, birds, and animals, cut, no doubt, by the former prisoners to beguile the weary hours.

In these quarters life was at least tolerable; but tenancy of so habitable a place was not long to be Ralph's portion.

When the trial for murder had ended in condemnation, Ralph and Sim were removed from the bar, not to the common gaol from whence they came, but to the castle, and were there committed to a pestilential dungeon under the keep. This dungeon was known as Doomsdale. It was indeed a "seminary of every vice and of every disease." Many a lean and yellow culprit, it was said, had carried up from its reeking floor into the court an atmosphere of pestilence which avenged him on his accusers. Some affirmed that none who ever entered it came out and lived. The access to it was down a long flight of winding stairs, and through a cleft hewn out of the bare rock on which the castle stood. It was wet with the waters that oozed out of countless fissures and came up from the floor and stood there in pools of mire that were ankle deep.

Ralph was scarcely the man tamely to endure a horrible den like this. Once again he demanded to see the governor, but was denied that justice.

As a prisoner condemned to die, he, with Sim, was allowed to attend service daily in the chapel of the castle. The first morning of his imprisonment in this place he availed himself of the privilege. Crossing the castle green towards the chapel, he attempted to approach the governor's quarters, but the guard interposed. Throughout the service he was watchful of any opportunity that might arise, but none appeared. At the close he was being taken back to Doomsdale, side by side with his companion, when he saw the chaplain, in his surplice, crossing the green to his rooms. Then, at a sudden impulse, Ralph pushed aside the guard, and, tapping the clergyman on the shoulder, called on him to stop and listen.

"We are condemned men," he said; "and if the law takes its course, in six days we are to die; but in less time than that we will be dead already if they keep us in that hell on earth."

The chaplain stared at Ralph's face with a look compounded equally of amazement and fear.

"Take him away," he cried nervously to the guard, who had now regained possession of their prisoner.

"You are a minister of the Gospel," said Ralph.

"Your servant," said the clergyman, with mock humility.

"My servant, indeed!" said Ralph; "my servant before God, yet beware of hypocrisy. You are a Christian minister, and you read in your Bible of the man who was cast into a lion's den, and of the three men who were thrown into the fiery furnace. But what den of lions was ever so deadly as this, where no fire would burn in the pestilential air?"

"He is mad," cried the chaplain, sidling off; "look at his eyes." The guard were making futile efforts to hurry Ralph away, but he shouted again, in a voice that echoed through the court,—

"You are a Christian minister, and your Master sent his disciples over all the earth without purse or scrip, but you lie here in luxury, while we die there in disease. Look to it, man, look to it! A reckoning day is at hand as sure as the same God is over us all!"

"The man is mad and murderous!" cried the affrighted chaplain. "Take him away."

Not waiting for his order to be executed, the spick-and-span wearer of the unsoiled surplice disappeared into one of the side rooms of the court.

This extraordinary scene might have resulted in a yet more rigorous treatment of the prisoners, but it produced the opposite effect. Within the same hour Ralph and Sim were removed from Doomsdale and imprisoned in a room high up in the Donjon tower.

Their new abode was in every way more tolerable than the old one. It had no fire, and it enjoyed the questionable benefit of being constantly filled with nearly all the smoke of every fire beneath it. The dense clouds escaped in part through a hole in the wall where a stone had been disturbed. This aperture also served the less desirable purpose of admitting the rain and the wind.

Here the days were passed. They were few and short. Doomsdale itself could not have made them long.

With his long streaky hair hanging wild about his temples, Sim sat hour after hour on a low bench beneath the window, crying at intervals that God would not let them die.



CHAPTER XLVI. THE SKEIN UNRAVELLED.

It was Thursday when they were condemned, and the sentence was to be carried into effect on the Thursday following. Saturday, Sunday, and Monday passed by without any event of consequence. On Tuesday the under gaoler opened the door of their prison, and the sheriff entered. Ralph stepped out face to face with him. Sim crept closer into the shadow.

"The King's warrant has arrived," he said abruptly.

"And is this all you come to tell us?" said Ralph, no less curtly.

"Ray, there is no love between you and me, and we need dissemble none."

"And no hate—at least on my part," Ralph added.

"I had good earnest of your affections," answered the sheriff with a sneer; "five years' imprisonment." Then waving his hand with a gesture indicative of impatience, he continued, "Let that be as it may. I come to talk of other matters."

Resting on a bench, he added,—

"When the trial closed on Thursday, Justice Hide, who showed you more favor than seemed to some persons of credit to be meet and seemly, beckoned me to the antechamber. There he explained that the evidence against you being mainly circumstantial, the sentence might perchance, by the leniency of the King, be commuted to one of imprisonment for life."

A cold smile passed over Ralph's face.

"But this great mercy—whereof I would counsel you to cherish no certain hope—would depend upon your being able and willing to render an account of how you came by the document—the warrant for your own arrest—which was found upon your person. Furnish a credible story of how you came to be possessed, of that instrument, and it may occur—I say it may occur—that by our Sovereign's grace and favor this sentence of death can yet be put aside."

Sim had risen to his feet in obvious excitement.

Ralph calmly shook his head.

"I neither will nor can," he said emphatically.

Sim sank back into his seat.

A look of surprise in the sheriff's face quickly gave way to a look of content and satisfaction.

"We know each other of old, and I say there is no love between us," he observed, "but it is by no doing of mine that you are here. Nevertheless, your response to this merciful tender shows but too plainly how well you merit your position."

"It took you five days to bring it—this merciful tender, as you term it," said Ralph.

"The King is now at Newcastle, and there at this moment is also Justice Hide, in whom, had you been an innocent man, you must have found an earnest sponsor. I bid you good day."

The sheriff rose, and, bowing to the prisoner with a ridiculous affectation of mingled deference and superiority, he stepped to the door.

"Stop," said Ralph: "you say we know each other of old. That is false! To this hour you have never known, nor do you know now, why I stand here condemned to die, and doomed by a harder fate to take the life of this innocent old man. You have never known me: no, nor yourself neither—never! But you shall know both before you leave this room. Sit down."

"I have no time to waste in idle disputation," said the sheriff testily; but he sat down, nevertheless, at his prisoner's bidding, as meekly as if the positions had been reversed.

"That scar across your brow." said Ralph, "you have carried since the day I have now to speak of."

"You know it well," said the sheriff bitterly. "You have cause to know it."

"I have," Ralph answered.

After a pause, in which he was catching the thread of a story half forgotten, he continued: "You said I supplanted you in your captaincy. Pehaps so; perhaps not. God will judge between us. You went over to the Royalist camp, and you were among the garrison that had reduced this very castle. The troops of the Parliament came up one day and summoned you to surrender. The only answer your general gave us was to order the tunnel guns to fire on the white flag. It went down. We lay entrenched about you for six days. Then you sent out a dispatch assuring us that your garrison was well prepared for a siege, and that nothing would prevail with you to open your gates. That was a lie!"

"Well?"

"Your general lied; the man who carried your general's dispatch was a liar too, but he told the truth for a bribe."

"Ah! then the saints were not above warming the palm?"

"He assured our commander we might expect a mutiny in your city if we continued before it one day longer; that your castle was garrisoned only by a handful of horse, and two raw, undisciplined regiments of militia; that even from these desertions occurred hourly, and that some of your companies were left with only a score of men. This was at night, and we were under an order to break up next morning. That order was countermanded. Your messenger was sent back the richer by twenty pounds."

"How does this concern me?" asked the sheriff.

"You shall hear. I had been on the outposts that night, and, returning to the camp, I surprised two men robbing, beating, and, as I thought, murdering a third. One of the vagabonds escaped undetected, but with a blow from the butt of my musket which he will carry to his grave. The other I thrashed on the spot. He was the bailiff Scroope, whom you put up to witness against me. Their victim was the messenger from the castle, and he was James Wilson, otherwise Wilson Garth. You know this? No? Then listen. Rumor of his treachery, and of the price he had been paid for it, had already been bruited abroad, and the two scoundrels had gone out to waylay and rob him. He was lamed in the struggle and faint from loss of blood. I took him back and bound up his wound. He limped to the end of his life."

"Still I fail to see how this touches myself," interrupted the sheriff.

"Really? I shall show you. Next morning, under cover of a thick fog, we besieged the city. We got beneath your guns and against your gates before we were seen. Then a company of horse came out to us. You were there. You remember it? Yes? At one moment we came within four yards. I saw you struck down and reel out of the saddle. 'This man,' I thought, 'believes in his heart that I did him a grievous wrong. I shall now do him a signal service, though he never hear of it until the Judgment Day.' I dismounted, lifted you up, bound a kerchief about your head, and was about to replace you on your horse. At that instant a musket-shot struck the poor beast, and it fell dead. At the same instant one of our own men fell, and his riderless horse was prancing away. I caught it, threw you on to its back, turned his head towards the castle, and drove it hard among your troops. Do you know what happened next?"

"Happened next—" repeated the sheriff mechanically, with astonishment written on every feature of his face.

"No, you were insensible," continued Ralph. "At that luckless moment the drum beat to arms in a regiment of foot behind us. The horse knew the call and answered it. Wheeling about, it carried you into the heart of our own camp. There you were known, tried as a deserter, and imprisoned. Perhaps it was natural that you should set down your ill fortune to me."

The sheriff's eyes were riveted on Ralph's face, and for a time he seemed incapable of speech.

"Is this truth?" he asked at length.

"God's truth," Ralph answered.

"The kerchief—what color was it?"

"Yellow."

"Any name or mark on it? I have it to this day."

"None—wait; there was a rose pricked out in worsted on one corner."

The sheriff got up, with lips compressed and wide eyes. He made for the door, and pulled at it with wasted violence. It was opened from the other side by the under gaoler, and the sheriff rushed out.

Without turning to the right or left, he went direct to the common gaol. There, in the cell which Ralph had occupied between the first trial and the second one, Mark Garth, the perjurer, lay imprisoned.

"You hell-hound," cried the sheriff, grasping him by the hair and dragging him into the middle of the floor. "I have found out your devilish treachery," he said, speaking between gusts of breath. "Did you not tell me that it was Ray who struck me this blow—this" (beating with his palm the scar on his brow)? "It was a lie—a damned lie!"

"It was," said the man, glaring back, with eyes afire with fury.

"And did you not say it was Ray who carried me into their camp—an insensible prisoner?"

"That was a lie also," the man gasped, never struggling to release himself from the grip that held him on the floor.

"And did you not set me on to compass the death of this man, but for whom I should now myself be dead?"

"You speak with marvellous accuracy, Master Lawson," returned the perjurer.

The sheriff looked down at him for a moment, and then flung him away.

"Man, man! do you know what you have done?" he cried in an altered tone. "You have charged my soul with your loathsome crime."

The perjurer curled his lip.

"It was I who gave you that blow," he said, with a cruel smile, pointing with his thin finger at the sheriff's forehead. It was false.

"You devil!" cried the sheriff, "and you have killed the man who saved your brother's life, and consorted with one of two who would have been his murderers."

"I was myself the second," said the man, with fiendish calmness. It was the truth. "I carry the proof of it here," he added, touching a place at the back of his head where the hair, being shorn away, disclosed a deep mark.

The sheriff staggered back with frenzied eyes and dilated nostrils. His breast heaved; he seemed unable to catch his breath.

The man looked at him with a mocking smile struggling over clinched teeth. As if a reptile had crossed his path, Wilfrey Lawson turned about and passed out without another word.

He returned to the castle and ascended the Donjon tower.

"Tell me how you became possessed of the warrant," he said. "Tell me, I beg of you, for my soul's sake as well as for your life's sake."

Ralph shook his head.

"It is not even yet too late. I shall take horse instantly for Newcastle."

Sim had crept up, and, standing behind Ralph, was plucking at his jerkin.

Ralph turned about and looked wistfully into the old man's face. For an instant his purpose wavered.

"For the love of God," cried the sheriff, "for your own life's sake, for this poor man's sake, by all that is near and dear to both, I charge you, if you are an innocent man, give me the means to prove you such."

But again Ralph shook his head.

"Then you are resolved to die?"

"Yes! But for my old friend here—save him if you will and can."

"You will give me no word as to the warrant?"

"None."

"Then all is over."

But going at once to the stables in the courtyard, he called to a stableman,—

"Saddle a horse and bring it round to my quarters in half an hour."

In less time than that Wilfrey Lawson was riding hard towards Newcastle.



CHAPTER XLVII. THE BLACK CAMEL AT THE GATE.

Next morning after Rotha's struggle with Mrs. Garth at the bridge, the rumor passed through Wythburn that the plague was in the district. Since the advent of the new preachers the people had seen the dreaded scourge dangling from the sleeve of every stranger who came from the fearsome world without. They had watched for the fatal symptoms: they had waited for them: they had invited them. Every breeze seemed to be freighted with the plague wind; every harmless ailment seemed to be the epidemic itself.

Not faith in the will of God, not belief in destiny, not fortitude or fatalism, not unselfishness or devil-may-care indifference, had saved the people from the haunting dread of being mown down by the unseen and insidious foe.

And now in very truth the plague seemed to have reached their doors. It was at the cottage by the smithy. Rumor said that Mrs. Garth had brought it with her from Carlisle, but it was her son who was stricken down.

The blacksmith had returned home soon after Rotha had left him. His mother was there, and she talked to him of what she had heard of the plague. This was in order to divert his attention from the subject that she knew to be uppermost in his thoughts—the trial, and what had come of it. She succeeded but too well.

Garth listened in silence, and then slunk off doggedly to the smithy.

"I'm scarce well enough for work to-day," he said, coming back in half an hour.

His mother drew the settle to the fire, and fixed the cushions that he might lie and rest.

But no rest was to be his. He went back to the anvil and worked till the perspiration dripped from his forehead. Then he returned to the house.

"My mouth is parched to-day, somehow," he said; "did you say a parched mouth was a sign?"

"Shaf, lad! thou'rt hot wi' thy wark."

Garth went back once more to the smithy, and, writhing under the torture of suspense, he worked until the very clothes he wore were moist to the surface. Then he went into the house again.

"How my brain throbs!" he said; "surely you said the throbbing brain was a sign, mother; and my brain does throb."

"Tut, tut! it's nobbut some maggot thou's gitten intil it."

"My pulse, too, it gallops, mother. You said the galloping pulse was a sign. Don't say you did not. I'm sure of it, I'm sure of it; and my pulse gallops. I could bear the parched mouth and the throbbing brain if this pulse did not run so fast."

"Get away wi' thee, thou dummel-heed. What fagot has got hold on thy fancy now?"

There was only the swollen gland wanted to make the dread symptoms complete.

Garth went back to the anvil once more. His eyes rolled in his head. They grew as red as the iron that he was welding. He swore at the boy who helped him, and struck him fiercely. He shouted frantically, and flung away the hammer at every third blow. The boy slunk off, and went home affrighted. At a sudden impulse, Garth tore away the shirt from his breast, and thrust his left hand beneath his right arm. With that the suspense was ended. A mood of the deepest sadness and dejection supervened. Shuddering in every limb beneath all his perspiration, the blacksmith returned for the last time to the house.

"I wouldn't mind the parched mouth and the throbbing brain; no, nor the galloping pulse, mother; but oh, mother, mother, the gland, it's swelled; ey, ey, it's swelled. I'm doomed, I'm doomed. No use saying no. I'm a dead man, that's the truth, that's the truth, mother."

And then the disease, whether plague or other fever, passed its fiery hand over the throbbing brain of the blacksmith, and he was put to bed raving.

Little Betsy, like the boy in the smithy, stole away to her own home with ghastly stories of the blacksmith's illness and delirium.

At first the neighbors came to inquire, prompted partly by curiosity, but mainly by fear. Mrs. Garth shut the door, and refused to open it to any comers.

To enforce seclusion was not long a necessity. Desertion was soon the portion of the Garths, mother and son. More swift than a bad name passed the terrible conviction among the people at Wythburn that at last, at long last, the plague, the plague itself, was in their midst.

The smithy cottage stood by the bridge, and to reach the market town by the road it was necessary to pass it within five yards. Pitiful, indeed, were the artifices to escape contagion resorted to by some who professed the largest faith in the will of God. They condemned themselves to imprisonment within their own houses, or abandoned their visits to Gaskarth, or made a circuit of a mile across the breast of a hill, in order to avoid coming within range of the proscribed dwelling.

After three days of rumor and surmise, there was not a soul in the district would go within fifty yards of the house that was believed to hold the pestilence. No doctor approached it, for none had been summoned. The people who brought provisions left them in the road outside, and hailed the inmates. Mrs. Garth sat alone with her stricken son, and if there had been eyes to see her there in her solitude and desolation, perhaps the woman who seemed hard as flint to the world was softening in her sorrow. When the delirium passed away, and Garth lay conscious, but still feverish, his mother was bewailing their desertion.

"None come nigh to us, Joey, none come nigh. That's what the worth of neighbors is, my lad. They'd leave us to die, both on us; they'd leave us alone to die, and none wad come nigh."

"Alone, mother! Did you say alone?" asked Garth.

"We're not alone, mother. Some one has come nigh to us."

Mrs. Garth looked up amazed, and half turned in her seat to glance watchfully around.

"Mother," said Garth, "did you ever pray?"

"Hod thy tongue, lad, hod thy tongue," said Mrs. Garth, with a whimper.

"Did you ever pray, mother?" repeated Garth, his red eyes aflame, and his voice cracking in his throat. "Whisht, Joey, whisht!"

"Mother, we've not lived over well, you and I; but maybe God would forgive us, after all."

"Hod thy tongue, my lad; do, now, do."

Mrs. Garth fumbled with the bedclothes, and tucked them about the sufferer.

Her son turned his face full upon hers, and their eyes met.

"Dunnet look at me like that," she said, trying to escape his gaze. "What's comin' ower thee, my lad, that thou looks so, and talks so?"

"What's coming over me, mother? Shall I tell thee? It's Death that's coming over me; that's what it is, mother—Death!"

"Dunnet say that, Joey."

The old woman threw her apron over her head and sobbed.

Garth looked at her, with never a tear in his wide eyes.

"Mother," said the poor fellow again in his weak, cracked voice,—"mother, did you ever pray?"

Mrs. Garth uncovered her head. Her furrowed face was wet. She rocked herself and moaned.

"Ey, lad, I mind that I did when I was a wee bit of a girl. I had rosy cheeks then, and my own auld mother wad kiss me then. Ey, it's true. We went to church on a Sunday mornin' and all the bells ringin'. Ey, I mind that, but it's a wa', wa' off, my lad, it's a wa', wa' off."

The day was gaunt and dreary. Toward nightfall the wind arose, and sometimes its dismal wail seemed to run around the house. The river, too, now swollen and turbulent, that flowed beneath the neighboring bridge, added its voice of lamentation as it wandered on and on to the ocean far away.

In the blacksmith's cottage another wanderer was journeying yet faster to a more distant ocean. The darkness closed in. Garth was tossing on his bed. His mother was rocking herself at his side. All else was still.

Then a step was heard on the shingle without, and a knock came to the door. The blacksmith struggled to lift his head and listen. Mrs. Garth paused in her rocking and ceased to moan.

"Who ever is it?" whispered Garth.

"Let them stay where they are, whoever it be," his mother mumbled, never shifting from her seat. The knock came again.

"Nay, mother, nay; it is too late to—"

He had said no more when the latch was lifted, and Rotha Stagg walked into the room.

"I've come to help to nurse you, if you please," she said, addressing the sick man.

Garth looked steadily at her for a moment, every feature quivering. Shame, fear, horror—any sentiment but welcome—was written on his face. Then he straggled to twist his poor helpless body away; his head, at least, he turned from her to the wall.

"It wad look better of folk if they'd wait till they're axt," muttered Mrs. Garth, with downcast eyes.

Rotha unpinned the shawls that had wrapped her from the cold, and threw them over a chair. She stirred the fire and made it burn brightly; there was no other light in the room. The counterpane, which had been dragged away in the restlessness of the sufferer, she spread afresh. Reaching over the bed, she raised the sick man's head tenderly on her arm while she beat out his pillow. Never once did he lift his eyes to hers.

Mrs. Garth still rocked herself in her seat. "Folks should wait till they're wanted," she mumbled again; but the words broke down into a stifled sob.

Rotha lit a candle that stood at hand, went to the cupboard in the corner of the adjoining kitchen, and took out a jar of barley; then to the hearth and took up a saucepan. In two minutes she was boiling something on the fire.

Mrs. Garth was following every movement with watchful eyes.

Presently the girl came to the bedside again with a basin in her hand.

"Take a little of this, Mr. Garth," she said. "Your mouth is parched."

"How did you know that?" he muttered, lifting his eyes at last.

She made no reply, but held her cool hand to his burning forehead. He motioned to her to draw it away. She did so.

"It's not safe—it's not safe for you, girl," he said in his thin whisper, his breath coming and going between every word.

She smiled, put back her hand and brushed the dank hair from his moist brow.

Mrs. Garth got up from her seat by the bedside and hobbled to the fire. There she sat on a low stool, and threw her apron over her head.

Again raising the blacksmith from his pillow, Rotha put a spoonful of barley-water to his withered lips. He was more docile than a child now, and let her have her will.

For a moment he looked at her with melancholy eyes, and then, shifting his gaze, he said,—

"You had troubles enow of your own, Rotha, without coming to share ours—mother's and mine."

"Yes," she answered, and a shadow crossed the cheerful face.

"Will they banish him?" he said with quick-coming breath. "Mother says so; will they banish him from the country?"

"Yes, perhaps; but it will be to another and a better country," said Rotha, and dropped her head.

Garth glanced inquiringly into her face. His mother shifted on her stool.

"How, how?" he said, nervously clutching at the bedclothes.

"Why do you bother him, girl?" said Mrs. Garth, turning about. "Rest thee, my lad, rest thee still."

"Mother," said Garth, drawing back his head, but never shifting the determination of his gaze from Rotha's face, "what does she mean?"

"Haud thy tongue, Joey."

"What does she mean, mother?"

"Whisht! Never heed folks that meddle afore they're axt."

Mrs. Garth spoke peevishly, rose from her seat, and walked between Rotha and the bed.

Garth's wide eyes were still riveted on the girl's face.

"Never mind that she's not asked," he said; "but what does she mean, mother? What lie is it that she comes to tell us!"

"No lie, Mr. Garth," said Rotha, with tearful eyes. "Ralph and father are condemned to die, and they are innocent."

"Tush! get away wi' thee!" mumbled Mrs. Garth, brushing the girl aside with her elbow. The blacksmith glared at her, and seemed to gasp for breath.

"It is a lie; mother, tell her it is a lie."

"God knows it is not," cried Rotha passionately.

"Say I believed it," said Garth, rising convulsively on one elbow, with a ghastly stare; "say I believed that the idiots had condemned them to death for a crime they never committed—never; say I believed it—but it's a lie, that's what it is. Girl, girl, how can you come with a lie on your lips to a poor dying man? Cruel! cruel! Have you no pity, none, for a wretched dying man?"

The tears rolled down Rotha's cheeks. Mrs. Garth returned to her stool, and rocked herself and moaned.

The blacksmith glared from one to the other, the sweat standing in heavy beads on his forehead.

Then an awful scream burst from his lips. His face was horribly distorted.

"It is true," he cried, and fell back and rolled on the bed.

All that night the fiery hand lay on the blacksmith's brain, and he tossed in a wild delirium.

The wind's wail ran round the house, and the voice of that brother wanderer, the river beneath the bridge crept over the silence when the sufferer lay quiet and the wind was still.

No candle was now lighted, but the fire on the hearth burnt bright. Mrs. Garth sat before it, hardly once glancing up.

Again and again her son cried to her with the yearning cry of a little child. At such times the old woman would shrink within herself, and moan and cower over the fire, and smoke a little black pipe.

Hour after hour the blacksmith rolled in his bed in a madness too terrible to record. The memory of his blasphemies seemed to come back upon him in his raving, and add fresh agony to his despair.

A naked soul stood face to face with the last reality, battling meantime, with an unseen foe. There was to be no jugglery now.

Oh! that awful night, that void night, that night of the wind's wail and the dismal moan of the wandering river, and the frequent cry of a poor, miserable, desolate, despairing, naked soul! Had its black wings settled forever over all the earth?

No. The dawn came at last. Its faint streak of light crept lazily in at the curtainless window.

Then Garth raised himself in his bed.

"Give me paper—paper and a pen—quick, quick!" he cried.

"What would you write, Joe?" said Rotha.

"I want to write to him—to Ralph—Ralph Ray," he said, in a voice quite unlike his own.

Rotha ran to the chest in the kitchen and opened it. In a side shelf pens were there and paper too. She came back, and put them before the sick man.

But he was unconscious of what she had done.

She looked into his face. His eyes seemed not to see.

"The paper and pen!" he cried again, yet more eagerly.

She put the quill into his hand and spread the paper before him.

"What writing is this," he cried, pointing to the white sheet; "this writing in red?"

"Where?"

"Here—everywhere."

The pen dropped from his nerveless fingers.

"To think they will take a dying man!" he said. "You would scarce think they would have the heart, these people. You would scarce think it, would you?" he said, lifting his poor glassy eyes to Rotha's face.

"Perhaps they don't know," she answered soothingly, and tried to replace him on his pillow.

"That's true," he muttered; "perhaps they don't know how ill I am."

At that instant he caught sight of his mother's ill-shapen figure cowering over the fire. Clutching Rotha's arm with one hand, he pointed at his mother with the other, and said, with an access of strength,—

"I've found her out; I've found her out."

Then he laughed till it seemed to Rotha that the blood stood still in her heart.

When the full flood of daylight streamed into the little room, Garth had sunk into a deep sleep.



CHAPTER XLVIII. "OUT, OUT, BRIEF CANDLE."

As the clock struck eight Rotha drew her shawls about her shoulders and hurried up the road.

At the turning of the lonnin to Shoulthwaite she met Willy Ray. "I was coming to meet you," he said, approaching.

"Come no closer," said Rotha, thrusting out the palm of one hand; "you know where I've been—there, that is near enough."

"Nonsense, Rotha!" said Willy, stepping up to her and putting a hand on her arm. There was confidence in the touch.

"To-morrow is the day," Willy added, in an altered tone. "I am leaving for Carlisle at noon—that is, in four hours."

"Could you not wait four hours longer?" said Rotha.

"I could if you wish it; but why?"

"I don't know—that is, I can't say—but wait until four o'clock, I beg of you."

The girl spoke with deep earnestness.

"I shall wait," said Willy, after a pause.

"And you'll meet me at the bridge by the smithy?" said Rotha.

Willy nodded assent.

"At four precisely," he said.

"This is all I came to ask. I must go back."

"Rotha, a word: what is your interest in these Garths? Does it concern your father and Ralph?"

"I'll tell you at the bridge," said Rotha, sidling off.

"Every one is aghast at your going," he said.

"I have better reasons than any one knows of," she replied.

"And better faith, and a nobler heart," he added feelingly as he turned his head away.

Garth was still asleep when she got back to the cottage. A feeble gleam of winter sunshine came languidly through the little window. It fell across the bed and lit up the blue eyelids and discolored lips of the troubled sleeper.

The fire had smouldered out. Only a charred bough and a damp clod of peat lay black among the gray ashes on the hearth.

As Rotha re-entered Mrs. Garth got up from the stool on which she had sat the long night through. There was a strange look on her face. During the heavy hours she had revolved within herself a dark problem which to her was unsolvable, and the puzzle was still printed on her face. Drawing the girl aside, she said in a grating whisper,—

"Tell me, do ye think it's reet what the lad says?"

"About Ralph and father?" asked Rotha.

"Tush! about hissel'. Do ye think he'll die?"

Rotha dropped her head.

"Tell me: do ye think so?"

Rotha was still silent. Mrs. Garth looked searchingly into her face, and in answer to the unuttered reply, she whispered vehemently,—

"It's a lie. He'll be back at his anvil to-morrow. Why do you come wi' yer pale face to me? Crying? What's it for? tell me!"

And the old woman shook the girl roughly by the shoulders.

Rotha made no response. The puzzled expression on Mrs. Garth's face deepened at that instant, but as she turned aside she muttered again, with every accent of determination,—

"He'll be back at his anvil to-morrow, that he will."

The blacksmith awoke as serene as a child. When he looked at Rotha his hard, drawn face softened to the poor semblance of a smile. Then a shadow crossed it, and once more he turned his head to the wall.

And now to Rotha the hours went by with flying feet. Every hour of them was as precious to her as her heart's blood. How few were the hours of morning! The thing which above all she came here to do was not being done. A dull dead misery seemed to sit cold on her soul.

Rotha tended the sufferer with anxious care, and when the fitful sleep slid over him, she sat motionless with folded hands, and gazed through the window. All was still, sombre, chill, and dreary. The wind had slackened; the river ran smoother. In a field across the valley a woman was picking potatoes. No other human creature was visible.

Thus the hours wore on. At one moment Garth awoke with a troubled look, and glanced watchfully around. His mother was sitting in her accustomed seat, apparently asleep. He clutched at Rotha's gown, and made a motion to her to come closer. She did so, a poor breath of hope fluttering in her breast. But just then Mrs. Garth shifted in her seat, and faced about towards them. The blacksmith drew back his hand, and dropped his half-lifted head.

Towards noon Mrs. Garth got up and left the bedroom. Her son had appeared to be asleep but he was alert to every movement. Again he plucked Rotha's gown, and essayed to speak. But Mrs. Garth returned in a moment, and not a word was said.

Rotha's spirits flagged. It was as though she were crawling hour after hour towards a gleam of hope that fled farther and farther away.

The darkness was gathering in, yet nothing was done. Then the clock struck four, and Rotha drew on her shawl once more, and walked to the bridge.