CHAPTER XVI.

A LITTLE DIFFERENCE OF OPINION.

When the shuffling of the footsteps of the conspirators had died away far down below, not a sound was to be heard, save the rain, now fallen to a gentle patter, and ever and anon the wind spending itself in low fitful moans round the old mansion. From time to time, however, this monotony was varied by the obbligato which Sheriff Goodenough's nose continued to trumpet forth.

One more than ordinarily prolonged and loud snort afforded Ruth an opportunity of changing her cramped position, and at the same time of obtaining a clearer view of the scene before her.

Almost immediately facing her, at the corner of the table, sat Rumsey, staring with such a fixed steady gaze straight before him, through the lamp's thin flickering flame, that she trembled and sank crouching to the floor. Could he have caught sight of her?

Never a fear of that. For even if he had chanced to notice the long straggling crack in the wainscot, and that tiny hole caused by the displacement of a little knot in the wood, you had but to look at his moody face a second time, to be sure that his thoughts were blinding his outward senses to all around him; save when from time to time he turned his head on his sleeping companion with an ugly look of mingled mistrust and contempt.

[Sidenote: Rumsey draws cold steel.]

"Clod! idiot!" he growled at last through his clenched teeth, at the same time drawing a short poignard from a sheath in his buff leathern belt, and throwing it on the table with such a clatter that it woke the sheriff, who sat up with a start of terror.

"Ha; thieves!" he shouted. "Murder! Call the watch!"

"Come, come, sheriff; what's the matter?" laughed Rumsey. "Are you dreaming still? don't you know where you are? Hey! look about you, man."

Goodenough obeyed mechanically; and his dazed eyes, as fate would have it, fell first upon the naked dagger, glittering in the lamplight--"What's that? what's that?" he shrieked again, startled into all his senses at the sight of the thing. "Take it away! For mercy's sake, take it away," he entreated piteously. "It--it's just what I've been dreaming about! Put it up, Master Rumsey; dear Master Rumsey, put it away in its proper place."

"When I am quite sure where that is, I will," coolly answered Rumsey. "In the meantime you and I, sheriff, will just have a little bit of gossip together. There couldn't be a nicer opportunity for it, while we've got the place all snug to ourselves; 'under four eyes,' as they used to call it when I served in Italy."

[Sidenote: The sheriff and his enemy,]

"But where are they all?" said Goodenough, staring round into the darkness visible, with eyes now thoroughly wide-awake. "And how the plague came I to fall asleep?"

"I suppose only Sheriff Goodenough can solve that problem," answered Rumsey with a shrug.

"But where are they all?" persisted Goodenough.

"Ah!" impatiently said Rumsey, "down below."

"Down below!" gasped Goodenough. "Oughtn't we to be there along with them, colonel? They'd no business to go leaving us all alone;" and the sheriff shivered--"Eh, ought they now? Let's be going too, shall we?" and Goodenough rose to his feet, and began stumbling in his haste to reach the door, over the disorder of chairs and footstools. "I'd rather, I would indeed."

"Too late," said Rumsey. "They're ever so far by now. Serves you right, sheriff. Who ever heard of being caught napping when there's work of this sort on hand? Come, now--steady there--come. It's of no earthly use your rattling the bolts about like that. The captain's locked us in."

"No, no, he hasn't," said Goodenough frantically, wrenching at the ponderous door till he dragged it half open. "See!"

"The mischief seize you!" savagely returned Rumsey, snatching off Goodenough's hands, and banging to the door again with a kick "Not that one. The door, I mean, down at the stairfoot. 'Tis locked, I tell you. Double, triple locked; and you can't get out if you tore your arms off trying."

"But never mind," he went on, as Goodenough fell back despairingly against the wall, "don't look so down in the mouth, man; ain't I here?" and with a low chuckle of amusement at the poor man's discomfiture, he flung himself into a chair, and thrusting his hands deep into his pockets, sat watching through his half-closed eyelids every movement of his companion, who retreated slowly to a chair standing farthermost from Rumsey, and sat down on its edge, looking the very picture of wretchedness and despondency. "'Tis too bad," he said shiveringly, "I wish I hadn't come. I wish I'd never--" Then he stopped short.

"Well?" sharply interrogated Rumsey, fixing the unfortunate man's wandering glances with the steady, piercing, snakelike glitter of his own. "Say on, sheriff, out with it; you wish you'd never--joined this conspir--this society; is that it?"

[Sidenote: A faltering tongue.]

"I said nothing of the sort, Master Rumsey," faltered Goodenough. "But I--I--I do say--h'm. No matter;" and as his eyes followed Rumsey's, which were fixed on the dagger upon the table, he relapsed into silence.

"On the contrary," said Rumsey in calm hard tones, "'tis very great matter. Our noble association brooks no sticklers, nor cowards neither. What were you going to say?"

"That I hope there's not going to be any--any blood-spilling," said Goodenough in a steadier voice.

"Whose blood?" laughed Rumsey. "Charles's, do you mean?"

"Ah, heaven forbid!" fervently ejaculated Goodenough, "and forgive us the bare thought. Of the guards, I meant, or of any with him."

"That they must take their risk of, pretty dears," sneered Rumsey, "so long only as we secure our Blackbird, and our Chaffinch."

[Sidenote: Murderous plans.]

"Ay, ay," sighed Goodenough. "Well, 'tmust be chanced, I suppose, as you say, colonel; and perhaps if it comes to't, the sacrifice of a man's life will be forgiven by Providence, so only as we can succeed in bringing his majesty to our way of thinking, and make our Protestant religion safe from these popish scoundrels; and bind him to appoint a real true Church of England king to come after him."

"Instead of the Chaffinch."

"The Duke of York must certainly be set aside, if it be true indeed that he is a Papist at heart."

"If!" cried Rumsey in tones that might have been crook-backed Richard's own.

"But I never dreamed," continued Goodenough, "that 'twould come to blood-spilling, I protest, even of so much as a poor horse's."

"Bluer blood than a wretched Flanders mare's, or a handful of red coats', will be staining yonder road before this moon's out, I take it," muttered Rumsey. "You're a fool, Master Goodenough," he added in a louder key, and turning contemptuously on Goodenough; "a cowardly fool."

"No," said Goodenough, and he rose to his feet, a sudden light of indignation in his eyes; "but you are a traitor, Richard Rumsey! and 'tis not now for the first time I read your murderous thoughts." A low laugh was all Rumsey's comment. "Master Rumbold," hurried on Goodenough, "and Colonel Walcot--"

"Bah! Walcot!" interrupted Rumsey, snapping his fingers.

[Sidenote: A dangerous threat.]

"And my Lord of Escrick and the rest know well enough how I have bidden them beware of you."

"Absolutely!" said Rumsey, elevating his brows, and the corners of his mouth quivering about his teeth like some hungry hyena's. "We're as mighty fine as the pot was, when it talked a homily to the kettle. Do you imagine that Charles, once safe in their clutches, our good captain, or my Lord of Escrick, or any man-jack of our forty boys, would let him off alive?"

Goodenough was silent for a moment. "I doubt they would not one of them stain their hands with cold blood," he said then. "And for a certainty I can speak to Walcot--"

"Psha! speak no more of him, the white-livered loon."

"I can speak to Walcot," stoutly persisted Goodenough, "for many times I have heard him say that a fair front-to-front tussle with the guards was what his soul itched for. But for attacking the king he would not do it; for that it was a base thing to kill a naked man."

"Naked!" sneeringly echoed Rumsey as he rose from his chair and sauntered towards the table, on whose edge he seated himself, and began carelessly toying with the handle of the poignard he had thrown there. "Let his purple and fine linen shield him."

[Sidenote: The coward speaks up.]

"They would stand him in less stead against a bullet or a blade-thrust, than even my good Norwich drugget here would shield me, if any man bore me a grudge," answered Goodenough with a faint smile. "But 'tis no matter; why should it be spoken of? 'Tis quite certain that none of us are for killing the king, nor anybody else."

Rumsey's lips twitched with the old baleful smile. "There I think you are out, Master Sheriff," he said, as he took the poignard into his hand, and began examining its hilt with a half absent attention. "The puling scruples of a mere handful out of all our forty boys would not go for much;" and he fixed his eyes in a covert glare on Goodenough, who stood thoughtfully gazing into the lamp; "and these must be got rid of, for a 'house divided against itself cannot stand.'"

"'Tis the assassins who must be got rid of," sturdily retorted Goodenough. "For they foully blot our cause."

"Ha!" cried Rumsey starting up, with the poignard clutched fast in his hand. "Do you forget who--what I am?"

[Sidenote: An assassin.]

"Nay. But I think you do," answered Goodenough calmly. "You should be a soldier, but it looks much as if you would have me take you for a scoundrel, and a craven-hearted assassin!"

The last word was lost in a sudden sharp shriek of agony; and swaying round, Goodenough clutched convulsively at the poignard which lay plunged to the hilt in his breast, and fell heavily to the floor.