CHAPTER XVIII.

"GOD SAVE THE KING!"

"Come back!" he shouted.

He might more effectually have summoned back the wind, as it swept past with a low snarling hiss, as if in mockery of his indignation; and before he had time to repeat the words, the last echo of Rumsey's footsteps had died on the lowermost stair, and Lawrence Lee heard the scraping of the key in the lock of the tower door.

"Coward!" he cried aloud, "will you have me fetch you back?" and gently replacing the wounded man upon the ground, he rose to his feet, and with a couple of strides reached the door; but scarcely had he done, so than a deep groan from Goodenough brought him to a halt, and he turned, dizzy with perplexity. "To allow this fellow to get clear off was not to be thought of; and yet, to give chase to him and leave the unfortunate Goodenough?--"

"Lawrence! Lawrence!" imploringly cried a voice which seemed to him to proceed from the wainscot to his right. He started and looked towards the spot.

"Lawrence!"

[Sidenote: Ruth to the rescue.]

"Ruth!" cried the young man in amazement, "is that you?"

"Yes, yes. For the pitying heaven's sake stay! See here, I am getting a light."

He waited, stock-still, listening to the scratching sound of the tinder-box, perfectly audible through the panel's rotten wood; and then, as the thin yellow streak of light broke through the crack, he flew to the spot. "Out of the way, Ruth!" he cried; and as he spoke he raised his clenched fist and struck the panel such a sledge-hammer blow as sent it splintering in all directions, revealing the figure of Ruth by the light of the candle she held in her hand, enframed by the woodwork, like some cunningly painted picture.

The illusion, was however, instantly dispelled, as she stepped eager and breathless to the floor; and hastening to Goodenough, and falling on her knees beside him, she carefully opened his coat. Then tearing her linen kerchief from her neck, she bound it gently but firmly over the wound in such a manner as to staunch it and stay the rushing blood, which, had it continued but a few moments more, must have drained his life away.

[Illustration: RUTH AND LAWRENCE SUCCOUR SHERIFF GOODENOUGH]

Then having bathed the unfortunate man's face with some water from a small pitcher which she motioned to Lawrence to bring her from the table, she gave a deep and long pent-up sigh, as she perceived a faint flicker of returning animation overspread the ashen features. "So," she murmured.

"Ruth, my poor Ruth," said Lawrence. "This is a cruel sight for you." She shuddered, and gazed momentarily from Goodenough's face to his.

[Sidenote: A terrible sight.]

"I'd have given all that's mine, child," he went on, "to have spared you the sight of it."

"Ay," murmured Ruth. "'Twas terrible, very very terrible."

"Still, my dear," went on Lee philosophically, "don't take it to heart too much. One of the two must always get the worst of it in a fair stand-up fight. Eh, mustn't one?

"But 'twas no such thing," flashed Ruth. "The coward lied, Lawrence--lied to you. I saw it all," she went on shudderingly, "from the hole in the panel there. And he--that man Rumsey--struck him unawares. Think of it, Lawrence; an unarmed man!"

"Nay, hardly that," said Lee, extricating the poignard from Goodenough's fingers, and examining it by the light of Ruth's lamp. "For he must have struck Rumsey. See, there is blood upon this. It is stained to the very hilt."

"And did not Rumsey himself tell you that he had been barely so much as scratched?" she said. "Lawrence, that witnesses against him. These very words, that he intended to screen his guilt, would tell the truth against him, even if there were no tongue to tell what eye has seen."

"No, Ruth," said Lee, slowly shaking his head, and gazing distressfully into the fiery brilliancy of her eyes and on her pale face, flushed on either cheek with two spots of burning red. "You did not see it. You must have been dreaming, child. It was some hideous nightmare. Such a double-dyed treacherous villain as that, no man could be. No, Ruth, no. Say he did not do it," he added imploringly.

[Sidenote: Bad company.]

But she shook her head silently.

"It is not possible," he went on. "He--Ruth--that man and I have touched hands, in--well, in token of good fellowship."

"And God forgive you then, Lawrence," she replied. "As indeed I think he will. Because you do not know all. I am sure you do not know-- But hush!" she went on, interrupting herself; "hush, we must not be found here. My father will be back--"

"Ay, but not yet awhile. I left them all deep in--in their conversation, in the octagon vault."

"And did not their conversation interest you, Lawrence?" demanded she, gazing keenly into his face.

"Why, to confess the truth, not so very much," he replied, evading her look. "And your father--"

"Ay," she said eagerly, as he hesitated.

"He said I should mayhap do better to be coming on, and joining company with Colonel Rumsey and Master Goodenough here. I doubt," he continued ruminatively, "he suspected they might be falling to loggerheads; for I never knew them meet, but what they did always set to sparring like a pair of Kilkenny cats."

"That may be so," answered Ruth; "but this I am positive of, that those dreadful men wanted to be rid of you, for they would not have you know of the shameful deeds they are plotting. They make but a tool and a cat's-paw of you, Lawrence. Ay, but they do," she insisted, in no way daunted by the wave of offended dignity Lee's hand made. "For they know well enough that your heart is too honourable to stoop to baseness like theirs."

"Tut! tut!--"

"They think you but a fool, and right proud I am they do; for they are knaves and murderers. Their whole talk to-night was of the best way of killing the king."

"Killing the king?!!"

"And the Duke of York When they should come back next week from Newmarket."

"But--but your father?!" gasped Lee. "He--"

[Sidenote: A child's grief.]

"Oh do not--do not speak of him," implored she, clasping her hands in agony. "My good, dear father, Lawrence. How can we save him?" she went on in calmer tones.

"Save your father?" said Lawrence, gazing in helpless dejection into the misery of her face.

"The king; the king; for to save him, is to save my father from--from--sure, Lawrence, he must be mad; he must be saved from himself. And I--you must do it. Do you hear? Do you understand?"

Understanding, Lawrence felt, might come in time. For the present, only his ears fully mastered what Ruth had said, and, helplessly shrugging his shoulders, he continued to stand gazing vacantly at the prostrate form of Rumsey's victim.

"Yes, yes," she said, her eyes following his, "you are quite right. He must not be found here."

[Sidenote: The secret kept.]

"But," began Lawrence, "how can we hide him?" and he glanced towards the door communicating with hers. She shook her head. "'Tis locked; my father has the key. He took it this morning. There is but one way;" and she pointed to the broken panel--"this."

Half an hour later, had any of the conspirators returned to the Warder's Room, they would have found no trace of what had occurred there since their departure.

First, as gently as he was able, Lawrence, with Ruth's assistance, carried the wounded man to the secret passage, and laid him on the bed which she hastily prepared for him from the pillows and coverings of her own bed. That done, he stepped back into the Warder's Room, and having, with the aid of the pitcher of water, succeeded in effacing the worst of the ugly tell-tale stain upon the floor, he set the chairs overturned in the fray upon their legs again, and then busied himself in collecting the scattered pieces and splinters of the broken panel. Finally, after no small labour, not lessened by having to reach across the space occupied by the body of the unconscious Goodenough, he pieced the panel together, so that it looked, as he said, keenly surveying it when he had done, "as if catapults could have made no impression on it."

"I doubt," said Ruth with a faint smile, "one must not, however, breathe on it too roughly lest it fall to pieces."

"Hark! what's that?" whispered Lawrence in alarm, as a low curious burring, purring sound in the room beyond made itself audible.

Placing her finger warningly on her lip, Ruth crossed the floor, and, lifting a piece of tapestry half-covering one of the walls, she disappeared; returning, however, almost immediately with a bottle of cordial in her hand, and a look of relief on her face.

"Maudlin is sleeping as fast as a dormouse," she said, pouring a few drops of the bottle's contents into a cup, and moistening the wounded man's lips.

"But if she should waken?" said Lawrence.

"We will take difficulties only as they come," answered Ruth. "'Tis scarce likely to happen before daybreak. And long before then, Lawrence, you must be upon the road."

"Upon the road! To where?" demanded Lawrence aghast.

"Newmarket."

[Sidenote: The warning to the King.]

"The king," she went on, as he continued to stare at her in speechless astonishment, "must be warned of this danger that threatens him. And 'tis you must warn him."

"I!" flashed the young man. "Ruth, what do you take me for? I play traitor? I be a turncoat?"

"It is because you are not one," she answered calmly, "that you will do this. It is because you are loyal and true that you will not stand by and see this crime done."

"Betray my oath?"

"You never swore to taking the life of a fellow-creature; least of all your king's."

He was silent. She had indeed spoken the truth; yet how could he bring himself to acknowledge to her, what he shrank from admitting to his own heart, the weakness of that easy nature of his, which had brought him to this terrible pass? His one thought had been to "keep neighbourly," as he called it, with difficult Master Rumbold. To give the maltster offence, was never to see Ruth again, and that was an unendurable thought. And so, hardly conscious whither he was drifting, he suddenly found himself on the edge of this abyss of crime, from which the soft, sweet, but resolute voice at his side now warned him back ere it was too late. "Choose," she said.

[Sidenote: Lawrence decides.]

"I cannot," he answered, turning and gazing sadly down on the pale agonized face which had never before seemed so dear to him. "There is no choice for me, Ruth, but to go."

"And Heaven reward you!" she said, a ray of gladness breaking into her tearful eyes as she laid her hand on his arm.

"Farewell then, Ruth!" he said with an almost imperceptible shrug; "and if we should never meet again--." He paused. "Farewell then, Ruth."

[Sidenote: Gone.]

And turning away his face, as if he dared not again meet the sight of hers, he took her little hand in his and wrung it fast. Then springing to the window ledge, he flung the pane wide open, and planting one foot firmly on the fretted stonework outside, was lost in the darkness.