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The knowledge that he was ahead of him, and that he must derive an ample start from Galliard's mishap, warmed him like wine. His mind thus relieved from its weight of anxiety, he little recked fatigue, and such excellent use did he make of his horse that he reached Newmarket on it an hour before the morrow's moon. An hour he rested there, and broke his fast.
Read this letter, boy the letter that you were to have carried to Colonel Pride." With his eyes still fixed in a gaze of stupefaction upon Galliard's face, Kenneth took the paper. Then slowly, involuntarily almost it seemed, he dropped his glance to it, and read. He was long in reading, as though the writing presented difficulties, and his two companions watched him the while, and waited.
With a courtier's raiment Kenneth put on, too, a courtier's ways; he grew mincing and affected in his speech, and he whose utterance a while ago had been marked by a scriptural flavour now set it off with some of Galliard's less unseemly oaths.
"Longer, I confess, than they'll give you in an hour's time, if you remain; but it may lead elsewhere." The boy's mouth was parched. His eyes burned in their sockets, and yet his limbs shook with cold but not the cold of that September night. "I'll try it," he muttered with a gulp. Then suddenly clutching Galliard's arm, he pointed to the window. "What ails you now?" quoth Crispin testily.
Then, still keeping his eye upon the fellow: "Kenneth," he said, "attend to the crop-ear yonder, he will be recovering. Truss him with the bedclothes, and gag him with his scarf. See to it, Kenneth, and do it well, but leave his nostrils free that he may breathe." Kenneth carried out Galliard's orders swiftly and effectively, what time Crispin remained standing over the recumbent minister.
With a sad smile, Hogan advanced, and set his hand affectionately upon Galliard's shoulder. "Welcome to France, Crispin," said he. "If not him whom you looked to find, you have at least a loyal friend to greet you." "Hogan!" gasped the knight. "What make you here? How came you here? Where is Jocelyn?" The Irishman looked at him gravely for a moment, then sighed and sank down upon a chair.
Then, as he looked, it seemed to him that in one great leap from his recumbent position on the bed, Crispin had fallen upon the soldier. The lanthorn was dashed from the fellow's hand, and rolled to Kenneth's feet. The fellow had begun' a cry, which broke off suddenly into a gurgle as Galliard's fingers closed about his windpipe.
Give you good night, Master Ashburn." He staggered off, and stumbled up the broad staircase at the head of which a servant now awaited, taper in hand, to conduct him to the chamber he demanded. Gregory followed him with a dull, frightened eye. Galliard's halting, thickly uttered words had sounded like a prophecy in his ears.
But in the moment of writing the superscription to the letter Crispin was to bear to those that had reared the child, Joseph bethought him of a foul scheme for Galliard's final destruction. And so he has sent him to London instead, to a house in Thames Street, where dwells one Colonel Pride, who bears Sir Crispin a heavy grudge, and into whose hands he will be thus delivered.
At last he reached the staircase, and he realized that did he allow himself to go farther he was lost irretrievably. Yet farther was he driven; despite the strenuous efforts he put forth, until on his right there was room for a man to slip on to the stairs and take him in the flank. Twice one of his opponents essayed it, and twice did Galliard's deadly point repel him.
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