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Updated: June 1, 2025
"You shall sleep where you list, sir," answered Gregory, and they rose. "Do you look to honour us long at Castle Marleigh, Sir Crispin?" was Gregory's last question before separating from his guest. "Nay, sir, 'tis likely I shall go hence to-morrow," answered Crispin, unmindful of what he said. "I trust not," said Gregory, in accents of relief that belied him.
"Well, then, since know you must," he answered, "this is what befell: we had all drunk over-deep to our shame do I confess it and growing tenderhearted for you, and bethinking me of your professed distaste to Kenneth's suit, I told him that for all the results that were likely to attend his sojourn at Castle Marleigh, he might as well bear Crispin company in his departure.
Why he was attracted to a youth on whom never before had he set eyes was a matter that puzzled him not a little. Now he held, he thought, the explanation of it. It was the way of Fate. This boy was sent into his life by a Heaven that at last showed compassion for the deep wrongs he had suffered; sent him as a key wherewith, should the need occur, to open him the gates of Castle Marleigh.
When the Tavern Knight left the gates of Marleigh Park behind him on that wild October night, he drove deep the rowels of his spurs, and set his horse at a perilous gallop along the road to Norwich. The action was of instinct rather than of thought.
"Are you as cowardly as you are blind? Damn me, sir, it seems well that I am returned. I'll have no Marleigh plague my old age for me." He paused a moment, then continued in a quieter voice, but one whose ring was sinister beyond words: "Tomorrow I shall find a way to draw this your dog of war to some secluded ground.
He reseated himself upon the fallen tree, and there he set himself to reflect, and to realize that he, war-worn and callous, come to Castle Marleigh on such an errand as was his, should wax sick at the very thought of it for the sake of a chit of a maid, with a mind to make a mock and a toy of him.
Gregory shrugged his shoulders and laughed cynically, replying that it was the way of young men to be fools, and that through folly lay the road to wisdom. "Be that as it may," she answered him with spirit, "this folly transcends all bounds. Master Stewart may return to his Scottish heather; at Castle Marleigh he is wasting time." "Cynthia!" he cried. "Father," she pleaded, "why be angry?
Kenneth, flushed with wine, yet master of his wits, watched him with contempt. This was the man Cynthia preferred to him! Contempt was there also in Joseph Ashburn's eye, mingled with satisfaction. He had not looked to find the task so easy. At length he deemed the season ripe. "My brother tells me that you were once acquainted with Roland Marleigh," said he. "Aye," he answered thickly.
My fortunes are bound up with the King's. In his victory alone lies profit for me; not the profit of pillage, Hogan, but the profit of those broad lands that for nigh upon twenty years have been in usurping hands. The profit I look for, Hogan, is my restoration to Castle Marleigh, and of this my only hope lies in the restoration of King Charles.
Little trace was there in this fellow of the Roland Marleigh he had known. Moreover, he had looked to find an older man, forgetting that Roland's age could not exceed thirty-eight. Then, again, the fading light, whilst revealing the straight, supple lines of his lank figure, softened the haggardness of the face and made him appear yet younger than the light of day would have shown him.
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