Cardigan

"What game?" I asked, with deadly calmness. "Pray say what you have to say at once, Mr. Butler."

Again his evil gaze shifted from face to face; there was no mercy in the eyes that met his; his visage grew loose and pallid.

"That she-devil swore to wed me!" he broke out, hoarsely, pointing a shaking finger full at Silver Heels. "She – swore it!" His voice sank to a hiss.

"To save my father from a highwayman's death!" said Silver Heels, deathly white.

She turned to me, quivering. "Michael, I am a thief's daughter. This is what I am come to! – to buy my father's life with my own body – and fling my soul at that man's feet! Now will you wed me?"

A cold fury blinded me so I could scarcely see him. I cocked my rifle and drew my hand across my eyes to clear them.

"This is not your quarrel!" he said, desperately; "this woman is the daughter of Cade Renard, a notorious highwayman known as the Weasel! I doubt that Sir Michael Cardigan – for your uncle is dead, whether you know it or not! – would care to claim kinship in this house!"

He turned like a snake and measured Mount from head to foot.

"Give me my sword!" he said, harshly, "and I will answer for myself against this other thief!" His glaring eyes fell on Foxcroft.

"What the devil are you doing here?" he snarled. "Are you knave or fool, that you stand there listening to this threat on my life? You know that this woman is Renard's child! You have Sir John's papers to prove it! Are you not his attorney, man? Then tell these gentlemen that I speak the truth, and that I will meet them both, singly, and carve it on their bodies lest they forget it!"

"It is too late," I said; "a gentleman's sword can never again be soiled by those hands."

"Ay!" cried Foxcroft, suddenly, "it is too late! You say I have papers to prove the truth? I have; and you shall hear the truth, you cursed scoundrel!"

"She is the Weasel's child!" cried Butler, hoarsely.

"If she were the child of Tom o' Bedlam, she is still betrothed to me! God knows," I said, "whether you be human or demon, and so perhaps you may not burn in hell, but I shall send you thither, with God's help!"

And I laid my hand on his arm, and asked him if he was minded to die quietly in the garden; while Mount, knife at his throat, pushed him towards the door.

"Do you mean it?" he burst out, shuddering. "Am I not to have a chance for life? This is murder, Mr. Cardigan!"

"So dealt you by me at the Cayuga stake," I said.

"Yet – it is murder you do. If my hands are not clean, would you foul your own?"

"So dealt you by me in Queen Street prison," I said, slowly.

"Yet, nevertheless, it is murder. And you know it. This is no court of law, to sit in judgment. Are the Cardigans the public hangmen?"

"Give him his sword!" I cried, passionately. "I cannot breathe while he draws breath! Give him his sword, or I will slay him with naked hands!"

"No!" roared Foxcroft, hurling me back.

Butler scowled at the lawyer; Foxcroft scowled at him, and placed his heavy shoe on the fallen sword. Then he suddenly stooped, seized the gilded hilt, and snapped the blade in two, casting the fragments from him in contempt.

"The sword of a scoundrel," he said; "the sword of a petty malefactor – a pitiful forger – "

"Liar!" shrieked Butler, springing at him. Mount flung the maddened man into a chair, where he lay, white and panting, staring at Foxcroft, who now stood by the table, coolly examining a packet of documents.

"It is all here," he said – "the story of two cheap dabblers in petty crime – Sir John Johnson and Mr. Walter Butler – how they did conspire to steal from Miss Warren her wealth, her fair fame, and the very name God gave her. A shameful story, gentlemen, but true on the word of an honourable man."

"Lies!" muttered Butler, between ashen lips. His cheeks became loose and horrible; his lips shrivelled up above his teeth. Foxcroft turned to me, purple with passion.

"Sir William Johnson, your honourable kinsman, left Miss Warren property in his will. Sir John found, in the same box which held the will, a packet of documents and letters addressed to Sir William, apparently proving that Miss Warren was the child of a certain lady who had left her husband to follow the fortunes of Captain Warren – her child by her own husband, Cade Renard, a gentleman of Cambridge."

"The Weasel!" burst out Jack Mount.

"But she is not, sir!" cried Foxcroft, turning on Mount. "She is Captain Warren's own child; I journeyed to England and proved it; I have papers here in my pocket to prove it!" he said, slapping the flaps of his brass-buttoned coat. "It was a lie from beginning to end; the letters supposed to have been written to Sir William by Sir Peter Warren were forged; the documents supposed to have been unearthed from the flooring in the captain's cabin of his Majesty's ship Leda were forged. I can prove it! I can prove that Walter Butler was the forger! I can prove that Sir John Johnson knew it! And to that end Sir John and Captain Butler conspired to make her believe herself to be the child of a half-crazed forest-runner who had been besetting Sir John with his mad importunities, calling himself Cade Renard, and vowing that Miss Warren was his own child!"

He glared at Butler; the wretched man's lips moved to form the word, "Lies!" but no sound came. Then Foxcroft turned to me.

"In my presence these three men broke the news to her; they hoodwinked me, too. By God, sir, I had never suspected villany had not that contemptible fool, Sir John, attempted to bribe silence, should anything ever occur to cast doubt on the relationship betwixt this fellow Renard and Miss Warren!"

The lawyer paused, grinding his teeth in rage.

"I accepted the bribe! I did, gentlemen! I did it to quiet suspicion. Sir John believes me to be his creature. But I set out to follow the matter to the bitter end, and I have done it! It's a falsehood from A to Zed! I shall have the pleasure of flinging Sir John's bribe into his face!"

He laid his hand on my arm, speaking very gently and gravely.

"Mr. Cardigan, Miss Warren is the truest, bravest, sweetest woman I have ever known. She received the news of her dreadful position as a gallant soldier receives the fire of the enemy. When it was made hopelessly clear to her that this lunatic Renard was her father, and that she was not a Warren, not an heiress, that she must now give up all thought of the family on which she had so long imposed – and give up all pretensions to you, sir – she acquiesced with a dignity that might have become a princess of the blood, sir! No whining there, Mr. Cardigan! Not a whimper, sir; not a reproach, not a tear. Her first thought was of pity for her father – this little, withered lunatic, who sat there devouring her with his eyes of a sick hound. She went to him before us all; she took his hand – his hard, little claw – and kissed it. By God, gentlemen, blood tells!"

After a long silence I repeated, "Blood tells."

Mount, head in his hands, was weeping.

"Then came Butler, the forger," said Foxcroft, pointing at him. "And when he found that, after all, Miss Warren honoured herself too highly to seek a rehabilitation through his name, he came here and threatened this poor old man's life – threatened to denounce him as a thief, and have him hung at a cross-roads, unless she gave herself to him! Then – then she consented."

Butler was sitting forward in his chair, his bloodless face supported between his slim fingers, his eyes on vacancy. He did not seem to hear the words that branded him; he did not appear to see us as we drew closer around him.

"In the orchard," muttered Mount; "we can hang him with his own bridle."

We paused for an instant, gazing silently at the doomed man. Then Mount touched him on the shoulder.

At the voiceless summons he looked up at us as though stunned.

"You must hang," said Mount, gravely.

"Not that! No!" I stammered; "I can't do it! Give him a sword – give him something to fight with! Jack – I can't do it. I am not made that way!"

There was a touch on my arm; Silver Heels stood beside me.

"Let them deal with him," she murmured, "you cannot fight with him; there is no honour in him."

"No! – no honour in him!" I repeated.

He had risen, and now stood, staring vacantly at me.

"Damnation!" cried Mount, "are you going to let him loose on the world again?"