of remonstrance. At length he rose with a sigh and got to table. There he bethought him of his sick groom, and asked Nicholas for news of him. Nicholas reported the fellow to be much as he had been, whereupon Sir Oliver took up a cup and brimmed it with the steaming posset.
“Take him that,” he said. “There’s no better medicine for such an ailment.”
Outside fell a clatter of hooves.
“Here be Master Lionel at last,” said the servant.
“No doubt,” agreed Sir Oliver. “No need to stay for him. Here is all he needs. Carry that to Tom ere it cools.”
It was his object to procure the servant’s absence when Lionel should arrive, resolved as he was to greet him with a sound rating for his folly. Reflection had brought him the assurance that this was become his duty in view of his projected absence from Penarrow; and in his brother’s interest he was determined not to spare him.
He took a deep draught of the posset, and as he set it down he heard Lionel’s step without. Then the door was flung open, and his brother stood on the threshold a moment at gaze.
Sir Oliver looked round with a scowl, the well-considered reproof already on his lips.
“So....” he began, and got no further. The sight that met his eyes drove the ready words from his lips and mind; instead it was with a sharp gasp of dismay that he came immediately to his feet. “Lionel!”
Lionel lurched in, closed the door, and shot home one of its bolts. Then he leaned against it, facing his brother again. He was deathly pale, with great dark stains under his eyes; his ungloved right hand was pressed to his side, and the fingers of it were all smeared with blood that was still oozing and dripping from between them. Over his yellow doublet on the right side there was a spreading dark stain whose nature did not intrigue Sir Oliver a moment.
“My God!” he cried, and ran to his brother. “What’s happened, Lal? Who has done this?”
“Peter Godolphin,” came the answer from lips that writhed in a curious smile.
Never a word said Sir Oliver, but he set his teeth and clenched his hands until the nails cut into his palms. Then he put an arm about this lad he loved above all save one in the whole world, and with anguish in his mind he supported him forward to the fire. There Lionel dropped to the chair that Sir Oliver had lately occupied.
“What is your hurt, lad? Has it gone deep?” he asked, in terror almost.
“‘Tis naught—a flesh wound; but I have lost a mort of blood. I thought I should have been drained or ever I got me home.”
With fearful speed Sir Oliver drew his dagger and ripped away doublet, vest, and shirt, laying bare the lad’s white flesh. A moment’s examination, and he breathed more freely.
“Art a very babe, Lal,” he cried in his relief. “To ride without thought to stanch so simple a wound, and so lose all this blood—bad Tressilian blood though it be.” He laughed in the immensity of his reaction from that momentary terror. “Stay thou there whilst I call Nick to help us dress this scratch.”
“No, no!” There was note of sudden fear in the lad’s voice, and his hand clutched at his brother’s sleeve. “Nick must not know. None must know, or I am undone else.”
Sir Oliver stared, bewildered. Lionel smiled again that curious twisted, rather frightened smile.
“I gave better than I took, Noll,” said he. “Master Godolphin is as cold by now as the snow on which I left him.”
His brother’s sudden start and the fixed stare from out of his slowly paling face scared Lionel a little. He observed, almost subconsciously, the dull red wheal that came into prominence as the colour faded out of Sir Oliver’s face, yet never thought to ask how it came there. His own affairs possessed him too completely.
“What’s this?” quoth Oliver at last, hoarsely.
Lionel dropped his eyes, unable longer to meet a glance that was becoming terrible.
“He would have it,” he growled almost sullenly, answering the reproach that was written in every line of his brother’s taut body. “I had warned him not to cross my path. But to-night I think some madness had seized upon him. He affronted me, Noll; he said things which it was beyond human power to endure, and....” He shrugged to complete his sentence.
“Well, well,” said Oliver in a small voice. “First let us tend this wound of yours.”
“Do not call Nick,” was the other’s swift admonition. “Don’t you see, Noll?” he explained in answer to the inquiry of his brother’s stare, “don’t you see that we fought there almost in the dark and without witnesses. It....” he swallowed, “it will be called murder, fair fight though it was; and should it be discovered that it was I....” He shivered and his glance grew wild; his lips twitched.
“I see,” said Oliver, who understood at last, and he added bitterly: “You fool!”
“I had no choice,” protested Lionel. “He came at me with his drawn sword. Indeed, I think he was half-drunk. I warned him of what must happen to the other did either of us fall, but he bade me not concern myself with the fear of any such consequences to himself. He was full of foul words of me and you and all whoever bore our name. He struck me with the flat of his blade and threatened to run me through as I stood unless I drew to defend myself. What choice had I? I did not mean to kill him—as God’s my witness, I did not, Noll.”
Without a word Oliver turned to a side-table, where stood a metal basin and ewer. He poured water, then came in the same silence to treat his brother’s wound. The tale that Lionel told made blame impossible, at least from Oliver. He had but to recall the mood in which he himself had ridden after Peter Godolphin; he had but to remember, that only the consideration of Rosamund—only, indeed, the consideration of his future—had set a curb upon his own bloodthirsty humour.
When he had washed the wound he fetched some table linen from a press and ripped it into strips with his dagger; he threaded out one of these and made a preliminary crisscross of the threads across the lips of the wound—for the blade had gone right through the muscles of the breast, grazing the ribs; these threads would help the formation of a clot. Then with the infinite skill and cunning acquired in the course of his rovings he proceeded to the bandaging.
That done, he opened the window and flung out the blood-tinted water. The cloths with which he had mopped the wound and all other similar evidences of the treatment he cast upon the fire. He must remove all traces even from the eyes of Nicholas. He had the most implicit trust in the old servant’s fidelity. But the matter was too grave to permit of the slightest risk. He realized fully the justice of Lionel’s fears that however fair the fight might have been, a thing done thus in secret must be accounted murder by the law.
Bidding Lionel wrap himself in his cloak, Sir Oliver unbarred the door, and went upstairs in quest of a fresh shirt and doublet for his brother. On the landing he met Nicholas descending. He held him a moment in talk of the sick man above, and outwardly at least he was now entirely composed. He dispatched him upstairs again upon a trumped-up errand that must keep him absent for some little time, whilst himself he went to get the things he needed.
He returned below with them, and when he had assisted his brother into fresh garments with as little movement as possible so as not to disturb his dressing of the wound or set it bleeding
