, touching your parentage," quoth he
bluntly. "Alan Stewart, of Bailienochy, was not your father."

Kenneth looked from one to the other of them.

"Sirs, is this a jest?" he cried, reddening. Then, remarking at length
the solemnity of their countenances, he stopped short. Crispin came
close up to him, and placed a hand upon his shoulder. The boy shrank
visibly beneath the touch, and again an expression of pain crossed the
poor ruffler's face.

"Do you recall, Kenneth," he said slowly, almost sorrowfully, "the story
that I told you that night in Worcester, when we sat waiting for dawn
and the hangman?"

The lad nodded vacantly.

"Do you remember the details? Do you remember I told you how, when I
swooned beneath the stroke of Joseph Ashburn's sword, the last words
I heard were those in which he bade his brother slit the throat of the
babe in the cradle? You were, yourself, present yesternight at Castle
Marleigh when Joseph Ashburn told me Gregory had been mercifully
inclined; that my child had not died; that if I gave him his life he
would restore him to me. You remember?"

Again Kenneth nodded. A vague, numbing fear was creeping round his
heart, and his blood seemed chilled by it and stagnant. With fascinated
eyes he watched the knight's face--drawn and haggard.

"It was a trap that Joseph Ashburn set for me. Yet he did not altogether
lie. The child Gregory had indeed spared, and it seems from what I have
learned within the last half-hour that he had entrusted his rearing to
Alan Stewart, of Bailienochy, seeking afterwards--I take it--to wed him
to his daughter, so that should the King come to his own again, they
should have the protection of a Marleigh who had served his King."

"You mean," the lad almost whispered, and his accents were unmistakably
of horror, "you mean that I am your--Oh, God, I'll not believe it!" he
cried out, with such sudden loathing and passion that Crispin recoiled
as though he had been struck. A dull flush crept into his cheeks to fade
upon the instant and give place to a pallor, if possible, intenser than
before.

"I'll not believe it! I'll not believe it!" the boy repeated, as if
seeking by that reiteration to shut out a conviction by which he was
beset. "I'll not believe it!" he cried again; and now his voice had lost
its passionate vehemence, and was sunk almost to a moan.

"I found it hard to believe myself," was Crispin's answer, and his
voice was not free from bitterness. "Bu