aped. They say that Newlington himself is dead." He
poured himself more wine.

Ruth listened, her eyes burning, the rest of her as cold as ice.
"But...but.., oh, thank God that you at least are safe, Dick!"

"How did you escape?" quoth Diana.

"How?" He started as if he had been stung. He laughed in a high, cracked
voice, his eyes wild and bloodshot. "How? Perhaps it is just as well
that Blake has gone to his account. Perhaps..." He checked on the word,
and started to his feet; Diana screamed in sheer aifright. Behind her
the windows had been thrust open so violently that one of the panes was
shivered. Blake stood under the lintel, scarce recognizable, so smeared
was his face with the blood escaping from the wound his cheek had taken.
His clothes were muddied, soiled, torn, and disordered.

Framed there against the black background of the night, he stood and
surveyed them for a moment, his aspect terrific. Then he leapt forward,
baring his sword as he came. An incoherent roar burst from his lips as
he bore straight down upon Richard.

"You damned, infernal traitor!" he cried. "Draw, draw! Or die like the
muckworm that you are."

Intrepid, her terror all vanished now that there was the need for
courage, Ruth confronted him, barring his passage, a buckler to her
palsied brother.

"Out of my way, mistress, or I'll be doing you a mischief."

"You are mad, Sir Rowland," she told him in a voice that did something
towards restoring him to his senses.

His fierce eyes considered her a moment, and he controlled himself to
offer an explanation. "The twenty that were with me lie stark under
the stars in Newlington's garden," he told her, as Richard had told her
already. "I escaped by a miracle, no less, but for what? Feversham will
demand of me a stern account of those lives, whilst if I am found in
Bridgwater there will be a short shrift for me at the rebel hands--for
my share in this affair is known, my name on every lip in the town. And
why?" he asked with a sudden increase of fierceness. "Why? Because that
craven villain there betrayed me."

"He did not," she answered in so assured a voice that not only did it
give him pause, but caused Richard, cowering behind her, to raise his
head in wonder.

Sir Rowland smiled his disbelief, and that smile, twisting his
blood-smeared countenance, was grotesque and horrible. "I left him to
guard our backs and give me warning if any approached," he informed her.
"I knew him for