X.

X.The Lady Barbara, in the midst of her interview with Mr. Ashley, was disturbed by Lord Farquhart’s servant bearing her rings and the rose that had been stolen the night before. Her confusion expressed itself in deep damask roses on the cheeks that had, indeed, been lily white before.“Lord Farquhart returns these to me?” she cried in her amazement.“Yes, my lady, he said that they were to pass into no other hands than yours, that you would understand.”“That I would understand?” she questioned, and the damask roses had already flown.“How came they into Lord Farquhart’s hands?” asked Ashley, but he was vouchsafed no answer.“That you would understand, my lady, and that he would be with you himself this afternoon.”The servant was looking at the lady respectfully enough, but behind the respect lurked curiosity, for even a servant may question the drolleries and vagaries of his masters. And here, indeed, was a most droll mass of absurdities.But the lady was not looking at the servant at all. Rather was she looking at Mr. Ashley, and something that she read in his narrowing eyes, in the smile that curved but one corner of his lips, caused her cheeks to blossom once again into damask roses—nay, not in damask roses; rather were they peonies and poppies that dyed her cheeks. She spoke no word at all, and only with a gesture of her hand did she dismiss the servant, a gesture of the hand that held the withered rose and the jeweled rings.There was a long silence in the boudoir. My Lady Barbara was playing nervously with the rings Lord Farquhart’s servant had returned to her. Mr. Ashley was watching the girl.“So my Lord Farquhart masqueraded as our gentleman of the highways?” Mr. Ashley’s voice was full of scorn.A quick gleam shone in Barbara’s eyes. Her breath fluttered.“Masqueraded!” she whispered.There was another silence, and then Mr. Ashley spoke again, his voice, too, but little above a whisper.“You mean, Barbara, that Lord Farquhartisthis gentleman of the highways?”“Oh, why, why do you say so?” she stammered.“Ah, Barbara, Barbara, why do you not deny it if it is deniable?” His voice rang with triumph.But he was answered only by the Lady Barbara’s changing color, by her quivering lips.“Why do you not admit it, then?” he asked again.“Why should I admit it or deny it?” she asked, faintly. “What do I know of Lord Farquhart’s movements, save that I am to marry him in less than a fortnight’s time?”“To marry Lord Farquhart!” Mr. Ashley laughed aloud. “To marry a highwayman whose life is forfeit to the crown! Say rather that you are freefor all time from Lord Farquhart! Say rather, sweetheart, thatweare free!”“But why do you take it so easily for granted that my cousin is this highwayman?” asked Barbara.“Why, it has long been whispered that this highwayman was some one of London’s gallants seeking a new amusement. Surely it is easy to fit that surmise to Lord Farquhart. ’Twould be easy with even less assistance than Lord Farquhart has given us.”“But what would it profit us to be rid of Lord Farquhart—granting that he is this—this gentleman of the highways?” The Lady Barbara’s eyes were still on her rings. She did not lift them to the man who stood so near her.“Profit us!” he cried. “It would give you to me. It would permit you to marry me—if Lord Farquhart were out of the way. What else stands between us?”“No,” she murmured, in a low, faint voice, her eyes still on the jewels in her hands. “’Tis not my Lord Farquhart stands between us, but your poverty and my father’s will. How can we marry when you have nothing, when I would have less than nothing if I defied my father? No, I intend to marry Lord Farquhart, whatever he may be.”Ashley’s eyes questioned her, but his lips did not move. And she, although she did not raise her eyes to his, knew what his asked. And yet, for several moments, she did not answer. Then, flinging the rings from her, she sprang to her feet.“Why not take this chance that’s flung to us, Hal?” she cried. “Can’t you see what we have won? Why, Lord Farquhart’s life is forfeit tousso long as we hold his secret. A pretty dance we can lead him at the end of our own rope, and we’ll have but to twitch a finger to show him that we’ll transfer the end to the proper authority if he dares to interfere with our pleasures!”“But, Barbara!” The man was, indeed, as shaken as his voice. He had found it hard enough to credit the evidence of ears and eyes that proved to him that Lord Farquhart was the Black Devil of the London highways, but harder yet was it to believe that Barbara, the unsophisticated country girl, was versed in all the knowledge and diplomacy of a Londonmondaine.“Don’t ‘but Barbara’ me,” she cried, impatiently. “I’ll not be tied down any longer. I must be free, free, free! All my life long I’ve been in bondage to my father’s will. Now, in a fortnight’s time I can be free—controlled by no will but my own. Can you not see how this act of Lord Farquhart’s throws him into my power? How it gives me my freedom forever?”“But you’d consent to marry this common highwayman?” Incredulity held each of Ashley’s words.“Ay, I’d marry a common highwayman for the same gain.” The Lady Barbara’s violet eyes were black with excitement. “But Lord Farquhart’s not a common highwayman, as you call him. You know well enough that this Black Devil has never once stolen aught for himself. My Lord Farquhart, if he is, in reality, this gentleman highwayman, doubtless loves the excitement of the chase. ’Tis merely a new divertisement—a hunt, as it were, for men instead of beasts. In truth, it almost makes me love Lord Farquhart to find he has such courage, such audacity, such wit and spirit!”“But what if he is caught?” demanded Ashley. “Think of the disgrace if he is caught.”“Ah, but he won’t be caught,” she answered, gayly. “’Tis only your laggards and cowards that are caught, and Lord Farquhart has proved himself no coward. What can you ask of fortune if you’ll not trust the jade? How can you look for luck when you’re blind to everything save ill luck? Trust fortune! Trust to luck! And trust to me, to Lady Barbara Farquhart that’ll be in less than a fortnight!” She swept him a low curtsey and lifted laughing lips to his, but he still held back. “Trust me because I love you,” she cried, still daring him on. “Though I think you’ll make me a willing bride to Farquhart if you show the white feather now.”“But you can see, can you not, thatit’s because I love you that I fear for you?” Ashley’s tone was still grave.“Well, but then there are two loves to back luck in the game,” she cried. Then she echoed the gravity in his voice. “What else can we do, Hal? Have you aught else to offer? Can you marry me? Can I marry you? There’s naught to fear, anyway. Lord Farquhart’ll tire of the game. What has he ever pursued for any length of time? And he’s been at this for six months or more. Nay, we can stop him, if we will. Is he not absolutely in our power?”For a lady to win a lover to her way of thinking is easy, even though her way be diametrically opposed to his. Love blinds the eyes and dulls the ears; it lulls the conscience to all save its words. And Ashley yielded slowly, with little grace at first, wholly and absolutely at last, accepting his reward from the Lady Barbara’s pomegranate lips.XI.To the Lady Barbara, the game that she had planned seemed easy, and yet, in her first interview with her fiancé, certain difficulties appeared. Lord Farquhart presented himself, as in duty bound, late that first afternoon. Lady Barbara received him with chilly finger tips, offering him her oval cheek instead of her lips. He, ignoring the substitute, merely kissed the tapering fingers.“I am glad to see that you are none the worse for last night’s encounter,” he said.Wondering why his voice rang strangely, she answered, gayly:“Rather the better for it, I find myself, thank you.”“You told your tale of highway robbery so well that it deceived even my ears.” Lord Farquhart spoke somewhat stiffly. “I had not realized that you were so accomplished an actor.”“Ay, did I not tell it well?” Her agreement with him held but a faint note of interrogation.“I failed to catch your meaning, though, if meaning there was,” he said. And now his tone was so indifferent that the Lady Barbara might have been forgiven for thinking that he cared not to understand her meaning.“I think I expressed my meaning fairly well last night,” she answered, her indifference matching his.“Shall we let it pass at that, then?” he asked. “At that and nothing more?” If the Lady Barbara did not care to explain her joke, why should he force her?“Ay, let us call it a jest,” she answered, “unless the point be driven in too far. A too pointed jest is sometimes a blunt weapon, my Lord Farquhart.”Lord Farquhart heard the words that seemed so simple. He realized, also, that the tone was not so simple, but, as he told himself, the time would come soon enough when he would have to understand the Lady Barbara’s tones and manners. He would not begin until necessity compelled him. He had quite convinced himself that the story of the robbery, and the rings and rose in his coat, were naught save some silly joke of the unsophisticated schoolgirl he supposed his cousin to be. He moved restlessly in his chair. It was hard to find a simple subject to discuss with a simple country girl.“You received the rings in safety?” he asked, merely to fill in the silence.“Quite,” she answered, “quite in safety, my Lord Farquhart.” She was consuming herself with a rage that even she could not wholly understand. Her intended victim’s indifference angered her beyond endurance, and yet she dared not lose the hold she had not fully gained. A jest, indeed! He chose to call the whole thing a jest! A sorry jest he’d find it, then! And yet, surely, now was not the time for her to prove her power. Tapping her foot impatiently, she added in a thin, restrained voice: “Suppose we let the rings close the incident for the moment, my cousin!”Again Lord Farquhart questioned the tone and manner, but he answered both with a shrug. The Lady Barbarawas even more tiresome than he had feared. He would have to teach her that snapping eyes and quarrelsome speech were out of place in amariage de convenancesuch as they were making. Doubtless he had failed to please her in some way. How he knew not. But how could he please a lady to whom he was quite indifferent, who was quite indifferent to him, and yet a lady to whom he was to be married in less than a fortnight, a whole day less than a fortnight. Lord Farquhart sighed far more deeply than was courteous to the lady.“If I can do aught to please you, Barbara, during your stay——” he began, with perfunctory deference, but she interrupted him hotly.“Barbara!” she had been fuming inwardly. And only the night before it had been “Babs” and “sweetheart” and “sweet cousin”! Her wrath rose quite beyond control and her voice broke forth impetuously.“I beg of you not to give me your time before it is necessary, my Lord Farquhart. And—and I beg you will excuse me now. I go to-night to Mistress Barry’s ball, and I—I—would rest after last night’s fatigues.”She flounced from the room without further leave-taking, and as she fled on to her own chamber her anger escaped its bounds.“He talks to me of jests,” she cried, with angry vehemence. “A sorry jest he’ll find it, on my word.Aie!I hate his insolent indifference. One would think I was a simple country fool to hear him talk. He—he—when I can have him hung just when it suits my good convenience! I’ll not marry him at all! Ay, but I will, though. I’ll make it worse for him by marrying him. And then I’ll show him! Just wait, my lord, until I’m Lady Farquhart and you’ll dance to a different tune, I’m thinking. Oh, I hate him, I hate him! I suppose he goes now to his Sylvia, or—or, perchance, out onto the road again.” The Lady Barbara’s tantrum had carried her into her own room and she had slammed the door. Now she found herself stopped by the opposite wall, and suddenly her tone changed. It grew quite soft, almost tender. “I wonder if his Sylvia is fairer than I am,” she said. “I wonder if he might not come to look upon me as worthy of something more than that sidewise glance.”As for Lord Farquhart, left alone in the boudoir, he was still indifferent and still somewhat insolent, for, as he sauntered out from the room, he muttered:“May the devil take all women save the one you happen to be in love with! And yet she’s a pretty minx, too, if she hadn’t such a vixenish temper!”And then he hummed the last line of his song to Sylvia.XII.Five times had Johan, the player’s boy, met young Lindley at the edge of the Ogilvie woods. Five times he had reported nothing of any interest concerning Mistress Judith Ogilvie, or, rather, the sum of the five reports had amounted to naught. Once he said that Mistress Judith was, if anything, quieter than usual. Again he told that her maids had said that she had been in a fine rage when Master Lindley had braved her wrath by appearing at her home and demanding an interview with her. But when her father had taxed her with her rudeness in refusing to descend and speak with her cousin, she had merely shrugged her shoulders and said that Master Lindley was of too little consequence even to discuss. She had been little with the players. Johan himself had had much trouble in gaining any interviews with her. She had spent more time than usual sewing with the maids. She had spent more time with her father, giving as an excuse that she could not ride abroad because her horse was lame. But Johan averred that he had seen one of the stable lads exercising Star and there had been nothing wrong with the horse.On the sixth night Johan, peering up at Lindley from under his black curls, asked if any inference could be gathered from aught that he had reported and Lindley was obliged to confessthat he saw none. The shadows of the trees fell all about them.“If Mistress Judith knew that I was watching her to make report to you,” hazarded the lad, “it might almost seem as though she were playing some part for your benefit, so different is all this from her former ways, but——”“But she does not know,” Lindley concluded the sentence.“Nay, how could she know?” the lad asked. “If she knew she would but include me in her hatred of you. She would deny me all access to her, and that I could not bear. ’Tis all of no use, my master. Mistress Judith is quite outside of all chance of your winning her. So little have I done that I’ll gladly release you from your bargain if you’ll but give up all hope of winning her.”“I’ve no faint heart, boy,” answered Lindley. “Your Mistress Judith will come to my call yet, you’ll see.”“I’m not so sure I’d like to see that day, my master,” answered the lad, in a whimsical tone. “But, in all honesty, I should tell you—I mean I’m thinking——” He hesitated.“Well, boy, you’re thinking what?” questioned Lindley, impatiently. “Though I offered not to pay you for your thoughts.”“No, I give you my thoughts for no pay whatsoever.” Johan’s voice was still full of a restrained mirth. “And you must remember, too, that I told you at the first that I myself was a lover of Mistress Judith Ogilvie. That, perhaps, gives me better understanding of the maid. That, perhaps, makes my thoughts of value.”“Well, and what do you think?” demanded Lindley.“I—I was going to say”—the boy spoke slowly—“it seems to me that—that Mistress Judith may already be in love.”“In love!” echoed Lindley. “And with whom, pray you, might Mistress Judith be in love? Whom has she seen to fall in love with? Where has she been to fall in love? It was only last week that you told me that Mistress Judith had sworn that she would never be in love with any man—that she would never be won by any man.”“Ay, but maids—some maids—change their minds as easily as their ribbons, my master,” quoth the boy, somewhat sententiously.“What reason have you for your opinion that Mistress Judith may be in love?” Lindley’s question broke a short silence, and he bit his lip over the obnoxious word.“I—why, it seems to me that her docility might prove it, might it not? I—it’s a lover’s heart that speaks to you, remember—a heart that loves mightily, a heart that yearns mightily. But is not docility on a maid’s part a sign of love? Might it not be? It seems to me that if I were a maid and I’d fallen desperately and woefully in love, I’d be all for gentleness and quiet, I’d sew with my maids and dream of love, I’d give all of my time to my father from whom love was so soon to take me. That’s what I should think a maid would do, and that is what Mistress Judith has done for a week past. And then to-day, as I hung about outside her windows, I heard her rating her maids. Mistress Judith’s voice can be quite high and shrill when she is annoyed, you may remember; and the one complete sentence that I heard was this: ‘Am I always to be buried in a country house, think ye, and what would town folk think of stitches such as those if they could see them? But see them they’ll not, for you’ll have to do some tedious ripping here, my girls, and some better stitches.’ Now”—the boy’s lips curled dolorously—“does not that sound to you as though Mistress Judith were contemplating some change in her estate, as though she had already given her heart to some town gallant?”Lindley’s brows were black and his lips, too, were curled. But curses were the rods that twisted them.“What devil’s work is the girl up to now?” he demanded, savagely. “She’s doubtless met some ne’er-do-well unbeknown to Master Ogilvie. I must see Mistress Judith at once, on the very instant, and have it out with her.”“Oh, no, no!” cried Johan, the player’s boy. “You’ll but drive her on in any prank she’s bent on.”“Then it’s Master Ogilvie I’ll see,” declared Lindley. “Where have all your eyes been that the girl could have met a lover; that she could have seen anyone with whom to fall in love? She must not fall in love with anyone save me. Do you hear, boy? I love her. I love her.”“Ah, then it is your heart that’s engaged in this matter,” commented Johan. “I thought, perhaps—why, perhaps it was merely Mistress Judith’s defiance of her father’s wishes that led you on to wish to marry her. You—you really do love Mistress Judith, for herself? Really love her as a lover ought to love?”“You’re over curious, my lad,” growled Lindley. “And yet ’tis my own fault, I suppose. I’ve given you my confidence.”“But how know you that you love Mistress Judith?” persisted the boy.“I love her—I love her because I’ve loved her always,” answered Lindley, passionately. “I loved her when I was ten, when she was six, when her golden head was no higher than my heart.”“’Tis somewhat higher now, I think.” The boy’s words were very low. “More like her heart would match to yours. Her eyes are as high above the ground as your own. Her lips would not be raised to meet your lips.”Lindley’s face had grown scarlet.“Be silent, boy,” he cried. “You speak over freely of sacred things.”The lad, backing away from under Lindley’s upraised arm, still murmured, echoing Lindley’s words: “Sacred things!” and added: “Mistress Judith’s heart! Her eyes! Her lips!”What Lindley’s answer might have been from lips and hand the lad never knew. It was checked by a sudden onslaught from behind. Out from the low bushes that hedged the woods sprang two figures in hoods and cloaks. The foremost was tall and burly, though agile enough. The second seemed but a clumsy follower. In an instant Lindley’s sword was engaged with that of the leader. For only an instant Johan hesitated. Drawing a short sword from under his cloak, he sprang upon the second of the highwaymen. Their battle was short, for the fellow’s clumsiness made him an easy victim for the slender youth. Pinked but slightly in the arm, he gave vent to an unearthly howl and, turning away, he fled through the dark aisles of the woods, his diminishing shrieks denoting the speed and length of his flight.But Johan’s victory came not a second too soon, for just at that moment Lindley’s sword dropped from his hand, the blood spurting from a deep wound in his shoulder. With a low snarl of victory, the highwayman drew back his arm to plunge his sword into his victim’s breast, but Johan, springing forward and picking Lindley’s weapon from the ground, hurled himself upon their assailant.“Not so fast, my friend,” he cried, and in another second blades were again flashing. Lindley, who for a moment had been overwhelmed by the shock of his wound, raised a useless voice in protest. Johan’s own voice drowned every sound as he drove his antagonist now this way, now that, quite at his own will.The moon, in its last quarter, was just rising above the trees, and the narrow glade was lighted with its weird, fantastic glow. From one side of the road to the other, the shadowy figures moved, the steel blades flashing in the glinting light, Johan’s short, sharp cries punctuating the song of the swords. Lindley could hear the ruffian’s heavy breathing as Johan forced him up the bank that edged the road. He heard his horse’s nervous whinny as the fight circled his flanks. But Lindley was so fascinated by the brilliancy of the lad’s fighting that he had no thought of the outcome of the fray until he heard a sudden sharp outcry. Then he saw Johan stagger back, but he saw at the same instant that the highwayman had fallen, doubled over in a heap, upon the ground. He saw, too, that Johan’s sword, trailing on the ground, was red with blood.“You’re hurt, lad!” Lindley, faint from loss of blood, staggered toward the boy.“Ay, ay, hurt desperately,” moaned Johan. His voice seemed weak and faltering.“But how? But where? I did not see him touch you!” Lindley’s left arm encircled the lad, his right hung limp at his side.Johan’s head sank for an instant onto Lindley’s shoulder.“No, he did not touch me, ’tis no bodily hurt,” he moaned; “but I’ve—I’ve killed the man.”Lindley’s support was withdrawn instantly and roughly.“After such a fight, are you fool enough to bemoan a victory?” His words, too, were rough. “Why, man, it was a fight to the death! You’d have been killed if you had not killed. Did you think you were fighting for the fun of it? You’re squeamish as a woman.”Johan tried to recover his voice. He tried to stand erect.“I did it well, did I not?” An unsteady laugh rang out. “The play acting, I mean. You forget, Master Lindley, that I’m a player, that in my parts I’m more often a woman than a man. And we actors are apt to grow into the parts we oftenest counterfeit.” Suddenly he staggered and the sword clattered from his hand. But again he straightened himself. “Would I gain applause as a woman, think you?”“If it’s play acting, have done with it,” growled Lindley, whose wound was hurting; who, in reality, was almost fainting from loss of blood. “You’ve saved my life as well as your own, Johan. But we’ll touch on that later. There’s no fear, is there, that your dead man will come to life?”The boy for the first time raised his eyes to Lindley’s face. Even in the darkness he could see that it was ghastly white and drawn with pain. A nervous cry burst from his lips, and he stretched both arms toward Lindley.“Da—damn your play acting, boy,” sputtered Lindley. “Nay, I mean not to be so harsh. I’ll—I’ll not forget the debt I owe you either. But you must help me to The Jolly Grig, where Marmaduke has skill enough to tend my wound until I can reach London.”“But Master Ogilvie has skill in the care of wounds,” cried Johan. “Surely we are nearer Master Ogilvie’s than The Jolly Grig. And Mistress Judith will——”“Nay, I’ll not force myself on Mistress Judith in this way,” answered Lindley, petulantly.“You are over considerate of Mistress Judith’s feelings, even for a lover,” returned the boy.“Ah, it’s not Mistress Judith’s feelings I’m considerate of,” replied Lindley. “She’s capable of saying that I got the wound on purpose to lie in her house, on purpose to demand her care.”Here Johan’s unsteady laugh rang out once more.“Indeed she’s capable of that very thing, my master,” he said, and as he spoke he began to tear his long coat into strips.“What are you doing that for?” demanded Lindley, leaning more and more heavily against his horse’s side.“It’s a bandage and a sling for your arm,” answered the boy. “If you will persist in the ride to The Jolly Grig, your arm must be tied so that it will not bleed again.”“’Twill be a wonder if you do not faint away like a woman when you touch the blood,” scoffed Lindley.“’Twill be a wonder, I’m thinking myself,” answered the boy, unsteadily.And then, the bandage made and adjusted, Johan offered his shoulder to assist the wounded man into the saddle. But Lindley, pressing heavily yet tenderly against the lad, said gently:“I’ve been rough, Johan, but believe me, this night’s work will stand you in good stead. Hereafter your play acting may be a matter of choice, but never again of necessity.”“Heaven grant that the necessity will never again be so great!” murmured Johan, indistinctly.“I—I did not understand,” falteredLindley, reaching the saddle with difficulty.“I said—why I said,” stammered Johan, “Heaven be praised that there would be no more necessity for play acting.”Arrived at The Jolly Grig, Master Marmaduke Bass’ perturbed face boded ill for his surgical skill.“Hast heard the news, my master?” he cried, before he saw the condition of his guest. “Ah, Mr. Lindley, ’tis about a friend of your own, too—a friend who was with you here not a week ago.”“I—I care not for your news, whatever it may be, whomever it may be about,” groaned Lindley, who was near the end of his endurance.“Master Lindley’s met with highwaymen,” interrupted Johan. “Perchance ’tis the Black Devil himself. He’s wounded and has need of your skill, not of your news.”“Met with my Lord Farquhart!” cried honest Marmaduke. “But that’s impossible. My Lord Farquhart’s been in prison these twelve hours and more, denounced by his cousin, the Lady Barbara Gordon!”It would have been hard to say which was the whiter, Master Lindley or Johan, the player’s boy. It would have been difficult to distinguish between their startled voices.“Lord Farquhart! In prison!”“Ay, Lord Farquhart. The Black Devil. The Black Highwayman. Denounced at a festival at my Lord Grimsby’s by the Lady Barbara Gordon.”XIII.The worthy Marmaduke’s gossip was indeed true, for as strange a thing as that had really happened. Lady Barbara Gordon, in open company, had announced that she knew positively that Lord Farquhart was no other than the Black Highwayman who for a twelvemonth had been terrorizing the roads round about London town. He had confessed it to her, himself, she said. She had seen him guised as the highwayman. Mr. Ashley, the Lady Barbara’s escort at the moment, had corroborated her statements, vouchsafing on his own account that he had been with the Lady Barbara when Lord Farquhart’s servants had returned her rings and a rose that had been stolen from her by the Black Highwayman only the night before.Just a moment’s consideration of the conditions and incidents, the chances and mischances, that led up to this denouncement will show that it was not so strange a thing, after all. To take the Lady Barbara, first. Up to the time of her visit to London, Lord Farquhart had been to her something of a figurehead. She had considered him merely as a creature quite inanimate and impersonal, who was to be forced upon her by her father’s will just as she was to be forced upon him. But Lord Farquhart in the flesh was a young man of most pleasing appearance, if of most exasperating manners. When the Lady Barbara compared him with the other gallants of the society she frequented she found that he had few peers among them, and as she accepted his punctilious courtesies and attentions she began to long to see them infused with some personal warmth and interest. She saw no reason why Lord Farquhart should be the one and only gentleman of her acquaintance who discerned no charm in her. It piqued something more than her vanity to see that she alone of all the ladies whom he met could rouse in him no personal interest whatsoever. And, almost unconsciously, she exerted herself to win from him some sign of approbation.Also, in addition to her awakened interest in Lord Farquhart—or possibly because of it—the Lady Barbara thought she saw in Mr. Ashley’s devotion some new, some curious, some quite displeasing quality. It was not that he was not as courteous as ever. It was not that he was not as attentive as ever. It was not that he did not speak his love as tenderly, as warmly, as ever. All this was quite as it had been. But in his courtesies the Lady Barbara recognized a thinly veiled—it was not contempt, of course, but therewas the suggestion of the manner one would offer to a goddess who had advanced a step toward the extreme edge of her pedestal. And this Barbara resented. In his attentions he was quite solicitous, but it was a solicitude of custom—of custom to be, perhaps, as much as of custom that has been. To this Barbara objected. Already, too, his love savored of possession. Against this Barbara chafed. She would give her favors when she was ready to give them. They would be gifts, though—not things held by right.Her resentments, her objections, her chafings, she tried to hold in check. She endeavored to show no sign of them to Ashley, with the result that in her manner to him he saw only the endeavor. So he, in turn, was piqued by the change in his lady. He was angry and annoyed, and asked himself occasionally what right the Lady Barbara had to change toward him when she and her Lord Farquhart were so absolutely in his power. All of which strained, somewhat, the relations between the Lady Barbara and Mr. Ashley.To come to Lord Farquhart: he loved or thought he loved—he had loved or had thought he loved Sylvia—Sylvia, the light o’ love, one of the pretty creatures on whom love’s hand falls anything but lightly. To his prejudiced eyes, the Lady Barbara, cold and colorless in the gloom of Gordon’s Court, had seemed quite lacking in all charm. But when he had sauntered from her presence to that of Sylvia on the afternoon when the jest of the highway robbery had been discussed, he found that his curiosity, nay, his interest, had been aroused by the Lady Barbara. He found that his unsophisticated cousin was not altogether lacking in color and spirit, and Sylvia, for the first time, seemed somewhat over blown, somewhat over full of vulgar life and gayety. Later, that same night, when he saw the future Lady Farquhart dimpling and glowing, the central star in a galaxy of London beaux, he wondered if the Lady Barbara might not be worth the winning; he wondered if themariage de convenancemight not be transformed into the culmination of a quick, romantic courtship. To win the Lady Barbara before the Lady Barbara was his without the winning! Might not that be well worth while?To give just a passing word to Sylvia; for it was to Sylvia that the main mischance was due. Sylvia saw that her reign was over, that she had lost all hold on Lord Farquhart, and, in her own way, which, after all, was a very definite and distinct way, poor Sylvia loved Lord Farquhart.For six days these conditions had been changing, with all their attendant incidents and chances, and the time was ripe for a mischance. Lord Farquhart, lounging in the park, hoping to meet the Lady Barbara, even if it was only to be snubbed by the Lady Barbara, saw that young lady at the end of a long line of trees with Mr. Ashley. For Barbara had consented to walk with Mr. Ashley, partly so that she might have the freedom of open air and sunshine in which to express a belated opinion to Mr. Ashley concerning his new manner and tone, and partly in hopes that she would encounter Lord Farquhart and pique his jealousy by appearing with his rival.“I tell you I’ll not stand it, not for an instant,” she was saying, the roses in her cheeks a deep, deep damask and the stars in her eyes beaming with unwonted radiance. “To hear you speak the world would think that we had been married a twelvemonth! That you demanded your rights like a commonplace husband, rather than that you sought my favor. I’ll warn you to change your manner, Mr. Harry Ashley, or you’ll find that you have neither rights nor favors.”It was at this instant that the Lady Barbara caught sight of Lord Farquhart at his own end of the lime-shaded walk. Instantly her manner changed, though the damask roses still glowed and the stars still shone.“Nay, nay, Hal”—she laid a caressing hand on his arm—“forgive my lack of manners. I’m—I’m—perchance I’m over weary. We country maids are notused to so much pleasure as you’ve given me in London.” She leaned languorously toward Ashley and he, made presumptuous by her change of tone, slipped his arm about her slender waist.The Lady Barbara slid from his grasp with a pretty scream of amazement and shocked propriety. Then there might have followed a bit of swordplay; indeed, the Lady Barbara hoped there would—the affianced lover should have fought to defend his rights, the other should have fought for the privileges bestowed by the lady, and all the time the lady would have stood wringing her hands, moaning perchance, and praying for the discomfiture of the one or the other. But, unfortunately, none of this came to pass because, just at the critical moment, just when Lord Farquhart, watched slyly by Lady Barbara’s starry eyes, was starting forward to defend his rights, Sylvia slipped from behind a tree and flung herself with utter abandon upon Lord Farquhart.Now, in reality, Lord Farquhart tried to force the woman away from him, but the Lady Barbara saw only that his hands were on her arms, that, in very truth, he spoke to the girl! Turning on her heel, she sped from the lime walk, followed by Mr. Ashley.What ensued between Lord Farquhart and his Sylvia concerns the story little, for he had already told her that her reign was over, that a new queen had been enthroned in his heart. What ensued between the Lady Barbara and her escort cannot be written, for it was but a series of gasps and sharp cries on the lady’s part, interspersed with imploring commands on the lover’s part to tell him what ailed her. The interview was brought to a summary conclusion when the Lady Barbara reached her aunt’s house, for she flung the door to in his face and left him standing disconsolate on the outside.XIV.It was on that night that the Lady Barbara received an ovation at Lord Grimsby’s rout as the belle of London town. Most beautiful she was, in reality, for the damask roses in her cheeks were dyed with the hot blood of her heart; her eyes, that were wont to be blue as the noonday sky, were black as night, and the pomegranates of her lips had been ripened by passion. Surrounded by courtiers, she flung her favors right and left with impartial prodigality. All the time her heart was crying out that she would be avenged for the insult that had been offered her that afternoon. Harry Ashley, approaching her with hesitating deference, was joyously received, although to herself she declared that she loathed him, abhorred him and detested him.Jack Grimsby, toasting the Lady Barbara for the dozenth time, exclaimed to his crony:“’Pon my honor, though, I know not if I envy Lord Farquhart or not. His future lady seems somewhat unstinting in her favors.”“To me it seems that Lord Farquhart asks but little from his future lady,” laughed the crony.“Is not that Lord Farquhart now?” asked young Grimsby. “Let us watch him approach the lady. Let us see if she has aught left for him.”A narrow opening in the court that surrounded Lady Barbara permitted Lord Farquhart to draw near her. There was a sudden lull in the chatter that encompassed her, for others beside Jack Grimsby were questioning what the Lady Barbara had reserved for her future lord. Possibly the Lady Barbara had drawn a little aloof from her attendant swains, for she seemed to stand quite alone as she measured her fiancé with her eyes from his head to his feet and back again to his eyes. And all the while her heart was beating tempestuously and her brain was crying passionately: “If only he had loved me! If only he had loved me the least little bit!”On Lord Farquhart’s lips was an appeal to his lady’s forbearance, in his eyes lay a message to her heart, but she saw them not. His face flushed slightly, for he knew that all eyes were bent upon him. Then it paled under Barbara’scold glance. For a full moment she looked at him before she turned from him with a shiver that was visible to all, with a shrug that was seen by all. And yet, when she spoke, it was after a vehement movement of her hand as though she had silenced a warning voice.“My lords and ladies,” she cried, her voice ringing even to the corners of the hushed room, “I—I feel that I must tell you all that this man, this Lord Farquhart, who was to have been my husband in less than a week, is—is your gentleman highwayman, your Black Devil who has made your London roads a terror to all honest men.”For an instant there was absolute silence. Then surprise, amazement and consternation rose in a babel of sound, but over all Lady Barbara’s voice rang once more.“I am positive that I speak only the truth,” she cried. “No, Lord Farquhart, I’ll not hear you, now or ever again. I’ve seen him in his black disguise. He told me himself that he was this Black Devil of the roads. He confessed it all to me.”The lady still stood alone, and the crowd had edged away from Lord Farquhart, leaving him, also, alone. On every face surprise was written, but in no eyes, on no lips, was this so clearly marked as on Lord Farquhart’s own face.And yet he spoke calmly.“Is this the sequel to your jest, my lady, or has it deeper meaning than a jest?”“Ah, jest you chose to call it once before, and jest you may still call it,” she answered, fiercely, but now her hand was pressed close against her heart.“For a full week I have known this fact,” exclaimed Ashley, stepping to the Lady Barbara’s side. “Unfortunately, I have seen with my own eyes proofs convincing even me that my Lord Farquhart is this highway robber. I cannot doubt it, but I have refrained from speaking before because Lady Barbara asked me to be silent, asked me to protect her cousin, hoping, I suppose, that she could save him from his fate, that she could induce him to forego this perilous pursuit; but——”Lord Farquhart’s hand was closing on his sword, but he did not fail even then to note the disdain with which Lady Barbara turned from her champion. She hurriedly approached Lord Grimsby, who was looking curiously at this highwayman who he himself had had reason to think was the devil incarnate.“I beg your pardon, Lord Grimsby”—Lady Barbara was still impetuous—“for this interruption of yourfête, but, to me, it seemed unwarranted that this man should longer masquerade among you as a gentleman.”She swept away from Lord Grimsby. She passed close to Lord Farquhart, lingering long enough to whisper for his ear alone: “You see I can forgive a crime, but not an insult.” Then, sending a hurried message to her aunt, she paced on down the room, her head held high, the damask roses still blooming brilliantly, the stars still shining brightly.A score of officious hands held her cloak, a dozen officious voices called her chair. And my Lady Barbara thanked her helpers with smiling lips that were still pomegranate red, and yet the curtains of her chair caught her first sob as they descended about her, and it seemed but a disheveled mass of draperies that the footmen discovered when they set the lady down at her own door, so prone she was with grief and despair.XV.Lord Farquhart seemed to recover himself but slowly from the shock of Lady Barbara’s denunciation, from the surprise of her whispered words. At last he raised his eyes to Lord Grimsby, who was still looking at him curiously.“I fear that I should also ask your pardon, my Lord Grimsby, for this confusion.” Lord Farquhart’s words came slowly. “My cousin, the Lady Barbara, must be strangely overwrought.With your permission, I will follow her and attend to her needs.”He turned and for the first time looked definitely at the little knot of men that surrounded him. The women, young and old, had been withdrawn from his environment by their escorts. His eyes traveled slowly from one to another of the familiar faces.“Surely, my Lord Grimsby,” clamored Ashley, “you will not let the fellow escape!”“Surely my Lord Grimsby is going to place no reliance on a tale like this told by a whimsical girl!” retorted Lord Farquhart before Lord Grimsby’s slow words had fallen on his ears.“We will most assuredly take all measures for safeholding my Lord Farquhart.”“But, Lord Grimsby,” cried Farquhart, realizing for the first time that the situation might have a serious side, “you surely do not believe this tale!”“I would like to see some reason for doubting the lady’s word,” answered the older man. “And you forget that her story is corroborated by Mr. Ashley. Neither must you overlook the fact that for some time the authorities have been convinced that this highwayman was no common rogue, that he is undoubtedly some one closely connected with our London life, if—if indeed——” But this was no place for Lord Grimsby to assert his own opinion that the highwayman was indeed the devil incarnate.“Why, the whole thing is the merest fabrication,” cried Lord Farquhart, impatiently. “It is all without reason, without sense, without possible excuse. The Lady Barbara’s imagination has been played upon in some way, for some reason that I cannot understand. You heard her declare that she’d seen me in the fellow’s disguise. That is an absolute impossibility. I’ve never seen the rogue, much less impersonated him.”“You shall, of course, have the benefit of any doubt, Lord Farquhart.” Lord Grimsby’s voice had assumed its judicial tones and fell with sinister coldness on every ear. “But, innocent or guilty, you must admit that the safety of his majesty’s realm demands that the truth be proved.”“Ay, it shall be proved, too,” cried Jack Grimsby, who had been so warmly befriended in time of direct need by the Black Highwayman. “And you shall have the benefit of every doubt there may be, Percy. Rest assured of that. And in the event that there is no doubt, if it is proved that you are our Black Devil, you’ll still go free. Your case will be in my father’s hands, and I here repeat my oath that if the Black Devil goes to the gallows, I go on the road, following as close as may be in his footsteps.”Farquhart shuddered out from under the protecting hand young Grimsby had laid on his shoulder.“You speak as though you half believed the tale,” he cried. His eyes traveled once again around the little circle. Then his face grew stern. “Let Mr. Ashley repeat his tale,” he said, slowly. “Let him tell the Lady Barbara’s story and his own corroboration as circumstantially as may be.”“Yes, let Harry Ashley tell his story,” echoed Jack Grimsby, “and when he has finished let him say where and when he will measure swords with me, for if he lies he lies like a blackguard, and if he spoke the truth he speaks it like a liar.”Ashley’s sword was half out of its sheath, but it was arrested by Lord Grimsby’s voice.“I will consent that Mr. Ashley should tell his story here and now,” he said. “It’s unusual and irregular, but the circumstances are unusual and irregular. I request your appreciation of this courtesy, my Lord Farquhart, and as for you, my son, a gentleman’s house may serve strange purposes, but it’s no place for a tavern brawler. So take heed of your words and manners.”Lord Farquhart had merely bowed his head in answer to Lord Grimsby’s words; Jack still stood near him, his hand on his shoulder, but Ashley looked in vain for a pair of friendly eyes to which he might direct his tale. And yet he knew that everyone was waiting avidly for his words.“The story is short and proves itself,” he began. “A week ago the Lady Barbara Gordon was traveling toward London attended only by her father’s servants. My Lord Farquhart, with a party of his friends, among whom I was included at that time, awaited her at Marmaduke Bass’ tavern, The Jolly Grig. A short time before the Lady Barbara was to arrive, Lord Farquhart withdrew to his room, presumably to sleep, until——”“Ay, and sleep he did,” interrupted young Treadway, who spoke for the first time. “We both slept in my room on the ground floor of the tavern.”“You slept, no doubt, Mr. Treadway,” answered Lord Grimsby. “But, if so, how can you vouch for the fact that Lord Farquhart slept?”“I can vouch for it—I can vouch for it because I know he slept,” spluttered Treadway.“I fear me much that your reasoning will not help to save your friend,” answered the councillor, a little scornfully. “Let me beg that Mr. Ashley be not again interrupted to so little purpose.”“While, according to his own account, Mr. Treadway slept,” continued Ashley, “while he supposed Lord Farquhart was also sleeping, I heard Lord Farquhart singing in his room overhead. At the time I paid little heed to it. In fact, I did not think of it again that night, although, if I remember rightly, I commented on Lord Farquhart’s voice to Mr. Cecil Lindley, who sat with me in the tavern. It was full fifteen minutes after that when the Lady Barbara drove into the inn, crying that she had been waylaid by the Black Highwayman. Her rings had been stolen, her rings and a jeweled gauntlet and a rose. She was strangely confused and would not permit us to ride in pursuit of the villain, averring that she had promised him immunity in exchange for her own life.”“A pretty tale,” Jack Grimsby again interrupted, in spite of his father’s commands. “It’s a lie on its own face. ’Tis well known that the Black Devil has never taken a life, has never even threatened bodily injury.”“Be that as it may”—Ashley’s level voice ignored the tone of the interruption, although his nervous fingers were on his sword—“when the Lady Barbara’s companion, Mistress Benton, tried to say that the Lady Barbara had recognized her assailant, that the Lady Barbara had willingly descended from the coach with the highwayman, the Lady Barbara silenced her peremptorily and ordered that we hurry with all speed to London. ’Twas the following morning, my Lord Grimsby, that the truth was revealed to me, for Lord Farquhart’s own servant returned to the Lady Barbara, in my presence, the jewels that had been stolen the night before, the jewels and the rose the highwayman had taken from her.”“You forget the jeweled gauntlet, Mr. Ashley.” Again it was Jack Grimsby’s sneering voice that interrupted Ashley’s tale. “Did my Lord Farquhart keep his lady’s glove when he returned the other baubles?”Ashley’s face flushed, but he looked steadily at Lord Grimsby; he directed the conclusion of his story to Lord Grimsby’s ears.“It was then that the Lady Barbara confessed, much against her will, I will admit, that it was indeed her cousin and her fiancé who had waylaid her, merely to confess to her his identity with this bandit whose life is, assuredly, forfeit to the crown.”Lord Farquhart had listened in tense silence. Now he started forward, his hand on his sword, but his arms were caught by two of Lord Grimsby’s men. “You will admit, my Lord Farquhart, that the matter demands explanation,” said the councillor, dryly. “How came you by the jewels and rose? Can you tell us? And what of the missing gauntlet?”“The rings and the rose my servant found in my coat,” answered Farquhart, his eyes so intent on his questioner’s face that he failed to see the smile that curved the lips of those who heard him. “The gauntlet I never saw, I never had it in my possession for a moment.”“How did you account for the jewelsin your coat if you did not put them there yourself?” demanded Lord Grimsby.“At first I was at a loss to account for them at all.” Lord Farquhart’s voice showed plainly that he resented the change in his questioner’s manner. “I recalled my cousin’s confusion when she had told her tale of highway robbery, and all at once it seemed to me that the whole affair was an invention of her own, some madcap jest that she was playing on me, perchance to test my bravery, to see if I would ride forthwith after the villain. If so, I had failed her signally, for I had accepted her commands and gone with her straight to London. I supposed, in furtherance of this idea, that she had hired her own servant, or bribed mine, to hide the jewels in my coat. I never thought once of the gauntlet she had claimed to lose, never remembered it from that night until now. I sent the jewels to her, and later in the day I taxed her with the jest, and she agreed, it seemed to me, that it had been a jest and asked that the return of the rings might close the incident. I have not spoken of it since, nor has she, until to-night.”There was a long silence, and then Lord Grimsby spoke.“Your manner carries conviction, Lord Farquhart, but Mr. Ashley’s tale sounds true. Perchance some prank is at the bottom of all this, but you will pardon me if I but fulfill my duty to the crown. The case shall be conducted with all speed, but until your name is cleared, or until we find the perpetrator of the joke, if joke it be, I must hold you prisoner.”There was a short scuffle, a sharp clash of arms. But these came from Lord Farquhart’s friends. Lord Farquhart himself stood as though stunned. He walked away as though he were in a dream, and not until he was safely housed under bolt and bar in the sheriff’s lodge could he even try to sift the matter to a logical conclusion.For an instant only did he wonder if Barbara and Ashley had chosen this way to rid themselves of him. He remembered with a gleam of triumph Barbara’s disdainful manner toward Ashley when he had stepped to her side, vouching for the truth of her statement. He remembered, too, that Barbara had had short moments of kindness toward him in the last few days, that there had been moments when she had been exceeding sweet to him; when he had even hoped that he was, indeed, winning her love.Then, like a flash, he remembered Sylvia’s presence under the trees that afternoon. Undoubtedly Barbara had seen her, and if Barbara had grown to care for him ever so little, she would have resented bitterly a thing like that. That might have been the insult to which she referred. But the crime! Of what crime had he been guilty? Assuredly she did not believe, herself, the tale she had told. She did not believe that he was this highwayman.Here Lord Farquhart caught a gleam of light. Ashley might have convinced her that such a tale was true. Ashley might have arranged the highway robbery and might have placed the jewels in his coat to throw the guilt on him. Ashley was undoubtedly at the bottom of the whole thing. Then he remembered Ashley’s flush when the gauntlet had been referred to. Had Ashley kept the gauntlet, then?Following fast upon this question was another flash of light even brighter than the first. To Farquhart the truth seemed to stand out clear and transparent. Ashley was the gentleman of the highways! Ashley was the Black Devil. Farquhart threw back his head and laughed long and loud. If only he had used his wits, he would have denounced the fellow where he stood.And in this realization of Ashley’s guilt, and in the consciousness that Barbara must love him at least a little if she had been jealous of Sylvia, Lord Farquhart slept profoundly.XVI.All this merely brings the narrative back to the announcement made by Marmaduke to Lindley and Johan whenthey entered the courtyard of The Jolly Grig after the fight with the highwaymen.As may be supposed, it was several nights before Lindley was sufficiently recovered from his wound to again keep tryst with Johan, the player’s boy. When at last he could ride out to the edge of the Ogilvie woods, he found the lad sitting on the ground under an oak, apparently waiting for whatever might happen. He did not speak at all until he was accosted by Lindley, and then he merely recited in a listless manner that Mistress Judith was gone to London with her father.The boy’s manner was so changed, his tone was so forlorn, that Lindley’s sympathy was awakened. He wondered if the lad really loved Judith so devotedly.“And that has left you so disconsolate?” he asked.“Ay, my master!” Indeed the youth’s tone was disconsolate, even as a true lover’s might have been.“And when went Mistress Judith to London?” asked Lindley. “This afternoon? This morning?”“But no. She went some four days ago, all in a hurry, as it seemed,” Johan answered.“Four days ago!” echoed Lindley. “But why did you not send me word?” He was thinking of the days that had been wasted with his lady near him, all unknown to him, in London.“She—I mean—I thought you would be here each night,” stammered the boy, contritely, and yet his tone was listless. “I’ve but kept the tryst with you.”Lindley looked at the boy curiously. Preoccupied as he was with his own thoughts, he still recognized the change in his companion.“What’s the matter, Johan?” he asked. “You were not hurt the other night, were you? Are you still brooding on the fact that you killed your man? Are you ill? Or do you fear that I’ve forgot my debt? What ails you? Can’t you tell me?” The questions hurried on, one after another. “Or is it Mistress Judith’s absence, alone, that hurts you thus? Is she to be long in London?”“N—no. That is, I do not know,” the boy made answer to the last question. “We, my master and I and all his company, go ourselves early to-morrow to London. Doubtless I shall see Mistress Judith there.”“Why, then, ’tis only that the scene will shift to London,” cried Lindley. “Cheer up, my lad, we’ll name a tryst in London. Besides, there’s news waiting you in London; news for you and your master concerning your bond to him. You hardly look the part of a lad who’s won to freedom by a pretty bit of swordplay. You should have learned ere now to fit your countenance to the parts you perform.”“But I’ve performed so few parts, Master Lindley. I am only Johan, the player’s boy, and, by your leave, I’ll go now, and for a tryst—she—for our tryst, say at ten o’clock, in front of Master Timothy Ogilvie’s mansion, where Mistress Judith and her father lodge. I’ll have surely seen Mistress Judith then, and can report to you any change, if change there be.”The slender lad slipped back into the shadows of the Ogilvie woods, but for full ten minutes he held Lindley’s thoughts away from the lady of his heart’s desire. What could ail the lad to be so changed, so spiritless? Was his love so deep that to be weaned from Judith for even a few short hours could break his spirit thus? Or was it possible that the duel and the fatigues of that midnight encounter had been too much for his strength? Lindley could answer none of these questions, so the lover’s thoughts soon strayed back to Mistress Judith, and the player’s lad was forgot.But even Mistress Judith held not all of Lindley’s thoughts that night, for Lord Farquhart’s fate was resting heavily on his mind. That Farquhart was, indeed, the gentleman of the highways Lindley knew to be impossible, and yet all the facts seemed to be against the imprisoned lord. Even Lindley’s word had gone against him, for Lindley had been questioned, and had been obliged to admit that he had heard Lord Farquhartsinging in his room above the stairs at the very time when Clarence Treadway, when Farquhart himself, swore that he was asleep belowstairs in Treadway’s room. There was no evidence, whatsoever, for Lord Farquhart save his own words. All the evidence was against him.And the affair that had savored more of a jest than of reality seemed gradually to be settling down to a dull, unpleasant truth. Farquhart could and would tell but the one tale. Ashley would tell but one tale, and he, in truth, had convinced himself of Farquhart’s guilt, absurd as it seemed. The Lady Barbara could only lie on her bed and moan and sob, and cry that she loved Lord Farquhart; that she wished she could unsay her words. She could not deny the truth of what she had told, though nothing could induce her to tell the story over. But all of her stuttering, stammering evasions of the truth seemed only to fix the guilt more clearly upon Lord Farquhart. Even to Lindley, who had been with him on the night in question, it did not seem altogether impossible that Lord Farquhart had had time to ride forth, waylay his cousin and rejoin his friends at the inn ere the lady drove into the courtyard.Another point that stood out strongly against Lord Farquhart—a point that was weighing heavily in public opinion—was that since the night of Lady Barbara’s arrival in London, since which time Lord Farquhart had been obliged to be in close attendance upon his cousin, there had been no hold ups by this redoubtable highwayman. The men who had attacked Lindley and the player’s lad had been but bungling robbers of the road. That they could have had any connection with the robbery of the Lady Barbara, or with the other dashing plays of the Black Devil, had been definitely disproved.So all of Farquhart’s friends were weighed down with apprehension of the fate in store for him, whether he was guilty or not. The only hope lay in Lord Grimsby, the old man who had been convinced that the highwayman was in league with the devil, if he was not the devil himself; the old man whose only son had vowed to take to the road if the Black Highwayman met his fate at his father’s hands. But the hopes that were based on the demon-inspired terror, and the paternal love of Lord Grimsby, seemed faint, indeed, to Lindley as he rode toward London that night.XVII.Lindley was first at the tryst in London, but Johan soon slipped from the shadow of Master Timothy Ogilvie’s gateway.“I can stop but a moment,” he whispered, nervously. “I must not be seen here. My—my master must not know that I—I am abroad in London.”“And Mistress Judith?” questioned Lindley. “Have you seen her? Is she still here? Is she well?”“I have seen Mistress Judith for a moment only,” answered the lad. “She is well enough, but she is worn out with the care of her cousin, Lady Barbara, and she is sadly dispirited, too.”“’Tis a pity Lady Barbara cannot die,” muttered Lindley, “after the confusion she’s gotten Lord Farquhart into. A sorry mess she’s made of things.”“The poor girl——” Johan shuddered. “Mistress Judith says the poor girl is in desperate straits, does naught but cry and sob, and vows she loves Lord Farquhart better than her life.”“Ay, she may well be in desperate straits,” shrugged Lindley. “And she’ll be in worse ones when she finds she’s played a goodly part in hanging an innocent man!”“Hanging!” Johan’s exclamation was little more than a shrill, sharp cry.“Ay, hanging, I said,” answered Lindley. “What other fate does she think is in store for Lord Farquhart?”“But—but this Lord Farquhart is a friend of yours, too, is he not, Master Lindley?” The boy’s question was slow and came after a long silence.“Yes, a good friend and an honest man, if ever there was one,” answered Lindley.“An—an honest man!” Johan shuddered again. “That’s it, an honest man he is, isn’t he?”“As honest as you or I!” Lindley’s thoughts were so preoccupied that he hardly noticed his companion’s agitation.“But there must be some way of escape,” Johan whispered, after another silence. “Some way to save him! If nothing else, some way to effect his escape!”“Nay, I see no way,” gloomed Lindley.In the darkness Johan crept closer to Lindley.“Is it only grief for Lord Farquhart that fills your heart,” he asked, “or is it your wound that still hurts? Or—or has Mistress Judith some place in your thoughts? You seem so somber, so depressed, my master!”“Ah, lad!” Lindley’s sigh was deep and long. “Even Mistress Judith herself might fail to comprehend. She still fills all of me that a woman can fill, but a man’s friend has a firm grip on his life. If harm comes to Lord Farquhart, the world will never again be so bright a place as it has been!”“But harm cannot come to Lord Farquhart!” Johan’s voice was suddenly soft and full. “Hemustbe helped. There are a hundred ways that have not been tried. There is one way—oh, there is one way, in all those hundred ways—I mean, that must succeed. Think, Master Lindley. Cannot I help? Cannot I help in some way—to—to save your friend?”Lindley was touched by the earnestness of the boy’s tone, and laid a kindly hand on his shoulder.“I’ll think, my lad, but to what purpose I cannot promise you. This is no place for swordplay, however brilliant it may be.”Johan had drawn roughly away from Lindley’s side. Now he leaned against the gate, dejection in every line of his drooping figure.“There is one way,” he muttered, slowly. “There is always one way, but——”“You need not take it so to heart, boy,” Lindley urged. “You’re sadly worn and tired now. I saw last night that you were quite spiritless and lacking in heart! To-night, I see it even plainer.”“Oh, ’tis naught but the work I have to do,” Johan answered, wearily.“The work?” questioned Lindley. “Is it a new part you have to play?”“Ay, that’s it,” sighed Johan; “a new part, a man’s part and a woman’s part all in one! It’s a most difficult part, indeed.” He was muttering the words to himself, and, under his cloak, Lindley could see his hands twisting nervously.“Forgive me, lad!” Lindley’s tone was conscience-stricken. “I’d not forgotten the debt I owed you, though I seem to have forgot the promised payment. There’s been over much on my mind these last few days. But I’ll buy your freedom now, to-night, from this master player of yours. Where lies he? Let us go to him at once. Then you can give up this part and take the rest you need.”“Oh, no, no, I must play this part,” answered the player’s boy, hurriedly. “I—I——Let me win to success before I speak to him of leaving him. I must,mustsucceed now. Then, perhaps, we can talk of freedom, not before.”“Well, as you like!” Lindley’s voice had grown careless once again. He was again absorbed in his own affairs. “Think you I might see Mistress Judith to-morrow, if I had a message from Lord Farquhart for the Lady Barbara?”“But have you access to Lord Farquhart?” The boy spoke quickly, so quickly that Lindley failed to notice the change in voice and manner.“Why, I suppose I can gain access to him,” answered Lindley.“But then surely I—surely we can rescue him,” cried Johan. “I’d not supposed that we could see Lord Farquhart, that we could gain speech with him. Now I know that I can help you free him. Think, think from now until to-morrow night at this time of some feasible plan, some way of taking Johan,the player’s boy, into Lord Farquhart’s presence. But wait! Why could you not take me to him disguised as the Lady Barbara? Mistress Judith would provide me with Lady Barbara’s cloak and veil and petticoats. She could coach me in her looks and manners. Have you forgotten how well I can impersonate a woman? And then, if I could pass the jailer as the Lady Barbara, what would hinder Farquhart from passing out as the Lady Barbara? I—I could personate Lord Farquhart, at a pinch, until rescue came to me. Or if it came to a last extremity, why I could still go to the gallows as Lord Farquhart! But that extremity would not come. There would be no difficulty in saving a worthless player’s lad, and they say that ’tis only Mr. Ashley’s work that is telling against the prisoner; that he is using this public means to wreak a private vengeance. Oh, if I can but see Lord Farquhart! If I can but speak to him! Much might be done, even if he refused the disguise of hood and cloak. Be here to-morrow night, with permits for yourself and Lady Barbara to see Lord Farquhart. Leave all the rest to me!” Johan’s impetuous voice had grown stronger, more positive, as his thoughts had formed themselves. His last words savored of a command. They were uttered in the tone that expects obedience, but Lindley ignored this.“’Twould be but a waste of time,” he answered, gloomily.“Well, what of that?” demanded Johan. “Perhaps it would be but a waste of one night. But of what value is your time or my time when there is even a chance of safety for Lord Farquhart?”“I suppose you’re right in that,” agreed Lindley. “I’ll be here with the permits, as you say, to-morrow night. But what think you of my ruse to speak to Mistress Judith in the morning? If I were to present myself here at the house with a message from Lord Farquhart to the Lady Barbara, would not Judith speak with me? Remember, boy, that twenty-five crowns are yours the day I speak with Mistress Judith!”“Oh, Mistress Judith, Mistress Judith!” cried the lad, impatiently. “Your thoughts are all for Mistress Judith. She will see no one, she will speak to no one, so she said to-day, until the Lady Barbara is recovered, until Lord Farquhart is free. It will be all that I can do to gain access to her to make my demand for the Lady Barbara’s clothes. And she is—she says that she is sick of the whole world. Her cousin’s plight, Lord Farquhart’s danger, have sickened her of the whole world. It’s for her sake that I would free Lord Farquhart. Until Lord Farquhart is released, Judith Ogilvie’s mind cannot rest for a single second. So for her sake you must work to free him, for Judith’s sake, for the sake of the woman you love!”

The Lady Barbara, in the midst of her interview with Mr. Ashley, was disturbed by Lord Farquhart’s servant bearing her rings and the rose that had been stolen the night before. Her confusion expressed itself in deep damask roses on the cheeks that had, indeed, been lily white before.

“Lord Farquhart returns these to me?” she cried in her amazement.

“Yes, my lady, he said that they were to pass into no other hands than yours, that you would understand.”

“That I would understand?” she questioned, and the damask roses had already flown.

“How came they into Lord Farquhart’s hands?” asked Ashley, but he was vouchsafed no answer.

“That you would understand, my lady, and that he would be with you himself this afternoon.”

The servant was looking at the lady respectfully enough, but behind the respect lurked curiosity, for even a servant may question the drolleries and vagaries of his masters. And here, indeed, was a most droll mass of absurdities.

But the lady was not looking at the servant at all. Rather was she looking at Mr. Ashley, and something that she read in his narrowing eyes, in the smile that curved but one corner of his lips, caused her cheeks to blossom once again into damask roses—nay, not in damask roses; rather were they peonies and poppies that dyed her cheeks. She spoke no word at all, and only with a gesture of her hand did she dismiss the servant, a gesture of the hand that held the withered rose and the jeweled rings.

There was a long silence in the boudoir. My Lady Barbara was playing nervously with the rings Lord Farquhart’s servant had returned to her. Mr. Ashley was watching the girl.

“So my Lord Farquhart masqueraded as our gentleman of the highways?” Mr. Ashley’s voice was full of scorn.

A quick gleam shone in Barbara’s eyes. Her breath fluttered.

“Masqueraded!” she whispered.

There was another silence, and then Mr. Ashley spoke again, his voice, too, but little above a whisper.

“You mean, Barbara, that Lord Farquhartisthis gentleman of the highways?”

“Oh, why, why do you say so?” she stammered.

“Ah, Barbara, Barbara, why do you not deny it if it is deniable?” His voice rang with triumph.

But he was answered only by the Lady Barbara’s changing color, by her quivering lips.

“Why do you not admit it, then?” he asked again.

“Why should I admit it or deny it?” she asked, faintly. “What do I know of Lord Farquhart’s movements, save that I am to marry him in less than a fortnight’s time?”

“To marry Lord Farquhart!” Mr. Ashley laughed aloud. “To marry a highwayman whose life is forfeit to the crown! Say rather that you are freefor all time from Lord Farquhart! Say rather, sweetheart, thatweare free!”

“But why do you take it so easily for granted that my cousin is this highwayman?” asked Barbara.

“Why, it has long been whispered that this highwayman was some one of London’s gallants seeking a new amusement. Surely it is easy to fit that surmise to Lord Farquhart. ’Twould be easy with even less assistance than Lord Farquhart has given us.”

“But what would it profit us to be rid of Lord Farquhart—granting that he is this—this gentleman of the highways?” The Lady Barbara’s eyes were still on her rings. She did not lift them to the man who stood so near her.

“Profit us!” he cried. “It would give you to me. It would permit you to marry me—if Lord Farquhart were out of the way. What else stands between us?”

“No,” she murmured, in a low, faint voice, her eyes still on the jewels in her hands. “’Tis not my Lord Farquhart stands between us, but your poverty and my father’s will. How can we marry when you have nothing, when I would have less than nothing if I defied my father? No, I intend to marry Lord Farquhart, whatever he may be.”

Ashley’s eyes questioned her, but his lips did not move. And she, although she did not raise her eyes to his, knew what his asked. And yet, for several moments, she did not answer. Then, flinging the rings from her, she sprang to her feet.

“Why not take this chance that’s flung to us, Hal?” she cried. “Can’t you see what we have won? Why, Lord Farquhart’s life is forfeit tousso long as we hold his secret. A pretty dance we can lead him at the end of our own rope, and we’ll have but to twitch a finger to show him that we’ll transfer the end to the proper authority if he dares to interfere with our pleasures!”

“But, Barbara!” The man was, indeed, as shaken as his voice. He had found it hard enough to credit the evidence of ears and eyes that proved to him that Lord Farquhart was the Black Devil of the London highways, but harder yet was it to believe that Barbara, the unsophisticated country girl, was versed in all the knowledge and diplomacy of a Londonmondaine.

“Don’t ‘but Barbara’ me,” she cried, impatiently. “I’ll not be tied down any longer. I must be free, free, free! All my life long I’ve been in bondage to my father’s will. Now, in a fortnight’s time I can be free—controlled by no will but my own. Can you not see how this act of Lord Farquhart’s throws him into my power? How it gives me my freedom forever?”

“But you’d consent to marry this common highwayman?” Incredulity held each of Ashley’s words.

“Ay, I’d marry a common highwayman for the same gain.” The Lady Barbara’s violet eyes were black with excitement. “But Lord Farquhart’s not a common highwayman, as you call him. You know well enough that this Black Devil has never once stolen aught for himself. My Lord Farquhart, if he is, in reality, this gentleman highwayman, doubtless loves the excitement of the chase. ’Tis merely a new divertisement—a hunt, as it were, for men instead of beasts. In truth, it almost makes me love Lord Farquhart to find he has such courage, such audacity, such wit and spirit!”

“But what if he is caught?” demanded Ashley. “Think of the disgrace if he is caught.”

“Ah, but he won’t be caught,” she answered, gayly. “’Tis only your laggards and cowards that are caught, and Lord Farquhart has proved himself no coward. What can you ask of fortune if you’ll not trust the jade? How can you look for luck when you’re blind to everything save ill luck? Trust fortune! Trust to luck! And trust to me, to Lady Barbara Farquhart that’ll be in less than a fortnight!” She swept him a low curtsey and lifted laughing lips to his, but he still held back. “Trust me because I love you,” she cried, still daring him on. “Though I think you’ll make me a willing bride to Farquhart if you show the white feather now.”

“But you can see, can you not, thatit’s because I love you that I fear for you?” Ashley’s tone was still grave.

“Well, but then there are two loves to back luck in the game,” she cried. Then she echoed the gravity in his voice. “What else can we do, Hal? Have you aught else to offer? Can you marry me? Can I marry you? There’s naught to fear, anyway. Lord Farquhart’ll tire of the game. What has he ever pursued for any length of time? And he’s been at this for six months or more. Nay, we can stop him, if we will. Is he not absolutely in our power?”

For a lady to win a lover to her way of thinking is easy, even though her way be diametrically opposed to his. Love blinds the eyes and dulls the ears; it lulls the conscience to all save its words. And Ashley yielded slowly, with little grace at first, wholly and absolutely at last, accepting his reward from the Lady Barbara’s pomegranate lips.

To the Lady Barbara, the game that she had planned seemed easy, and yet, in her first interview with her fiancé, certain difficulties appeared. Lord Farquhart presented himself, as in duty bound, late that first afternoon. Lady Barbara received him with chilly finger tips, offering him her oval cheek instead of her lips. He, ignoring the substitute, merely kissed the tapering fingers.

“I am glad to see that you are none the worse for last night’s encounter,” he said.

Wondering why his voice rang strangely, she answered, gayly:

“Rather the better for it, I find myself, thank you.”

“You told your tale of highway robbery so well that it deceived even my ears.” Lord Farquhart spoke somewhat stiffly. “I had not realized that you were so accomplished an actor.”

“Ay, did I not tell it well?” Her agreement with him held but a faint note of interrogation.

“I failed to catch your meaning, though, if meaning there was,” he said. And now his tone was so indifferent that the Lady Barbara might have been forgiven for thinking that he cared not to understand her meaning.

“I think I expressed my meaning fairly well last night,” she answered, her indifference matching his.

“Shall we let it pass at that, then?” he asked. “At that and nothing more?” If the Lady Barbara did not care to explain her joke, why should he force her?

“Ay, let us call it a jest,” she answered, “unless the point be driven in too far. A too pointed jest is sometimes a blunt weapon, my Lord Farquhart.”

Lord Farquhart heard the words that seemed so simple. He realized, also, that the tone was not so simple, but, as he told himself, the time would come soon enough when he would have to understand the Lady Barbara’s tones and manners. He would not begin until necessity compelled him. He had quite convinced himself that the story of the robbery, and the rings and rose in his coat, were naught save some silly joke of the unsophisticated schoolgirl he supposed his cousin to be. He moved restlessly in his chair. It was hard to find a simple subject to discuss with a simple country girl.

“You received the rings in safety?” he asked, merely to fill in the silence.

“Quite,” she answered, “quite in safety, my Lord Farquhart.” She was consuming herself with a rage that even she could not wholly understand. Her intended victim’s indifference angered her beyond endurance, and yet she dared not lose the hold she had not fully gained. A jest, indeed! He chose to call the whole thing a jest! A sorry jest he’d find it, then! And yet, surely, now was not the time for her to prove her power. Tapping her foot impatiently, she added in a thin, restrained voice: “Suppose we let the rings close the incident for the moment, my cousin!”

Again Lord Farquhart questioned the tone and manner, but he answered both with a shrug. The Lady Barbarawas even more tiresome than he had feared. He would have to teach her that snapping eyes and quarrelsome speech were out of place in amariage de convenancesuch as they were making. Doubtless he had failed to please her in some way. How he knew not. But how could he please a lady to whom he was quite indifferent, who was quite indifferent to him, and yet a lady to whom he was to be married in less than a fortnight, a whole day less than a fortnight. Lord Farquhart sighed far more deeply than was courteous to the lady.

“If I can do aught to please you, Barbara, during your stay——” he began, with perfunctory deference, but she interrupted him hotly.

“Barbara!” she had been fuming inwardly. And only the night before it had been “Babs” and “sweetheart” and “sweet cousin”! Her wrath rose quite beyond control and her voice broke forth impetuously.

“I beg of you not to give me your time before it is necessary, my Lord Farquhart. And—and I beg you will excuse me now. I go to-night to Mistress Barry’s ball, and I—I—would rest after last night’s fatigues.”

She flounced from the room without further leave-taking, and as she fled on to her own chamber her anger escaped its bounds.

“He talks to me of jests,” she cried, with angry vehemence. “A sorry jest he’ll find it, on my word.Aie!I hate his insolent indifference. One would think I was a simple country fool to hear him talk. He—he—when I can have him hung just when it suits my good convenience! I’ll not marry him at all! Ay, but I will, though. I’ll make it worse for him by marrying him. And then I’ll show him! Just wait, my lord, until I’m Lady Farquhart and you’ll dance to a different tune, I’m thinking. Oh, I hate him, I hate him! I suppose he goes now to his Sylvia, or—or, perchance, out onto the road again.” The Lady Barbara’s tantrum had carried her into her own room and she had slammed the door. Now she found herself stopped by the opposite wall, and suddenly her tone changed. It grew quite soft, almost tender. “I wonder if his Sylvia is fairer than I am,” she said. “I wonder if he might not come to look upon me as worthy of something more than that sidewise glance.”

As for Lord Farquhart, left alone in the boudoir, he was still indifferent and still somewhat insolent, for, as he sauntered out from the room, he muttered:

“May the devil take all women save the one you happen to be in love with! And yet she’s a pretty minx, too, if she hadn’t such a vixenish temper!”

And then he hummed the last line of his song to Sylvia.

Five times had Johan, the player’s boy, met young Lindley at the edge of the Ogilvie woods. Five times he had reported nothing of any interest concerning Mistress Judith Ogilvie, or, rather, the sum of the five reports had amounted to naught. Once he said that Mistress Judith was, if anything, quieter than usual. Again he told that her maids had said that she had been in a fine rage when Master Lindley had braved her wrath by appearing at her home and demanding an interview with her. But when her father had taxed her with her rudeness in refusing to descend and speak with her cousin, she had merely shrugged her shoulders and said that Master Lindley was of too little consequence even to discuss. She had been little with the players. Johan himself had had much trouble in gaining any interviews with her. She had spent more time than usual sewing with the maids. She had spent more time with her father, giving as an excuse that she could not ride abroad because her horse was lame. But Johan averred that he had seen one of the stable lads exercising Star and there had been nothing wrong with the horse.

On the sixth night Johan, peering up at Lindley from under his black curls, asked if any inference could be gathered from aught that he had reported and Lindley was obliged to confessthat he saw none. The shadows of the trees fell all about them.

“If Mistress Judith knew that I was watching her to make report to you,” hazarded the lad, “it might almost seem as though she were playing some part for your benefit, so different is all this from her former ways, but——”

“But she does not know,” Lindley concluded the sentence.

“Nay, how could she know?” the lad asked. “If she knew she would but include me in her hatred of you. She would deny me all access to her, and that I could not bear. ’Tis all of no use, my master. Mistress Judith is quite outside of all chance of your winning her. So little have I done that I’ll gladly release you from your bargain if you’ll but give up all hope of winning her.”

“I’ve no faint heart, boy,” answered Lindley. “Your Mistress Judith will come to my call yet, you’ll see.”

“I’m not so sure I’d like to see that day, my master,” answered the lad, in a whimsical tone. “But, in all honesty, I should tell you—I mean I’m thinking——” He hesitated.

“Well, boy, you’re thinking what?” questioned Lindley, impatiently. “Though I offered not to pay you for your thoughts.”

“No, I give you my thoughts for no pay whatsoever.” Johan’s voice was still full of a restrained mirth. “And you must remember, too, that I told you at the first that I myself was a lover of Mistress Judith Ogilvie. That, perhaps, gives me better understanding of the maid. That, perhaps, makes my thoughts of value.”

“Well, and what do you think?” demanded Lindley.

“I—I was going to say”—the boy spoke slowly—“it seems to me that—that Mistress Judith may already be in love.”

“In love!” echoed Lindley. “And with whom, pray you, might Mistress Judith be in love? Whom has she seen to fall in love with? Where has she been to fall in love? It was only last week that you told me that Mistress Judith had sworn that she would never be in love with any man—that she would never be won by any man.”

“Ay, but maids—some maids—change their minds as easily as their ribbons, my master,” quoth the boy, somewhat sententiously.

“What reason have you for your opinion that Mistress Judith may be in love?” Lindley’s question broke a short silence, and he bit his lip over the obnoxious word.

“I—why, it seems to me that her docility might prove it, might it not? I—it’s a lover’s heart that speaks to you, remember—a heart that loves mightily, a heart that yearns mightily. But is not docility on a maid’s part a sign of love? Might it not be? It seems to me that if I were a maid and I’d fallen desperately and woefully in love, I’d be all for gentleness and quiet, I’d sew with my maids and dream of love, I’d give all of my time to my father from whom love was so soon to take me. That’s what I should think a maid would do, and that is what Mistress Judith has done for a week past. And then to-day, as I hung about outside her windows, I heard her rating her maids. Mistress Judith’s voice can be quite high and shrill when she is annoyed, you may remember; and the one complete sentence that I heard was this: ‘Am I always to be buried in a country house, think ye, and what would town folk think of stitches such as those if they could see them? But see them they’ll not, for you’ll have to do some tedious ripping here, my girls, and some better stitches.’ Now”—the boy’s lips curled dolorously—“does not that sound to you as though Mistress Judith were contemplating some change in her estate, as though she had already given her heart to some town gallant?”

Lindley’s brows were black and his lips, too, were curled. But curses were the rods that twisted them.

“What devil’s work is the girl up to now?” he demanded, savagely. “She’s doubtless met some ne’er-do-well unbeknown to Master Ogilvie. I must see Mistress Judith at once, on the very instant, and have it out with her.”

“Oh, no, no!” cried Johan, the player’s boy. “You’ll but drive her on in any prank she’s bent on.”

“Then it’s Master Ogilvie I’ll see,” declared Lindley. “Where have all your eyes been that the girl could have met a lover; that she could have seen anyone with whom to fall in love? She must not fall in love with anyone save me. Do you hear, boy? I love her. I love her.”

“Ah, then it is your heart that’s engaged in this matter,” commented Johan. “I thought, perhaps—why, perhaps it was merely Mistress Judith’s defiance of her father’s wishes that led you on to wish to marry her. You—you really do love Mistress Judith, for herself? Really love her as a lover ought to love?”

“You’re over curious, my lad,” growled Lindley. “And yet ’tis my own fault, I suppose. I’ve given you my confidence.”

“But how know you that you love Mistress Judith?” persisted the boy.

“I love her—I love her because I’ve loved her always,” answered Lindley, passionately. “I loved her when I was ten, when she was six, when her golden head was no higher than my heart.”

“’Tis somewhat higher now, I think.” The boy’s words were very low. “More like her heart would match to yours. Her eyes are as high above the ground as your own. Her lips would not be raised to meet your lips.”

Lindley’s face had grown scarlet.

“Be silent, boy,” he cried. “You speak over freely of sacred things.”

The lad, backing away from under Lindley’s upraised arm, still murmured, echoing Lindley’s words: “Sacred things!” and added: “Mistress Judith’s heart! Her eyes! Her lips!”

What Lindley’s answer might have been from lips and hand the lad never knew. It was checked by a sudden onslaught from behind. Out from the low bushes that hedged the woods sprang two figures in hoods and cloaks. The foremost was tall and burly, though agile enough. The second seemed but a clumsy follower. In an instant Lindley’s sword was engaged with that of the leader. For only an instant Johan hesitated. Drawing a short sword from under his cloak, he sprang upon the second of the highwaymen. Their battle was short, for the fellow’s clumsiness made him an easy victim for the slender youth. Pinked but slightly in the arm, he gave vent to an unearthly howl and, turning away, he fled through the dark aisles of the woods, his diminishing shrieks denoting the speed and length of his flight.

But Johan’s victory came not a second too soon, for just at that moment Lindley’s sword dropped from his hand, the blood spurting from a deep wound in his shoulder. With a low snarl of victory, the highwayman drew back his arm to plunge his sword into his victim’s breast, but Johan, springing forward and picking Lindley’s weapon from the ground, hurled himself upon their assailant.

“Not so fast, my friend,” he cried, and in another second blades were again flashing. Lindley, who for a moment had been overwhelmed by the shock of his wound, raised a useless voice in protest. Johan’s own voice drowned every sound as he drove his antagonist now this way, now that, quite at his own will.

The moon, in its last quarter, was just rising above the trees, and the narrow glade was lighted with its weird, fantastic glow. From one side of the road to the other, the shadowy figures moved, the steel blades flashing in the glinting light, Johan’s short, sharp cries punctuating the song of the swords. Lindley could hear the ruffian’s heavy breathing as Johan forced him up the bank that edged the road. He heard his horse’s nervous whinny as the fight circled his flanks. But Lindley was so fascinated by the brilliancy of the lad’s fighting that he had no thought of the outcome of the fray until he heard a sudden sharp outcry. Then he saw Johan stagger back, but he saw at the same instant that the highwayman had fallen, doubled over in a heap, upon the ground. He saw, too, that Johan’s sword, trailing on the ground, was red with blood.

“You’re hurt, lad!” Lindley, faint from loss of blood, staggered toward the boy.

“Ay, ay, hurt desperately,” moaned Johan. His voice seemed weak and faltering.

“But how? But where? I did not see him touch you!” Lindley’s left arm encircled the lad, his right hung limp at his side.

Johan’s head sank for an instant onto Lindley’s shoulder.

“No, he did not touch me, ’tis no bodily hurt,” he moaned; “but I’ve—I’ve killed the man.”

Lindley’s support was withdrawn instantly and roughly.

“After such a fight, are you fool enough to bemoan a victory?” His words, too, were rough. “Why, man, it was a fight to the death! You’d have been killed if you had not killed. Did you think you were fighting for the fun of it? You’re squeamish as a woman.”

Johan tried to recover his voice. He tried to stand erect.

“I did it well, did I not?” An unsteady laugh rang out. “The play acting, I mean. You forget, Master Lindley, that I’m a player, that in my parts I’m more often a woman than a man. And we actors are apt to grow into the parts we oftenest counterfeit.” Suddenly he staggered and the sword clattered from his hand. But again he straightened himself. “Would I gain applause as a woman, think you?”

“If it’s play acting, have done with it,” growled Lindley, whose wound was hurting; who, in reality, was almost fainting from loss of blood. “You’ve saved my life as well as your own, Johan. But we’ll touch on that later. There’s no fear, is there, that your dead man will come to life?”

The boy for the first time raised his eyes to Lindley’s face. Even in the darkness he could see that it was ghastly white and drawn with pain. A nervous cry burst from his lips, and he stretched both arms toward Lindley.

“Da—damn your play acting, boy,” sputtered Lindley. “Nay, I mean not to be so harsh. I’ll—I’ll not forget the debt I owe you either. But you must help me to The Jolly Grig, where Marmaduke has skill enough to tend my wound until I can reach London.”

“But Master Ogilvie has skill in the care of wounds,” cried Johan. “Surely we are nearer Master Ogilvie’s than The Jolly Grig. And Mistress Judith will——”

“Nay, I’ll not force myself on Mistress Judith in this way,” answered Lindley, petulantly.

“You are over considerate of Mistress Judith’s feelings, even for a lover,” returned the boy.

“Ah, it’s not Mistress Judith’s feelings I’m considerate of,” replied Lindley. “She’s capable of saying that I got the wound on purpose to lie in her house, on purpose to demand her care.”

Here Johan’s unsteady laugh rang out once more.

“Indeed she’s capable of that very thing, my master,” he said, and as he spoke he began to tear his long coat into strips.

“What are you doing that for?” demanded Lindley, leaning more and more heavily against his horse’s side.

“It’s a bandage and a sling for your arm,” answered the boy. “If you will persist in the ride to The Jolly Grig, your arm must be tied so that it will not bleed again.”

“’Twill be a wonder if you do not faint away like a woman when you touch the blood,” scoffed Lindley.

“’Twill be a wonder, I’m thinking myself,” answered the boy, unsteadily.

And then, the bandage made and adjusted, Johan offered his shoulder to assist the wounded man into the saddle. But Lindley, pressing heavily yet tenderly against the lad, said gently:

“I’ve been rough, Johan, but believe me, this night’s work will stand you in good stead. Hereafter your play acting may be a matter of choice, but never again of necessity.”

“Heaven grant that the necessity will never again be so great!” murmured Johan, indistinctly.

“I—I did not understand,” falteredLindley, reaching the saddle with difficulty.

“I said—why I said,” stammered Johan, “Heaven be praised that there would be no more necessity for play acting.”

Arrived at The Jolly Grig, Master Marmaduke Bass’ perturbed face boded ill for his surgical skill.

“Hast heard the news, my master?” he cried, before he saw the condition of his guest. “Ah, Mr. Lindley, ’tis about a friend of your own, too—a friend who was with you here not a week ago.”

“I—I care not for your news, whatever it may be, whomever it may be about,” groaned Lindley, who was near the end of his endurance.

“Master Lindley’s met with highwaymen,” interrupted Johan. “Perchance ’tis the Black Devil himself. He’s wounded and has need of your skill, not of your news.”

“Met with my Lord Farquhart!” cried honest Marmaduke. “But that’s impossible. My Lord Farquhart’s been in prison these twelve hours and more, denounced by his cousin, the Lady Barbara Gordon!”

It would have been hard to say which was the whiter, Master Lindley or Johan, the player’s boy. It would have been difficult to distinguish between their startled voices.

“Lord Farquhart! In prison!”

“Ay, Lord Farquhart. The Black Devil. The Black Highwayman. Denounced at a festival at my Lord Grimsby’s by the Lady Barbara Gordon.”

The worthy Marmaduke’s gossip was indeed true, for as strange a thing as that had really happened. Lady Barbara Gordon, in open company, had announced that she knew positively that Lord Farquhart was no other than the Black Highwayman who for a twelvemonth had been terrorizing the roads round about London town. He had confessed it to her, himself, she said. She had seen him guised as the highwayman. Mr. Ashley, the Lady Barbara’s escort at the moment, had corroborated her statements, vouchsafing on his own account that he had been with the Lady Barbara when Lord Farquhart’s servants had returned her rings and a rose that had been stolen from her by the Black Highwayman only the night before.

Just a moment’s consideration of the conditions and incidents, the chances and mischances, that led up to this denouncement will show that it was not so strange a thing, after all. To take the Lady Barbara, first. Up to the time of her visit to London, Lord Farquhart had been to her something of a figurehead. She had considered him merely as a creature quite inanimate and impersonal, who was to be forced upon her by her father’s will just as she was to be forced upon him. But Lord Farquhart in the flesh was a young man of most pleasing appearance, if of most exasperating manners. When the Lady Barbara compared him with the other gallants of the society she frequented she found that he had few peers among them, and as she accepted his punctilious courtesies and attentions she began to long to see them infused with some personal warmth and interest. She saw no reason why Lord Farquhart should be the one and only gentleman of her acquaintance who discerned no charm in her. It piqued something more than her vanity to see that she alone of all the ladies whom he met could rouse in him no personal interest whatsoever. And, almost unconsciously, she exerted herself to win from him some sign of approbation.

Also, in addition to her awakened interest in Lord Farquhart—or possibly because of it—the Lady Barbara thought she saw in Mr. Ashley’s devotion some new, some curious, some quite displeasing quality. It was not that he was not as courteous as ever. It was not that he was not as attentive as ever. It was not that he did not speak his love as tenderly, as warmly, as ever. All this was quite as it had been. But in his courtesies the Lady Barbara recognized a thinly veiled—it was not contempt, of course, but therewas the suggestion of the manner one would offer to a goddess who had advanced a step toward the extreme edge of her pedestal. And this Barbara resented. In his attentions he was quite solicitous, but it was a solicitude of custom—of custom to be, perhaps, as much as of custom that has been. To this Barbara objected. Already, too, his love savored of possession. Against this Barbara chafed. She would give her favors when she was ready to give them. They would be gifts, though—not things held by right.

Her resentments, her objections, her chafings, she tried to hold in check. She endeavored to show no sign of them to Ashley, with the result that in her manner to him he saw only the endeavor. So he, in turn, was piqued by the change in his lady. He was angry and annoyed, and asked himself occasionally what right the Lady Barbara had to change toward him when she and her Lord Farquhart were so absolutely in his power. All of which strained, somewhat, the relations between the Lady Barbara and Mr. Ashley.

To come to Lord Farquhart: he loved or thought he loved—he had loved or had thought he loved Sylvia—Sylvia, the light o’ love, one of the pretty creatures on whom love’s hand falls anything but lightly. To his prejudiced eyes, the Lady Barbara, cold and colorless in the gloom of Gordon’s Court, had seemed quite lacking in all charm. But when he had sauntered from her presence to that of Sylvia on the afternoon when the jest of the highway robbery had been discussed, he found that his curiosity, nay, his interest, had been aroused by the Lady Barbara. He found that his unsophisticated cousin was not altogether lacking in color and spirit, and Sylvia, for the first time, seemed somewhat over blown, somewhat over full of vulgar life and gayety. Later, that same night, when he saw the future Lady Farquhart dimpling and glowing, the central star in a galaxy of London beaux, he wondered if the Lady Barbara might not be worth the winning; he wondered if themariage de convenancemight not be transformed into the culmination of a quick, romantic courtship. To win the Lady Barbara before the Lady Barbara was his without the winning! Might not that be well worth while?

To give just a passing word to Sylvia; for it was to Sylvia that the main mischance was due. Sylvia saw that her reign was over, that she had lost all hold on Lord Farquhart, and, in her own way, which, after all, was a very definite and distinct way, poor Sylvia loved Lord Farquhart.

For six days these conditions had been changing, with all their attendant incidents and chances, and the time was ripe for a mischance. Lord Farquhart, lounging in the park, hoping to meet the Lady Barbara, even if it was only to be snubbed by the Lady Barbara, saw that young lady at the end of a long line of trees with Mr. Ashley. For Barbara had consented to walk with Mr. Ashley, partly so that she might have the freedom of open air and sunshine in which to express a belated opinion to Mr. Ashley concerning his new manner and tone, and partly in hopes that she would encounter Lord Farquhart and pique his jealousy by appearing with his rival.

“I tell you I’ll not stand it, not for an instant,” she was saying, the roses in her cheeks a deep, deep damask and the stars in her eyes beaming with unwonted radiance. “To hear you speak the world would think that we had been married a twelvemonth! That you demanded your rights like a commonplace husband, rather than that you sought my favor. I’ll warn you to change your manner, Mr. Harry Ashley, or you’ll find that you have neither rights nor favors.”

It was at this instant that the Lady Barbara caught sight of Lord Farquhart at his own end of the lime-shaded walk. Instantly her manner changed, though the damask roses still glowed and the stars still shone.

“Nay, nay, Hal”—she laid a caressing hand on his arm—“forgive my lack of manners. I’m—I’m—perchance I’m over weary. We country maids are notused to so much pleasure as you’ve given me in London.” She leaned languorously toward Ashley and he, made presumptuous by her change of tone, slipped his arm about her slender waist.

The Lady Barbara slid from his grasp with a pretty scream of amazement and shocked propriety. Then there might have followed a bit of swordplay; indeed, the Lady Barbara hoped there would—the affianced lover should have fought to defend his rights, the other should have fought for the privileges bestowed by the lady, and all the time the lady would have stood wringing her hands, moaning perchance, and praying for the discomfiture of the one or the other. But, unfortunately, none of this came to pass because, just at the critical moment, just when Lord Farquhart, watched slyly by Lady Barbara’s starry eyes, was starting forward to defend his rights, Sylvia slipped from behind a tree and flung herself with utter abandon upon Lord Farquhart.

Now, in reality, Lord Farquhart tried to force the woman away from him, but the Lady Barbara saw only that his hands were on her arms, that, in very truth, he spoke to the girl! Turning on her heel, she sped from the lime walk, followed by Mr. Ashley.

What ensued between Lord Farquhart and his Sylvia concerns the story little, for he had already told her that her reign was over, that a new queen had been enthroned in his heart. What ensued between the Lady Barbara and her escort cannot be written, for it was but a series of gasps and sharp cries on the lady’s part, interspersed with imploring commands on the lover’s part to tell him what ailed her. The interview was brought to a summary conclusion when the Lady Barbara reached her aunt’s house, for she flung the door to in his face and left him standing disconsolate on the outside.

It was on that night that the Lady Barbara received an ovation at Lord Grimsby’s rout as the belle of London town. Most beautiful she was, in reality, for the damask roses in her cheeks were dyed with the hot blood of her heart; her eyes, that were wont to be blue as the noonday sky, were black as night, and the pomegranates of her lips had been ripened by passion. Surrounded by courtiers, she flung her favors right and left with impartial prodigality. All the time her heart was crying out that she would be avenged for the insult that had been offered her that afternoon. Harry Ashley, approaching her with hesitating deference, was joyously received, although to herself she declared that she loathed him, abhorred him and detested him.

Jack Grimsby, toasting the Lady Barbara for the dozenth time, exclaimed to his crony:

“’Pon my honor, though, I know not if I envy Lord Farquhart or not. His future lady seems somewhat unstinting in her favors.”

“To me it seems that Lord Farquhart asks but little from his future lady,” laughed the crony.

“Is not that Lord Farquhart now?” asked young Grimsby. “Let us watch him approach the lady. Let us see if she has aught left for him.”

A narrow opening in the court that surrounded Lady Barbara permitted Lord Farquhart to draw near her. There was a sudden lull in the chatter that encompassed her, for others beside Jack Grimsby were questioning what the Lady Barbara had reserved for her future lord. Possibly the Lady Barbara had drawn a little aloof from her attendant swains, for she seemed to stand quite alone as she measured her fiancé with her eyes from his head to his feet and back again to his eyes. And all the while her heart was beating tempestuously and her brain was crying passionately: “If only he had loved me! If only he had loved me the least little bit!”

On Lord Farquhart’s lips was an appeal to his lady’s forbearance, in his eyes lay a message to her heart, but she saw them not. His face flushed slightly, for he knew that all eyes were bent upon him. Then it paled under Barbara’scold glance. For a full moment she looked at him before she turned from him with a shiver that was visible to all, with a shrug that was seen by all. And yet, when she spoke, it was after a vehement movement of her hand as though she had silenced a warning voice.

“My lords and ladies,” she cried, her voice ringing even to the corners of the hushed room, “I—I feel that I must tell you all that this man, this Lord Farquhart, who was to have been my husband in less than a week, is—is your gentleman highwayman, your Black Devil who has made your London roads a terror to all honest men.”

For an instant there was absolute silence. Then surprise, amazement and consternation rose in a babel of sound, but over all Lady Barbara’s voice rang once more.

“I am positive that I speak only the truth,” she cried. “No, Lord Farquhart, I’ll not hear you, now or ever again. I’ve seen him in his black disguise. He told me himself that he was this Black Devil of the roads. He confessed it all to me.”

The lady still stood alone, and the crowd had edged away from Lord Farquhart, leaving him, also, alone. On every face surprise was written, but in no eyes, on no lips, was this so clearly marked as on Lord Farquhart’s own face.

And yet he spoke calmly.

“Is this the sequel to your jest, my lady, or has it deeper meaning than a jest?”

“Ah, jest you chose to call it once before, and jest you may still call it,” she answered, fiercely, but now her hand was pressed close against her heart.

“For a full week I have known this fact,” exclaimed Ashley, stepping to the Lady Barbara’s side. “Unfortunately, I have seen with my own eyes proofs convincing even me that my Lord Farquhart is this highway robber. I cannot doubt it, but I have refrained from speaking before because Lady Barbara asked me to be silent, asked me to protect her cousin, hoping, I suppose, that she could save him from his fate, that she could induce him to forego this perilous pursuit; but——”

Lord Farquhart’s hand was closing on his sword, but he did not fail even then to note the disdain with which Lady Barbara turned from her champion. She hurriedly approached Lord Grimsby, who was looking curiously at this highwayman who he himself had had reason to think was the devil incarnate.

“I beg your pardon, Lord Grimsby”—Lady Barbara was still impetuous—“for this interruption of yourfête, but, to me, it seemed unwarranted that this man should longer masquerade among you as a gentleman.”

She swept away from Lord Grimsby. She passed close to Lord Farquhart, lingering long enough to whisper for his ear alone: “You see I can forgive a crime, but not an insult.” Then, sending a hurried message to her aunt, she paced on down the room, her head held high, the damask roses still blooming brilliantly, the stars still shining brightly.

A score of officious hands held her cloak, a dozen officious voices called her chair. And my Lady Barbara thanked her helpers with smiling lips that were still pomegranate red, and yet the curtains of her chair caught her first sob as they descended about her, and it seemed but a disheveled mass of draperies that the footmen discovered when they set the lady down at her own door, so prone she was with grief and despair.

Lord Farquhart seemed to recover himself but slowly from the shock of Lady Barbara’s denunciation, from the surprise of her whispered words. At last he raised his eyes to Lord Grimsby, who was still looking at him curiously.

“I fear that I should also ask your pardon, my Lord Grimsby, for this confusion.” Lord Farquhart’s words came slowly. “My cousin, the Lady Barbara, must be strangely overwrought.With your permission, I will follow her and attend to her needs.”

He turned and for the first time looked definitely at the little knot of men that surrounded him. The women, young and old, had been withdrawn from his environment by their escorts. His eyes traveled slowly from one to another of the familiar faces.

“Surely, my Lord Grimsby,” clamored Ashley, “you will not let the fellow escape!”

“Surely my Lord Grimsby is going to place no reliance on a tale like this told by a whimsical girl!” retorted Lord Farquhart before Lord Grimsby’s slow words had fallen on his ears.

“We will most assuredly take all measures for safeholding my Lord Farquhart.”

“But, Lord Grimsby,” cried Farquhart, realizing for the first time that the situation might have a serious side, “you surely do not believe this tale!”

“I would like to see some reason for doubting the lady’s word,” answered the older man. “And you forget that her story is corroborated by Mr. Ashley. Neither must you overlook the fact that for some time the authorities have been convinced that this highwayman was no common rogue, that he is undoubtedly some one closely connected with our London life, if—if indeed——” But this was no place for Lord Grimsby to assert his own opinion that the highwayman was indeed the devil incarnate.

“Why, the whole thing is the merest fabrication,” cried Lord Farquhart, impatiently. “It is all without reason, without sense, without possible excuse. The Lady Barbara’s imagination has been played upon in some way, for some reason that I cannot understand. You heard her declare that she’d seen me in the fellow’s disguise. That is an absolute impossibility. I’ve never seen the rogue, much less impersonated him.”

“You shall, of course, have the benefit of any doubt, Lord Farquhart.” Lord Grimsby’s voice had assumed its judicial tones and fell with sinister coldness on every ear. “But, innocent or guilty, you must admit that the safety of his majesty’s realm demands that the truth be proved.”

“Ay, it shall be proved, too,” cried Jack Grimsby, who had been so warmly befriended in time of direct need by the Black Highwayman. “And you shall have the benefit of every doubt there may be, Percy. Rest assured of that. And in the event that there is no doubt, if it is proved that you are our Black Devil, you’ll still go free. Your case will be in my father’s hands, and I here repeat my oath that if the Black Devil goes to the gallows, I go on the road, following as close as may be in his footsteps.”

Farquhart shuddered out from under the protecting hand young Grimsby had laid on his shoulder.

“You speak as though you half believed the tale,” he cried. His eyes traveled once again around the little circle. Then his face grew stern. “Let Mr. Ashley repeat his tale,” he said, slowly. “Let him tell the Lady Barbara’s story and his own corroboration as circumstantially as may be.”

“Yes, let Harry Ashley tell his story,” echoed Jack Grimsby, “and when he has finished let him say where and when he will measure swords with me, for if he lies he lies like a blackguard, and if he spoke the truth he speaks it like a liar.”

Ashley’s sword was half out of its sheath, but it was arrested by Lord Grimsby’s voice.

“I will consent that Mr. Ashley should tell his story here and now,” he said. “It’s unusual and irregular, but the circumstances are unusual and irregular. I request your appreciation of this courtesy, my Lord Farquhart, and as for you, my son, a gentleman’s house may serve strange purposes, but it’s no place for a tavern brawler. So take heed of your words and manners.”

Lord Farquhart had merely bowed his head in answer to Lord Grimsby’s words; Jack still stood near him, his hand on his shoulder, but Ashley looked in vain for a pair of friendly eyes to which he might direct his tale. And yet he knew that everyone was waiting avidly for his words.

“The story is short and proves itself,” he began. “A week ago the Lady Barbara Gordon was traveling toward London attended only by her father’s servants. My Lord Farquhart, with a party of his friends, among whom I was included at that time, awaited her at Marmaduke Bass’ tavern, The Jolly Grig. A short time before the Lady Barbara was to arrive, Lord Farquhart withdrew to his room, presumably to sleep, until——”

“Ay, and sleep he did,” interrupted young Treadway, who spoke for the first time. “We both slept in my room on the ground floor of the tavern.”

“You slept, no doubt, Mr. Treadway,” answered Lord Grimsby. “But, if so, how can you vouch for the fact that Lord Farquhart slept?”

“I can vouch for it—I can vouch for it because I know he slept,” spluttered Treadway.

“I fear me much that your reasoning will not help to save your friend,” answered the councillor, a little scornfully. “Let me beg that Mr. Ashley be not again interrupted to so little purpose.”

“While, according to his own account, Mr. Treadway slept,” continued Ashley, “while he supposed Lord Farquhart was also sleeping, I heard Lord Farquhart singing in his room overhead. At the time I paid little heed to it. In fact, I did not think of it again that night, although, if I remember rightly, I commented on Lord Farquhart’s voice to Mr. Cecil Lindley, who sat with me in the tavern. It was full fifteen minutes after that when the Lady Barbara drove into the inn, crying that she had been waylaid by the Black Highwayman. Her rings had been stolen, her rings and a jeweled gauntlet and a rose. She was strangely confused and would not permit us to ride in pursuit of the villain, averring that she had promised him immunity in exchange for her own life.”

“A pretty tale,” Jack Grimsby again interrupted, in spite of his father’s commands. “It’s a lie on its own face. ’Tis well known that the Black Devil has never taken a life, has never even threatened bodily injury.”

“Be that as it may”—Ashley’s level voice ignored the tone of the interruption, although his nervous fingers were on his sword—“when the Lady Barbara’s companion, Mistress Benton, tried to say that the Lady Barbara had recognized her assailant, that the Lady Barbara had willingly descended from the coach with the highwayman, the Lady Barbara silenced her peremptorily and ordered that we hurry with all speed to London. ’Twas the following morning, my Lord Grimsby, that the truth was revealed to me, for Lord Farquhart’s own servant returned to the Lady Barbara, in my presence, the jewels that had been stolen the night before, the jewels and the rose the highwayman had taken from her.”

“You forget the jeweled gauntlet, Mr. Ashley.” Again it was Jack Grimsby’s sneering voice that interrupted Ashley’s tale. “Did my Lord Farquhart keep his lady’s glove when he returned the other baubles?”

Ashley’s face flushed, but he looked steadily at Lord Grimsby; he directed the conclusion of his story to Lord Grimsby’s ears.

“It was then that the Lady Barbara confessed, much against her will, I will admit, that it was indeed her cousin and her fiancé who had waylaid her, merely to confess to her his identity with this bandit whose life is, assuredly, forfeit to the crown.”

Lord Farquhart had listened in tense silence. Now he started forward, his hand on his sword, but his arms were caught by two of Lord Grimsby’s men. “You will admit, my Lord Farquhart, that the matter demands explanation,” said the councillor, dryly. “How came you by the jewels and rose? Can you tell us? And what of the missing gauntlet?”

“The rings and the rose my servant found in my coat,” answered Farquhart, his eyes so intent on his questioner’s face that he failed to see the smile that curved the lips of those who heard him. “The gauntlet I never saw, I never had it in my possession for a moment.”

“How did you account for the jewelsin your coat if you did not put them there yourself?” demanded Lord Grimsby.

“At first I was at a loss to account for them at all.” Lord Farquhart’s voice showed plainly that he resented the change in his questioner’s manner. “I recalled my cousin’s confusion when she had told her tale of highway robbery, and all at once it seemed to me that the whole affair was an invention of her own, some madcap jest that she was playing on me, perchance to test my bravery, to see if I would ride forthwith after the villain. If so, I had failed her signally, for I had accepted her commands and gone with her straight to London. I supposed, in furtherance of this idea, that she had hired her own servant, or bribed mine, to hide the jewels in my coat. I never thought once of the gauntlet she had claimed to lose, never remembered it from that night until now. I sent the jewels to her, and later in the day I taxed her with the jest, and she agreed, it seemed to me, that it had been a jest and asked that the return of the rings might close the incident. I have not spoken of it since, nor has she, until to-night.”

There was a long silence, and then Lord Grimsby spoke.

“Your manner carries conviction, Lord Farquhart, but Mr. Ashley’s tale sounds true. Perchance some prank is at the bottom of all this, but you will pardon me if I but fulfill my duty to the crown. The case shall be conducted with all speed, but until your name is cleared, or until we find the perpetrator of the joke, if joke it be, I must hold you prisoner.”

There was a short scuffle, a sharp clash of arms. But these came from Lord Farquhart’s friends. Lord Farquhart himself stood as though stunned. He walked away as though he were in a dream, and not until he was safely housed under bolt and bar in the sheriff’s lodge could he even try to sift the matter to a logical conclusion.

For an instant only did he wonder if Barbara and Ashley had chosen this way to rid themselves of him. He remembered with a gleam of triumph Barbara’s disdainful manner toward Ashley when he had stepped to her side, vouching for the truth of her statement. He remembered, too, that Barbara had had short moments of kindness toward him in the last few days, that there had been moments when she had been exceeding sweet to him; when he had even hoped that he was, indeed, winning her love.

Then, like a flash, he remembered Sylvia’s presence under the trees that afternoon. Undoubtedly Barbara had seen her, and if Barbara had grown to care for him ever so little, she would have resented bitterly a thing like that. That might have been the insult to which she referred. But the crime! Of what crime had he been guilty? Assuredly she did not believe, herself, the tale she had told. She did not believe that he was this highwayman.

Here Lord Farquhart caught a gleam of light. Ashley might have convinced her that such a tale was true. Ashley might have arranged the highway robbery and might have placed the jewels in his coat to throw the guilt on him. Ashley was undoubtedly at the bottom of the whole thing. Then he remembered Ashley’s flush when the gauntlet had been referred to. Had Ashley kept the gauntlet, then?

Following fast upon this question was another flash of light even brighter than the first. To Farquhart the truth seemed to stand out clear and transparent. Ashley was the gentleman of the highways! Ashley was the Black Devil. Farquhart threw back his head and laughed long and loud. If only he had used his wits, he would have denounced the fellow where he stood.

And in this realization of Ashley’s guilt, and in the consciousness that Barbara must love him at least a little if she had been jealous of Sylvia, Lord Farquhart slept profoundly.

All this merely brings the narrative back to the announcement made by Marmaduke to Lindley and Johan whenthey entered the courtyard of The Jolly Grig after the fight with the highwaymen.

As may be supposed, it was several nights before Lindley was sufficiently recovered from his wound to again keep tryst with Johan, the player’s boy. When at last he could ride out to the edge of the Ogilvie woods, he found the lad sitting on the ground under an oak, apparently waiting for whatever might happen. He did not speak at all until he was accosted by Lindley, and then he merely recited in a listless manner that Mistress Judith was gone to London with her father.

The boy’s manner was so changed, his tone was so forlorn, that Lindley’s sympathy was awakened. He wondered if the lad really loved Judith so devotedly.

“And that has left you so disconsolate?” he asked.

“Ay, my master!” Indeed the youth’s tone was disconsolate, even as a true lover’s might have been.

“And when went Mistress Judith to London?” asked Lindley. “This afternoon? This morning?”

“But no. She went some four days ago, all in a hurry, as it seemed,” Johan answered.

“Four days ago!” echoed Lindley. “But why did you not send me word?” He was thinking of the days that had been wasted with his lady near him, all unknown to him, in London.

“She—I mean—I thought you would be here each night,” stammered the boy, contritely, and yet his tone was listless. “I’ve but kept the tryst with you.”

Lindley looked at the boy curiously. Preoccupied as he was with his own thoughts, he still recognized the change in his companion.

“What’s the matter, Johan?” he asked. “You were not hurt the other night, were you? Are you still brooding on the fact that you killed your man? Are you ill? Or do you fear that I’ve forgot my debt? What ails you? Can’t you tell me?” The questions hurried on, one after another. “Or is it Mistress Judith’s absence, alone, that hurts you thus? Is she to be long in London?”

“N—no. That is, I do not know,” the boy made answer to the last question. “We, my master and I and all his company, go ourselves early to-morrow to London. Doubtless I shall see Mistress Judith there.”

“Why, then, ’tis only that the scene will shift to London,” cried Lindley. “Cheer up, my lad, we’ll name a tryst in London. Besides, there’s news waiting you in London; news for you and your master concerning your bond to him. You hardly look the part of a lad who’s won to freedom by a pretty bit of swordplay. You should have learned ere now to fit your countenance to the parts you perform.”

“But I’ve performed so few parts, Master Lindley. I am only Johan, the player’s boy, and, by your leave, I’ll go now, and for a tryst—she—for our tryst, say at ten o’clock, in front of Master Timothy Ogilvie’s mansion, where Mistress Judith and her father lodge. I’ll have surely seen Mistress Judith then, and can report to you any change, if change there be.”

The slender lad slipped back into the shadows of the Ogilvie woods, but for full ten minutes he held Lindley’s thoughts away from the lady of his heart’s desire. What could ail the lad to be so changed, so spiritless? Was his love so deep that to be weaned from Judith for even a few short hours could break his spirit thus? Or was it possible that the duel and the fatigues of that midnight encounter had been too much for his strength? Lindley could answer none of these questions, so the lover’s thoughts soon strayed back to Mistress Judith, and the player’s lad was forgot.

But even Mistress Judith held not all of Lindley’s thoughts that night, for Lord Farquhart’s fate was resting heavily on his mind. That Farquhart was, indeed, the gentleman of the highways Lindley knew to be impossible, and yet all the facts seemed to be against the imprisoned lord. Even Lindley’s word had gone against him, for Lindley had been questioned, and had been obliged to admit that he had heard Lord Farquhartsinging in his room above the stairs at the very time when Clarence Treadway, when Farquhart himself, swore that he was asleep belowstairs in Treadway’s room. There was no evidence, whatsoever, for Lord Farquhart save his own words. All the evidence was against him.

And the affair that had savored more of a jest than of reality seemed gradually to be settling down to a dull, unpleasant truth. Farquhart could and would tell but the one tale. Ashley would tell but one tale, and he, in truth, had convinced himself of Farquhart’s guilt, absurd as it seemed. The Lady Barbara could only lie on her bed and moan and sob, and cry that she loved Lord Farquhart; that she wished she could unsay her words. She could not deny the truth of what she had told, though nothing could induce her to tell the story over. But all of her stuttering, stammering evasions of the truth seemed only to fix the guilt more clearly upon Lord Farquhart. Even to Lindley, who had been with him on the night in question, it did not seem altogether impossible that Lord Farquhart had had time to ride forth, waylay his cousin and rejoin his friends at the inn ere the lady drove into the courtyard.

Another point that stood out strongly against Lord Farquhart—a point that was weighing heavily in public opinion—was that since the night of Lady Barbara’s arrival in London, since which time Lord Farquhart had been obliged to be in close attendance upon his cousin, there had been no hold ups by this redoubtable highwayman. The men who had attacked Lindley and the player’s lad had been but bungling robbers of the road. That they could have had any connection with the robbery of the Lady Barbara, or with the other dashing plays of the Black Devil, had been definitely disproved.

So all of Farquhart’s friends were weighed down with apprehension of the fate in store for him, whether he was guilty or not. The only hope lay in Lord Grimsby, the old man who had been convinced that the highwayman was in league with the devil, if he was not the devil himself; the old man whose only son had vowed to take to the road if the Black Highwayman met his fate at his father’s hands. But the hopes that were based on the demon-inspired terror, and the paternal love of Lord Grimsby, seemed faint, indeed, to Lindley as he rode toward London that night.

Lindley was first at the tryst in London, but Johan soon slipped from the shadow of Master Timothy Ogilvie’s gateway.

“I can stop but a moment,” he whispered, nervously. “I must not be seen here. My—my master must not know that I—I am abroad in London.”

“And Mistress Judith?” questioned Lindley. “Have you seen her? Is she still here? Is she well?”

“I have seen Mistress Judith for a moment only,” answered the lad. “She is well enough, but she is worn out with the care of her cousin, Lady Barbara, and she is sadly dispirited, too.”

“’Tis a pity Lady Barbara cannot die,” muttered Lindley, “after the confusion she’s gotten Lord Farquhart into. A sorry mess she’s made of things.”

“The poor girl——” Johan shuddered. “Mistress Judith says the poor girl is in desperate straits, does naught but cry and sob, and vows she loves Lord Farquhart better than her life.”

“Ay, she may well be in desperate straits,” shrugged Lindley. “And she’ll be in worse ones when she finds she’s played a goodly part in hanging an innocent man!”

“Hanging!” Johan’s exclamation was little more than a shrill, sharp cry.

“Ay, hanging, I said,” answered Lindley. “What other fate does she think is in store for Lord Farquhart?”

“But—but this Lord Farquhart is a friend of yours, too, is he not, Master Lindley?” The boy’s question was slow and came after a long silence.

“Yes, a good friend and an honest man, if ever there was one,” answered Lindley.

“An—an honest man!” Johan shuddered again. “That’s it, an honest man he is, isn’t he?”

“As honest as you or I!” Lindley’s thoughts were so preoccupied that he hardly noticed his companion’s agitation.

“But there must be some way of escape,” Johan whispered, after another silence. “Some way to save him! If nothing else, some way to effect his escape!”

“Nay, I see no way,” gloomed Lindley.

In the darkness Johan crept closer to Lindley.

“Is it only grief for Lord Farquhart that fills your heart,” he asked, “or is it your wound that still hurts? Or—or has Mistress Judith some place in your thoughts? You seem so somber, so depressed, my master!”

“Ah, lad!” Lindley’s sigh was deep and long. “Even Mistress Judith herself might fail to comprehend. She still fills all of me that a woman can fill, but a man’s friend has a firm grip on his life. If harm comes to Lord Farquhart, the world will never again be so bright a place as it has been!”

“But harm cannot come to Lord Farquhart!” Johan’s voice was suddenly soft and full. “Hemustbe helped. There are a hundred ways that have not been tried. There is one way—oh, there is one way, in all those hundred ways—I mean, that must succeed. Think, Master Lindley. Cannot I help? Cannot I help in some way—to—to save your friend?”

Lindley was touched by the earnestness of the boy’s tone, and laid a kindly hand on his shoulder.

“I’ll think, my lad, but to what purpose I cannot promise you. This is no place for swordplay, however brilliant it may be.”

Johan had drawn roughly away from Lindley’s side. Now he leaned against the gate, dejection in every line of his drooping figure.

“There is one way,” he muttered, slowly. “There is always one way, but——”

“You need not take it so to heart, boy,” Lindley urged. “You’re sadly worn and tired now. I saw last night that you were quite spiritless and lacking in heart! To-night, I see it even plainer.”

“Oh, ’tis naught but the work I have to do,” Johan answered, wearily.

“The work?” questioned Lindley. “Is it a new part you have to play?”

“Ay, that’s it,” sighed Johan; “a new part, a man’s part and a woman’s part all in one! It’s a most difficult part, indeed.” He was muttering the words to himself, and, under his cloak, Lindley could see his hands twisting nervously.

“Forgive me, lad!” Lindley’s tone was conscience-stricken. “I’d not forgotten the debt I owed you, though I seem to have forgot the promised payment. There’s been over much on my mind these last few days. But I’ll buy your freedom now, to-night, from this master player of yours. Where lies he? Let us go to him at once. Then you can give up this part and take the rest you need.”

“Oh, no, no, I must play this part,” answered the player’s boy, hurriedly. “I—I——Let me win to success before I speak to him of leaving him. I must,mustsucceed now. Then, perhaps, we can talk of freedom, not before.”

“Well, as you like!” Lindley’s voice had grown careless once again. He was again absorbed in his own affairs. “Think you I might see Mistress Judith to-morrow, if I had a message from Lord Farquhart for the Lady Barbara?”

“But have you access to Lord Farquhart?” The boy spoke quickly, so quickly that Lindley failed to notice the change in voice and manner.

“Why, I suppose I can gain access to him,” answered Lindley.

“But then surely I—surely we can rescue him,” cried Johan. “I’d not supposed that we could see Lord Farquhart, that we could gain speech with him. Now I know that I can help you free him. Think, think from now until to-morrow night at this time of some feasible plan, some way of taking Johan,the player’s boy, into Lord Farquhart’s presence. But wait! Why could you not take me to him disguised as the Lady Barbara? Mistress Judith would provide me with Lady Barbara’s cloak and veil and petticoats. She could coach me in her looks and manners. Have you forgotten how well I can impersonate a woman? And then, if I could pass the jailer as the Lady Barbara, what would hinder Farquhart from passing out as the Lady Barbara? I—I could personate Lord Farquhart, at a pinch, until rescue came to me. Or if it came to a last extremity, why I could still go to the gallows as Lord Farquhart! But that extremity would not come. There would be no difficulty in saving a worthless player’s lad, and they say that ’tis only Mr. Ashley’s work that is telling against the prisoner; that he is using this public means to wreak a private vengeance. Oh, if I can but see Lord Farquhart! If I can but speak to him! Much might be done, even if he refused the disguise of hood and cloak. Be here to-morrow night, with permits for yourself and Lady Barbara to see Lord Farquhart. Leave all the rest to me!” Johan’s impetuous voice had grown stronger, more positive, as his thoughts had formed themselves. His last words savored of a command. They were uttered in the tone that expects obedience, but Lindley ignored this.

“’Twould be but a waste of time,” he answered, gloomily.

“Well, what of that?” demanded Johan. “Perhaps it would be but a waste of one night. But of what value is your time or my time when there is even a chance of safety for Lord Farquhart?”

“I suppose you’re right in that,” agreed Lindley. “I’ll be here with the permits, as you say, to-morrow night. But what think you of my ruse to speak to Mistress Judith in the morning? If I were to present myself here at the house with a message from Lord Farquhart to the Lady Barbara, would not Judith speak with me? Remember, boy, that twenty-five crowns are yours the day I speak with Mistress Judith!”

“Oh, Mistress Judith, Mistress Judith!” cried the lad, impatiently. “Your thoughts are all for Mistress Judith. She will see no one, she will speak to no one, so she said to-day, until the Lady Barbara is recovered, until Lord Farquhart is free. It will be all that I can do to gain access to her to make my demand for the Lady Barbara’s clothes. And she is—she says that she is sick of the whole world. Her cousin’s plight, Lord Farquhart’s danger, have sickened her of the whole world. It’s for her sake that I would free Lord Farquhart. Until Lord Farquhart is released, Judith Ogilvie’s mind cannot rest for a single second. So for her sake you must work to free him, for Judith’s sake, for the sake of the woman you love!”

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