The Shadow of a Crime Part 70

"I had good earnest of your affections," answered the sheriff with a sneer; "five years' imprisonment." Then waving his hand with a gesture indicative of impatience, he continued, "Let that be as it may. I come to talk of other matters."

Resting on a bench, he added,--

"When the trial closed on Thursday, Justice Hide, who showed you more favor than seemed to some persons of credit to be meet and seemly, beckoned me to the antechamber. There he explained that the evidence against you being mainly circ.u.mstantial, the sentence might perchance, by the leniency of the King, be commuted to one of imprisonment for life."

A cold smile pa.s.sed over Ralph's face.

"But this great mercy--whereof I would counsel you to cherish no certain hope--would depend upon your being able and willing to render an account of how you came by the doc.u.ment--the warrant for your own arrest--which was found upon your person. Furnish a credible story of how you came to be possessed, of that instrument, and it may occur--I say it _may_ occur--that by our Sovereign's grace and favor this sentence of death can yet be put aside."

Sim had risen to his feet in obvious excitement.

Ralph calmly shook his head.

"I neither will nor can," he said emphatically.

Sim sank back into his seat.

A look of surprise in the sheriff's face quickly gave way to a look of content and satisfaction.

"We know each other of old, and I say there is no love between us," he observed, "but it is by no doing of mine that you are here.

Nevertheless, your response to this merciful tender shows but too plainly how well you merit your position."

"It took you five days to bring it--this merciful tender, as you term it," said Ralph.

"The King is now at Newcastle, and there at this moment is also Justice Hide, in whom, had you been an innocent man, you must have found an earnest sponsor. I bid you good day."

The sheriff rose, and, bowing to the prisoner with a ridiculous affectation of mingled deference and superiority, he stepped to the door.

"Stop," said Ralph: "you say we know each other of old. That is false!

To this hour you have never known, nor do you know now, why I stand here condemned to die, and doomed by a harder fate to take the life of this innocent old man. You have never known me: no, nor yourself neither--never! But you shall know both before you leave this room.

Sit down."

"I have no time to waste in idle disputation," said the sheriff testily; but he sat down, nevertheless, at his prisoner's bidding, as meekly as if the positions had been reversed.

"That scar across your brow." said Ralph, "you have carried since the day I have now to speak of."

"You know it well," said the sheriff bitterly. "You have cause to know it."

"I have," Ralph answered.

After a pause, in which he was catching the thread of a story half forgotten, he continued: "You said I supplanted you in your captaincy.

Pehaps so; perhaps not. G.o.d will judge between us. You went over to the Royalist camp, and you were among the garrison that had reduced this very castle. The troops of the Parliament came up one day and summoned you to surrender. The only answer your general gave us was to order the tunnel guns to fire on the white flag. It went down. We lay entrenched about you for six days. Then you sent out a dispatch a.s.suring us that your garrison was well prepared for a siege, and that nothing would prevail with you to open your gates. That was a lie!"

"Well?"

"Your general lied; the man who carried your general's dispatch was a liar too, but he told the truth for a bribe."

"Ah! then the saints were not above warming the palm?"

"He a.s.sured our commander we might expect a mutiny in your city if we continued before it one day longer; that your castle was garrisoned only by a handful of horse, and two raw, undisciplined regiments of militia; that even from these desertions occurred hourly, and that some of your companies were left with only a score of men. This was at night, and we were under an order to break up next morning. That order was countermanded. Your messenger was sent back the richer by twenty pounds."

"How does this concern me?" asked the sheriff.

"You shall hear. I had been on the outposts that night, and, returning to the camp, I surprised two men robbing, beating, and, as I thought, murdering a third. One of the vagabonds escaped undetected, but with a blow from the b.u.t.t of my musket which he will carry to his grave. The other I thrashed on the spot. He was the bailiff Scroope, whom you put up to witness against me. Their victim was the messenger from the castle, and he was James Wilson, otherwise Wilson Garth. You know this? No? Then listen. Rumor of his treachery, and of the price he had been paid for it, had already been bruited abroad, and the two scoundrels had gone out to waylay and rob him. He was lamed in the struggle and faint from loss of blood. I took him back and bound up his wound. He limped to the end of his life."

"Still I fail to see how this touches myself," interrupted the sheriff.

"Really? I shall show you. Next morning, under cover of a thick fog, we besieged the city. We got beneath your guns and against your gates before we were seen. Then a company of horse came out to us. _You_ were there. You remember it? Yes? At one moment we came within four yards. I saw you struck down and reel out of the saddle. 'This man,' I thought, 'believes in his heart that I did him a grievous wrong. I shall now do him a signal service, though he never hear of it until the Judgment Day.' I dismounted, lifted you up, bound a kerchief about your head, and was about to replace you on your horse. At that instant a musket-shot struck the poor beast, and it fell dead. At the same instant one of our own men fell, and his riderless horse was prancing away. I caught it, threw you on to its back, turned his head towards the castle, and drove it hard among your troops. Do you know what happened next?"

"Happened next--" repeated the sheriff mechanically, with astonishment written on every feature of his face.

"No, you were insensible," continued Ralph. "At that luckless moment the drum beat to arms in a regiment of foot behind us. The horse knew the call and answered it. Wheeling about, it carried you into the heart of our own camp. There you were known, tried as a deserter, and imprisoned. Perhaps it was natural that you should set down your ill fortune to me."

The sheriff's eyes were riveted on Ralph's face, and for a time he seemed incapable of speech.

"Is this truth?" he asked at length.

"G.o.d's truth," Ralph answered.

"The kerchief--what color was it?"

"Yellow."

"Any name or mark on it? I have it to this day."

"None--wait; there was a rose p.r.i.c.ked out in worsted on one corner."

The sheriff got up, with lips compressed and wide eyes. He made for the door, and pulled at it with wasted violence. It was opened from the other side by the under gaoler, and the sheriff rushed out.

Without turning to the right or left, he went direct to the common gaol. There, in the cell which Ralph had occupied between the first trial and the second one, Mark Garth, the perjurer, lay imprisoned.

"You h.e.l.l-hound," cried the sheriff, grasping him by the hair and dragging him into the middle of the floor. "I have found out your devilish treachery," he said, speaking between gusts of breath. "Did you not tell me that it was Ray who struck me this blow--this"

(beating with his palm the scar on his brow)? "It was a lie--a d.a.m.ned lie!"

"It was," said the man, glaring back, with eyes afire with fury.

"And did you not say it was Ray who carried me into their camp--an insensible prisoner?"

"That was a lie also," the man gasped, never struggling to release himself from the grip that held him on the floor.

"And did you not set me on to compa.s.s the death of this man, but for whom I should now myself be dead?"

"You speak with marvellous accuracy, Master Lawson," returned the perjurer.

The sheriff looked down at him for a moment, and then flung him away.

"Man, man! do you know what you have done?" he cried in an altered tone. "You have charged my soul with your loathsome crime."

The perjurer curled his lip.