“Master Dale, look back. Is there nothing in your past life that is as yet an unsolved riddle? Did it never strike you that this man had some reason for showing such signs of fear when he set eyes upon you?”
“Sir,” I answered, “I am, I dare say, very stupid and thickheaded, and, to tell the truth, I troubled myself very little about the man and his fancies.”
“Did it never strike you that he feared you because of your extraordinary resemblance to some other person?”
“The only man, sir, that I resemble was my own father, who was my very image. But why should that make the man afraid? I dare say he has seen my father at some time or other, but why should my resemblance to him frighten the poor soul?”
“Why, indeed? Because of a guilty conscience. Master Dale, be strong to hear what I have to tell you. The man who is dying in yonder chamber is your father’s murderer!”
My father’s murderer! The words sounded in my ears as if they were not real. The walls seemed to fall away from me, my brain went round in a sickening whirl. I stretched out my arms to save myself from falling.
“Come, Master Dale, be brave, and quit you like a Christian man. Oh, I promise you this most unfortunate wretch hath paid dearly for his fell crime.”
“Sir, sir!” I cried. “I cannot believe it—it seems impossible. What had my father done to offend this villain?”
“Alas! naught. Master Dale, the man upstairs was paid to murder your father by one who was your father’s enemy—Rupert Watson.”
At last! Thank God, the secret was out at last! Now I knew whom I had to thank for the foul deed that made me fatherless and my mother a widow. Whose hand it was that fired the fatal shot mattered little: I knew at last, after all those years of waiting, whose devilish malice it was that prompted the deed; I knew in whose evil mind the devilish plans were worked out and put in operation. It was as I had always thought. There was no surprise in my mind at the news. But at last I knew my enemy without doubt or question, and could go to my revenge with a clear purpose.
My mind was clear once more, my nerves strung themselves like quivering steel. I moved to the door.
“Where are you going, Master Dale?” asked the clergyman.
“To the magistrate, sir, ere yonder villain dies.”
“Master Dale, bethink you! This is no time for earthly feelings of revenge—the man is dying.”
“Sir, if he were at the very gates of hell, and the evil one were waiting to receive him, he should not escape me now! On my dead father’s body I swore to God in Heaven that whoever had part or lot in that foul murder should account to me for it with their lives. Shall I forget my vow? God forbid!”
“Alas! Master Dale, your words are hard. Oh, my son, think, I pray you, of the terrible bar before which this unhappy wretch must shortly plead. What is any earthly tribunal in comparison with that of God? What good purpose can you serve by tormenting your father’s murderer for an hour or two before death seizes him? Master Dale, this unhappy man hath made full confession to me of his whole life, and hath charged me with the duty of imploring your forgiveness. Already you have heaped coals of fire upon his head by your good treatment of him.”
“Sir,” said I, “an he had been my worst enemy, Rupert Watson himself, I should have done no less for him. But justice must surely be done on such as he. Think of the foul deed he did.”
“I think of naught else, Master Dale, and it is because his sin hath been so great that I plead for your great forgiveness. Will you not die easier yourself for the knowledge that you forgave all your enemies?”
Before I could answer him there came a great knocking at the door, and the hostess entered, looking very scared, and begged us to go up to the man at once, for he was at his last gasp.
We entered the room, I with such feeling at my heart as I cannot describe. The man lay gasping for breath; his eyes were closed, and his face was covered with great drops of sweat. We bent over him; he suddenly opened his eyes and saw me, and across his features there came the same look of awful fear. He half raised himself in his bed and made as if he would speak; then he fell back dead, and so passed to his great account.
That night Master Brewer told me such particulars as the dead man had desired him to make known to me, and thus I learnt the true history of my father’s murder. The man in his youth had been a wild and lawless character, and had committed many crimes, for which the law had punished him in various ways. At the York assizes, whereat our case with Rupert Watson was tried, he had been charged with horse-stealing, and had gotten off. Riding southward from York, he had fallen in with Rupert, who found him a willing abettor of the foul plot he had devised as he followed my father homeward. At Ferrybridge Rupert had shown him the man he wished to slay, and thereupon the murderer rode forward to the lonely piece of road, where he lay in wait for and slew my father, being at that time of such a disposition that murder was naught to him. But if all that he confessed to Master Brewer were true, he had been punished hard enow for his sins in the years that followed that horrible deed.
XLVI
Of Our Preparations for the Wedding
I entered upon the final stages of my homeward journey with
