“I have no secrets from my companion,” replied I. “And I would just as soon there was someone heard what we have to say, Master Watson.”
His face grew dark when I said that, and he stood frowning at us both for a full minute before he spoke again.
“As you like,” he said at last. “I only wished to say, Master Dale, that I am sorry for you.”
“And for what?” said I sharply.
“Why, because you have lost your sweetheart.”
Now, it did not strike me at first that his words had any special significance, for I thought that he had heard that Rose was gone away and was simply taking occasion of the fact to sneer at me. So I said naught, but sat silent, looking, I dare say, very stupid and sullen.
“I suppose,” he continued, “that you two gentlemen are in search of the young lady, and if you are, ’tis a pity they have three days’ start of you.”
“They—who?”
“Mistress Rose and the gay gallant that your good mother nursed back to health. It had been better if she had let him die of his wound, Master Dale.”
When he said this all the blood in my body rushed to my heart and thence to my head, and I felt a great singing about my ears as if I were going down in the midst of some whirlpool. And then I shouted, “Liar!” and would have leapt at Dennis and choked the sneering laugh that rose to his lips, but for Philip Lisle, who laid his hand upon me and restrained me forcibly.
“Let be, Will, let be!” said Philip. “We will soon know whether he be a liar or not. Now, sir,” he continued, turning to Dennis, “I am the father of Mistress Rose Lisle, and must ask you to explain yourself further. Where is it that you have seen my daughter, and in whose company?”
“Why, Master Lisle,” answered Dennis, “I do not know that I am bound to explain matters to you. However, I am no liar, as Master Dale there would make out. It would be better for him if I were.”
“Go on, sir, go on,” said Philip.
“Well, then, here I am in this part of the land, buying hogs, as is my custom at this time o’ year, as Will Dale there knows. Three days ago I was on the high-road ’twixt here and Sheffield, when I saw four travellers approach, two of whom rode in front while the other two brought up the rear. I thought I recognised Mistress Rose Lisle as one of the first, and slipped amongst the trees to watch. Mistress Rose it was, and with her, laughing and jesting, the gay cavalier who stayed so long at Dale’s Field. The others were decent-looking serving-men of a certain age.”
“If you met such on the road, sir, they passed here. The host will remember them. Call him in.”
The host did remember such a company. Nay, he remembered more; the young lady came there with the serving-men, and was there met by the cavalier, all four then proceeding southward.
“I am no liar, Master Dale,” said Dennis.
We went outside to our horses. What I felt I cannot describe. My heart and brain were on fire. I knew not what to think nor what to do.
“What do you think, what do you think!” I cried to Philip when we were out of the house. “For God’s sake say something to me.”
“My poor lad, what can I say? Only this, Will, that my dear girl would do naught against honour. She is the victim of some foul plot. Listen. This Trevor hath a country estate in the north of Derbyshire. Let us push on through Sheffield and see if we can find him there.”
So we paid our reckoning and rode away in the summer evening, and my heart was as heavy as lead within my breast.
XXXIV
Of Our Adventure in Derbyshire
We came shortly into Rotherham, where we found men busily engaged in the casting of cannon for the Parliamentarians, and on that account we tarried there but a short time, and succeeded not in learning any news of the party we sought. Neither did we hear much as we passed along the road betwixt that town and Sheffield, for we were now come into a more populous district, and the folks at the inns and toll-bars more than once told us that they had something else to do than observe what manner of travellers passed along the highways. Now and then, indeed, we came across an innkeeper or a toll-bar man who had some vague and misty notion that he remembered the company we described, but the answers of these people were usually so little to be depended upon that we could put no confidence in them.
“There is nothing for it, Will, but to push on towards Trevor’s estate, which lieth, I know, somewhere in the Peak country,” said Philip Lisle. “We shall most likely find him there, and can then make strict inquiry of him.”
“It shall be but a short inquiry,” I said meaningly, for I was by that time sure that the man whom we had befriended had wrought me this great wrong, and my heart burned to have him by the throat. “Only let me lay hands upon him and we will have the truth out of him whether he will or no.”
“Justice shall be done,” said Philip; and we rode on again in silence, for I had no mind to talk, being chiefly concerned with fierce thoughts of revenge and anger. My brain was on fire with these things, and I think that if Captain Trevor had suddenly appeared before us I should have slain him where he stood, without giving him the chance to beg for mercy.
It was well on in the evening when we came into Sheffield, for during the last few miles our horses had advanced at little more than a foot-pace. The poor beasts, in fact,
