CHAPTER X.
[A TALK WITH LORD DERWENTWATER. I ESCAPE.]
"Lawrence!" he exclaimed, starting back at the sight of me, and with a cry Lady Derwentwater came forward and took my hand. In truth, I must have cut a sufficiently pitiable figure, for my dress was all fouled from head to foot, and my face, I have no doubt, the complement of my dress.
"The soldiers are after me," I gasped out.
"Ah! Jervas Rookley!" cried Lord Derwentwater, with a bang of his fist upon the table, the while his wife got me some brandy from a sideboard. "But I warned you, Lawrence! I warned you, when I caught sight of him in Keswick."
"I know," I answered. "But you did not warn me he was a traitor. All this while Jervas Rookley has been my steward at Blackladies."
"Your steward!" exclaimed Lord Derwentwater; "and you did not know."
"Nay," I replied, "it was not so much that. But I would not know. I pledged my word to him." With that I drank off the brandy.
"Oh, if you had only told me this!" he cried.
"I could not," I answered "I had but conjectures, and they were not enough to warrant me. There was but one fact in all the business which was clearly known to me: I had pledged my word to him."