"You believe me, father?"
"Would I believe your mother, could she speak from her place by the great white throne? The mother you have sworn by!"
"The mother I have sworn by," repeated Ruth, lifting her eyes to heaven.
"Thank God! Thank God! Ah, Ruth! my child! my child!"
The locked agony, which was not all physical pain, went out of the old man's face then. His eyes softened, his lips relaxed; a deep, long breath heaved his chest. After this he lay upon his pillow, weak as a child, and smiling like one.
Thus Ruth watched by him for an hour; but her face was contracted with anxiety, that came back upon her after the calm of her father's rest. She had told him the truth, yet how much was kept back? There was no shame to confess; but oh, how much of sorrow to endure! Danger, too, of which Hurst should be warned. But how, with that fair woman by his side—how could any one approach him with counsel or help?
Jessup stirred on his pillow. An hour of refreshing sleep had given him wonderful strength. That surgeon, when he took the bullet from his chest, had not given him half the relief found in the words which Ruth had uttered. But out of those words came subjects for reflection when his brain awoke from its slumbers. If Ruth spoke truly, what object could have led to his own wounds? Why had young Hurst assaulted him if there was nothing to conceal—no vengeance to anticipate? Then arose a vague consciousness that all was not clear in his own mind regarding the events that had brought him so near death. The darkness of midnight lay under those old cedars of Lebanon. He had seen the figure of a man under their branches that night, but remembered it vaguely. A little after, when the bullet had struck him, and he was struggling up from the ground, he did see a face on the verge of the moonlight, looking that way. That face was Walton Hurst. Then all was black. He must have fainted.
But how had the young man been wounded? There had been a struggle—Jessup remembered that. Perhaps he had wrested the gun from his assailant, and struck back in the first agony of his wound; but of that he had no certainty—a sharp turn, and one leap upon the dark figure, was all he could remember.
What motive was there for all this? Better than his own life had he loved the family of Sir Noel Hurst—the young heir most of all. What cause of enmity had arisen up against him, a most faithful and always favored retainer? Ah, if he could but see the young man!
But that was impossible. Both were stricken down, and Ruth had failed to carry the message of conciliation and caution that had been intrusted to her. Even when writhing under a sense of double wrong, his love for the young man had come uppermost; and in the desperate apprehension inspired by Richard Storms, he had urged Ruth to go and warn the heir.