“I do not wish,” added Miller Harmer, “to enter into any dispute with you. What is past I am willing to forget, if it has fallen short of the crime of abduction, which I feel myself in a position to lay at the door of some one.”
“And I, too,” said Sir Richard; “I, too, have reason to require an explanation from you, colonel, of rather an extraordinary appearance that you made in my house last night, but am quite willing, for the present, to wave that circumstance in favour of the questions that my friend, the miller here, has put to you.”
“Very well, gentlemen,” said the colonel, coolly. “You find me peculiarly situated here; the king, who holds my first duty, can command me to reply to you.”
“Nay,” said the king, “that I do not. I only stand here as, I hope, the friend of all parties; and if anything I can say or do will have the effect of preventing honourable gentlemen and good subjects from embroiling themselves in conflict with each other, of course I am only too happy.”
“Then,” said Ned Warbeck, “do I understand, Colonel Blood, that you will answer what I have to say to you?”
“You do, sir,” said the colonel, with a curling lip.
“On the word of a gentleman?” said Ned.
“On the word of a gentleman,” replied the colonel.
“Which,” added Sir Richard, “it is moral suicide to falsify.”
“Exactly so,” said the colonel, with a smile; “I propose your questions, and here I stand ready to reply to them fully and fairly.”