“And wherefore?”
“The mark of your gripe is still on my throat,” replied Houseman, significantly; “you know as well as I, that it is not always safe to have a friend lagging behind.”
“Let us rest here, then,” said Aram, calmly, the darkness veiling any alteration of his countenance, which his comrade’s suspicion might have created.
“Yet it were much better,” said Houseman, doubtingly, “could we gain the cave below.”
“The cave!” said Aram, starting, as if the word had a sound of fear.
“Ay, ay: but not St. Robert’s,” said Houseman; and the grin of his teeth was visible through the dullness of the shade. “But come, give me your hand, and I will venture to conduct you through the thicket:—that is your left hand,” observed Houseman with a sharp and angry suspicion in his tone; “give me the right.”
“As you will,” said Aram in a subdued, yet meaning voice, that seemed to come from his heart; and thrilled, for an instant, to the bones of him who heard it; “as you will; but for fourteen years I have not given this right hand, in pledge of fellowship, to living man; you alone deserve the courtesy—there!”
Houseman hesitated, before he took the hand now extended to him.
“Pshaw!” said he, as if indignant at himself, “what! scruples at a shadow! Come,” (grasping the hand) “that’s well—so, so; now we are in the thicket—tread firm—this way—hold,” continued Houseman, under his breath, as suspicion anew seemed to cross him; “hold! we can see each other’s face not even dimly now: but in this hand, my right is free, I have a knife that has done good service ere this; and if I feel cause to suspect that you meditate to play me false, I bury it in your heart; do you heed me?”
“Fool!” said Aram, scornfully, “I should dread you dead yet more than living.”