"And may be brewing the devil's own mischief against you."
"Oh, ho!" laughed the young man, with a careless shrug of the shoulders, "against me? ... Well! you know, honest John, I am bound to end on the gallows..."
"Sooner or later! Sooner or later!" he added merrily, noting John's look of sorrowful alarm. "They've not got me yet, though there are so many soldiers about, as that piece of underdone roast-beef said just now."
"You'll not tell me what Sir Humphrey Challoner spoke to you about?"
"No, friend, I will not," said Jack, with a look of infinite kindness and placing a slender white hand on the smith's broad shoulder. "You are my friend, you know, you shoe and care after my horse, you shelter and comfort me. May Heaven's legions of angels bless you for that. Of my life on the Heath I'll never tell you aught, whatever you may guess. 'Tis better so. I'll not have you compromised, or implicated in my adventures. In case ... well! ... if they do catch me, you know, friend, 'tis better for your sake that you should know nothing."
"But you'll not go on the Heath to-night, Captain," pleaded the smith, with a tremor in his voice.
"Aye! that I will, John Stich," rejoined Bathurst, with a careless laugh, which now had an unmistakable ring of bitterness in it, "to stop a coach, to lift a purse! that's my business.... Aye! I'll to the Heath, friend, 'tis my only home, you know, ere I find a resting-place on the gallows yonder."
John sighed and turned away, and thus did not hear the faint murmur that came of a great and good heart over-full with longing and disappointment.
"My beautiful white rose! ... how pale she looked ... and how exquisitely fair! ... Ah! me ... if only.... Jack! Jack! don't be a fool!" he added with a short, deep sigh, "'tis too late; remember, for Beau Brocade to go galloping after an illusion!"
CHAPTER XIV