“No news, sir,” said Waghorn, gloomily.
“You great bungling idiot! Of course, I know you didn’t find Captain Harford in Malvern; he was lying within a stone’s throw of us behind the hedge.”
“And challenged you in order to save Mistress Hilary?—I guessed as much,” said the wood-carver. “I like your doings very ill, sir, and you well deserve what you got.”
“You vile hypocrite! Do you sit in judgment on me?” said Norton. “You! a turncoat—a spy! Why, you can’t even carry out the dirty work you undertake. Prate no more, but tell me what they did with Captain Harford. We fell at the same moment, and he, as I well remember, had death in his face as he ran me through.”
“I know not where they bore him, sir, and had there been a burial at Bosbury I must surely have known of it.”
“Maybe, then, he still lives, and they have hidden him away somewhere. Doubtless the Vicar hath sheltered him; he is one of those soft-hearted fools who seek to overcome evil with good, and models his life after the Sermon on the Mount, not in your fashion, on the cursing Psalms.”
There was enough truth in this remark to cause Waghorn another twinge of conscience.
“I may have been ill-advised to leave you in the orchard with Mistress Hilary,” he admitted. “But the flesh is weak, and I remembered only the duty of securing that half-hearted sparer of crosses. The lady told a most shameless lie, and if her lover was slain in the duel his blood will be on her head.”
“That may be a very soothing reflection for you,” said Norton, with a grim smile, “but it doth not better my case. Now, look you here, I will do anything in reason for you if you discover this man’s whereabouts. You think, had he died, you would have heard of it. Well, by hook or by crook, you can surely find out where they have stowed him away. Have you seen aught of Mistress Hilary?”
“Nay; she keeps the house, I hear, and is ill.”