“Well, I must not detain you any longer, Captain O’Shaughnessy. I am grateful to you for telling me the truth, and for promising to befriend Saul Tresithny as far as you are able. You say he will be brought before the magistrates to-morrow—does that mean to-day? It is their day for sitting, I know.”
“To-day! why, to be sure it is to-day,” answered the young man, with a short laugh. “Good morning, Lady Bride. I must be off after my men. They have been out the best part of the night. I’ll say all I can for that fellow Tresithny; but——”
He sprang on his horse, and the rest of the sentence, if it was ever finished, was lost on Bride. She took Mr. Tremodart’s arm, and he felt that she was trembling all over.
“This has been too much for you, Lady Bride,” he said, with his awkward gentleness. “I ought not to have let you come.”
“It is not that,” answered Bride, in a very low voice. “I am not tired; it is the thought of that. Oh, Mr. Tremodart, is it true?—can they hang him for it?”
“The magistrates cannot hang him,” answered Mr. Tremodart; “and if he is committed for trial, several weeks will elapse before the assize comes on, and things may have happened to divert public attention; so perhaps the feeling against him will not be running so high. All those things make a great difference.”
“But have they hanged men before for this sort of thing?”
“Yes—they have certainly done so.”
Bride shuddered again. She spoke some words, as if to herself, in so low a voice that he could not catch them; but he thought he heard the name of Eustace pass her lips.
He shook his own head sorrowfully.