Poor Dick had stood the whole evening, never moving his eyes from his young guests, but, in his misery, so unconscious of what was going on around him, that he was in every one's way, and of no use at all. It was therefore no small relief to himself, as well as the others, when Bertrand bade him shoulder his tools and go off to his work. For a while the two men marched along in silence, till they came to one of the deep, dark pools into which the soldier had looked so wistfully that afternoon. Here he stopped, flung down his burden, and turned toward his companion with the reckless look of a wild beast brought to bay on the brink of a precipice, preferring to leap from the dizzy height to certain destruction rather than fall into the hands of its enemies. Bertrand was startled at the change in the man's face.
"I tell you, 'tis of no use; they are after me again, and there is no driving them off, He saved me, and I have killed them both. There is no changing it--the devils may as well have me first as last. The other Judas hanged himself, but I think it was because there was no pool near. Ha! how they would dance around me if I were dangling to yon branch! No; this is better. Fare thee well, comrade!"
He turned, and was pushing aside the branches to take the fatal leap, when he felt himself seized from behind in a powerful grasp.
"Hold, Dick Redwood! What meanest thou, man? Art thou mad?"
"Let me alone!" said the soldier, struggling with his captor. "It is the only place for peace; I shall be one of them there, and there they cannot torment so. Take off thy hand, man, or it will be the worse for thee!"
"Not so fast," replied Bertrand coolly. "Dost think I will see murder committed before my eyes--ay, and the worst of murder, the murder of a soul? We will try a bout for that first, my man."
Then began a fierce struggle, in which the soldier's strength and military knowledge were well matched by the supple limbs and clear, cool eye of the forester. It was truly a conflict for life or death on which the calm moonbeams looked down that lovely spring night. Hither and thither went the combatants over the fallen trees and stones, and through the brushwood, the object of Bertrand being to get as far as possible from the brink of the fatal precipice. Sometimes one party gained a slight advantage, sometimes the other; but both were evidently becoming exhausted. It seemed an even chance whether the Lollard would succeed in his benevolent object of saving his comrade's life from his own violent hands, or would be obliged to yield, in order to preserve his own. The struggle was carried on, however, in the utmost silence, neither caring to waste strength in outcries, so that the only sounds to be heard during the combat were the crackling of the branches, the trampling of feet, and the panting breath of the wrestlers.
Just at the moment when Bertrand had the other in a position to give him a heavy fling on the grass, his foot slipped, and they rolled together to the ground; the forester's head struck heavily, and he lay for a moment stunned.
In that moment the soldier disengaged himself from Bertrand's relaxed grasp, and, with a yell of triumph, sprang toward the pool. A few strides, and he was at the brink, parting the bushes with a trembling hand.
The moon cast a shimmer of light on some inky-black water--a rush of a heavy body, a shriek, a plunge--and the smooth surface, broken into a thousand points of light, was settling itself once more into tranquillity.