“Cut through!” cried Wat, with such genuine amazement that Andrew looked keenly at him.
“Beshrew me, yes! Didst thou not know it? The ladder gave way, and I might have made a fool of myself on the stones below, but that I have been long enough on shipboard to hold on by the very hair of my head. I gave thee a halloo.”
“I never thought it was thou, sir. Cut through! Then that is Roger’s work again; he would have done Hugh a mischief, the false traitor! If only I could wring his neck! Let me see the place.”
He strode off, boiling over with excitement, and Andrew, with a whistle of some amusement, sauntered slowly after him.
It was quite true. One of the rungs of the ladder about half-way up had been so cut where it ran into the upright that it must necessarily have given way under an ordinary weight, and Hugh, who would have gone up encumbered with his tools, could scarcely have avoided a bad fall. He arrived very soon, and the other men dropped in, Wat questioning them all closely, not, it must be owned, with any thought that they could have done such a dastardly deed, but with a hope of getting evidence that Roger had been seen near the ladder. In this he failed. No one had noticed anything, all the ladders lay near each other, and whoever had done it had undoubtedly exercised much caution and ingenuity. The men were angry. Many of them were jealous of Hugh, but not to the extent of committing a crime in order to incapacitate him; such an act, if proved, would be visited by the most severe punishment the guild could inflict. Roger himself came late, he cast a swift glance at the groups of men standing about in unusual idleness, and another, which Wat noted, towards Hugh’s pillar. When he saw Hugh there, engaged on his work as on every other day, the colour left his face, and he glanced uneasily from one to the other, finally pausing before Wat, who had planted himself aggressively in his way.
“Is aught the matter?” he demanded.
“Murder or maiming might have been the matter,” returned Wat grimly. “Now, maybe, there will be naught but the hanging.”
“Hanging?”
“Of the villain who tried this wickedness. Canst thou give a guess who that might be?”
“Thou talkest riddles,” said Roger impatiently. “Let me pass to my work.”