"'Tis a deadly foe to the Lord Captain, for he openly challenged him to mortal combat," said Lady Trenchard gravely.
"What! he dared to challenge the Captain of the Wight?" cried Ralph, in amaze; "and what said he?"
"He accepted his challenge."
CHAPTER XVIII.
HOW THE RUSTY KNIGHT LET THE SUN GO DOWN ON HIS WRATH.
On the evening of the last day of the jousts, just as the sun was setting in a blaze of stormy grandeur, tingeing crag and headland and far-off swelling down and beetling cliff with fiery glow, two men were making their way from the steep summit of the high down above the dark fissure in the cliffs where Ralph Lisle had so nearly met his death.
"'Vengeance is mine, I will repay,' saith the Lord," the older and less active figure was saying to his companion.
"Maybe, maybe," said the other testily. "And I never counted much of disputation, but I know this, that even in Holy Writ evil-doers were punished, and made to atone for their wrong-doings."
"But their punishment came not from those who were wronged. 'Evil shall hunt the wicked man,' it is true, but it says not we are to be the instruments of our revenge--and, as I have often-times told thee, there is not the least proof that thou hast received any wrong at his hands."
"Man, man, talk not with me thus!" broke in the other with hot passion. "She loved him or ever she saw me--and she hated me from the time she took me for her lord and master, even if she hated me not from the time of first seeing me; and when a woman hateth one and loveth another, and the one is her husband and the other her--"