"Stand—or I fire!" exclaimed Markham, advancing towards him, and presenting a pistol.
"Fool!" said the man; and he threw himself with desperate fury upon our hero.
But Richard, maintaining his footing gallantly, closed with his assailant, and threw him to the ground, his pistol going off with the shock—without, however, inflicting any injury.
And at the same moment three police-officers leapt over the wall, in time to put an end to the struggle between Markham and his opponent, the latter of whom they made their prisoner and immediately bound with strong cords.
"Is your Highness hurt?" asked one of the officers.
"No, Benstead," was the reply: "a little bruised, perhaps—but it is nothing. Bring the prisoner this way."
The whole transaction,—from the moment when Richard left the undertaker's parlour to that when he re-entered it, followed by the policemen with the captive,—had not occupied two minutes.
He found Katherine reclining back in her chair—half fainting and paralysed by terror, so deeply had the report of the pistol and the concomitant scuffle in the yard alarmed her.
But the moment she heard her brother's voice, she started up, gazed wildly around, and threw herself into his arms.
"You are not hurt, Richard? Oh! tell me—that pistol!" she exclaimed, terror still depicted on her countenance.