"Fool! We have met him all ways—with light hearts and with heavy, with force and guile, with many men and few—Give me the key!" he broke off roughly. "This girl goes scatheless—and for her safer conduct I'll take her down myself to Marsh."
Nell caught her breath as she listened to the voices, raised high in dispute, which spoke to her of safety. Was she mazed with the long confinement, or were the voices real?
"Then you are willing, sir, to accept so curt and uncivil a message as Wayne sent hither?" went on Red Ratcliffe, sullenly. "You are willing to give them cause for boasting—ay, and to put your own life in their hands by going to Marsh? The messenger we sent returns not—will Wayne do less to you?"
"The messenger is not slain that we know of; he may be drinking in some wayside tavern, for unless he were a very fool his horsemanship would carry him free of Wayne after he had shouted his message, as I bade him, from the lane."
"Well, he comes not back. And you, sir? Is your life of such little moment to us——"
"Thou'rt a babe," broke in the Lean Man. "Some things a Wayne will do for the feud's sake, and some he could not do. He has promised safe conduct, and if I go down with the lass, I shall return in safety. The Waynes—plague rot them!—keep faith, whatever else they do or leave undone."
At a loss still to comprehend the meaning of it, Nell was conscious of a flush of pride. Even their foes, it seemed, gave her folk credit for scrupulous observance of their word—ay, the Lean Man admitted it, steeped as he was in subtlety and lies. But how came this about? Had Janet, in trying to save her been captured by Shameless Wayne? It must be so. A quick thought came to her then, that Ned could not love the girl so madly, after all, if he were willing to make her a cat's-paw with which to outwit his adversaries.
She was still turning the thought over, well pleased with it, when the voices in the passage ceased disputing; the key grated in the lock, and the door moved slowly open.
"Come with me, Mistress Wayne; there's a horse ready saddled to take you down to Marsh," said the Lean Man.
"Sir, am I free? Or is this a fresh trick, to make my case seem harder for a sight of freedom?"