"Quarter! We're defenceless, Wayne. Would'st butcher us?"
"Ay, would I," answered Wayne of Marsh, and cut at Ratcliffe's head-guard, and grazed his scalp as his own blade slid down the other's steel.
"Thou'st made a priest of him!" roared Griff, beside himself with the reek of slaughter. "Look at his bloody tonsure, Ned."
Red Ratcliffe flung his sword in the lad's face, and picked up a dying Ratcliffe in his arms. Fury lent sinew to despair; a moment he staggered under the body, then hurled it full at Shameless Wayne and drove him blundering half across the floor. And then he raced down the pathway he had made, and gained the hinder door, forgotten until now, and clashed it to behind him.
The passage was pitch-dark, with a sharp turn and three unlooked-for steps half down it; and his first thought was to pick off the Waynes who followed as they stumbled in the darkness, and afterward to make good his escape in such rough-ready fashion as the ensuing uproar might suggest. He halted awhile, waiting their coming, while his breath came and went in hard-won sobs; then, as his brain cooled, he bethought him of the narrow, winding passage that branched oft from the one in which he stood and led at one end to a rarely opened door that backed the orchard, at the other to the room where his Cousin Janet lay.
Behind him he could hear the Waynes calling one to another as they blundered out in search of him; some went up the main stairway; others moved cautiously toward him and called to their fellows in hall to bring them candles. He waited for no more, but crept down the narrowed passage, and felt for the door, and had his hand already on the hasp when he remembered Janet. It was his last chance of safety, this, he knew; but, like the greybeard who had schemed his last behind in hall there, he had a desperate courage of his own, and a like remorselessness. Was he to leave Wayne of Marsh to make merry with the maid for whom he had hungered these twelve months past? Nay, for she should share his flight; and Wayne should find the dregs of victory less welcome than he looked for.
His pursuers were moving all about the house; but their thoughts were all of the main doors and plainer ways of escape, and in their hurry they neglected the narrow belt of darkness that marked the opening of the side-passage. Red Ratcliffe laughed softly to himself as he ran to Janet's room; for there was time, and he could yet plant a mortal thrust in Wayne of Marsh.
Janet, with the ring of Wayne's last triumph-shout in her ears, heard steps without her door, and cried, half between tears and laughter, that Ned had come to free her—Ned, who had fought a righteous quarrel to the last bitter end; Ned, who was her master, and the master of her enemies. Ah, God! If he had not saved her from Red Ratcliffe!
The key was turned softly in the lock—too softly, she thought, for an impetuous lover. She put her hands out, felt them prisoned, and with a "Thank Our Lady, Ned, thou'rt safe!" she yielded herself to a hot embrace.
"Ned, take me to the light! I want to see thy face. Is there blood on thee, dear lad? Nay, I care not, so it be not thine own."