"Stir from here, 'ee don't, Abram Lestwick, after what 'ee hev done!"
One sweep of his arm would have felled Markabee and left the way clear for him to depart, yet Abram Lestwick never thought of that—he stood still, silent, submissive.
His dull brain refused to answer the question that he would have put to it. A mistake—how had he come to make a mistake—another man—what other man could it be? Had he not seen his enemy standing erect, unhurt, the lamplight on his face?
"It be past, all past my understanding——" Abram Lestwick muttered. "All misty and dizzy it du seem to I—all misty and dizzy!"
They had carried the victim into the house, now they came back for Lestwick, they took him and bound his hands behind his back, those terrible, those death dealing hands, and he submitted without a word, without a struggle.
Sullenly and with bent head, he shambled along between his captors. They took him into the house, into the light, he stood with bent head, then slowly lifted it, his restless eyes roamed the room, they fell on Kathleen's white face for a moment, then strayed away again.
The man was muttering to himself, they bent near to listen, yet could make but little of it.
"Wonderful pleasant spoken he be——" he said, and said it again and yet again, a score of times.
Old Markabee, tremulous, but staunch, gripping a Dutch hoe, stood on guard. "I du remember," he said, "aye I du remember his mother, my Lady, and it be the same wi' Abram as it were wi' she—strange she were always, terribul strange and they du say aye I have heard it said as her did die in the madhouse!"
Kathleen drew back, but the horror died out of her face and in its place there came pity, a great pity for this stricken wretch, the dull eyes rested for a moment on her face, then sank to the ground, his fingers were picking at the rope that bound his wrists together, but not with any intention of picking himself free, just for the sake of picking and fraying and tearing the cords, that was all.