“Name him not—oh, name him not,” said Learmont. “Hark—hark!”
As he spoke, it appeared that whoever had been knocking at the outer door of the house had grown impatient, and burst it open, frailly as it had been fastened after the violence that had been used towards it by Britton, for there was heard a loud crash, and then a sound of rapid footsteps approaching.
“Flight—flight,” gasped Learmont, as he sprung towards the door.
“Flight be d—d,” said Britton, as he flourished the cleaver above his head. “I’m not going to be scared now because some one is coming.”
He then walked deliberately to Gray’s cloak, in which it will be recollected the confession was concealed, and wiped the reeking blade of the instrument, by which he had put Gray to death, upon it.
“For my sake, and your own,” said Learmont, “leave this room. What enemy to us can he be who is coming, unless we make him one?”
As he spoke, he seized the reluctant smith by the arm, and dragging him across the narrow landing pushed open another doorway on the same story, and entered an empty room.
Now that the savage smith had dipped his hands in Gray’s blood, he would, with wild ferocity, have defied the world; and it would have given him far greater pleasure to have been hindered in his retreat, and to have had to fight his way out of the house, with Bond’s cleaver, than to escape easily and without a struggle.
In order now to explain the cause of the violent knocking at so terrible a moment at the door, we must carry the reader back for a brief space to Albert Seyton and his lonely walk. Filled with surprise, as we know he was, to see the squire at such an hour making a clandestine entrance into the house in which Gray resided, he remained upon the tip-toe of expectation waiting his re-appearance, accompanied by Ada, in which case he felt that he could no longer restrain his impatience, but must fly across to her, and welcome her to freedom, even if it cost him the reproach of breaking his word, and his future friendship of the rich squire.
But as minute after minute passed languidly away, and no re-appearance look place, Albert’s impatience and anxiety became excruciating, and he could no longer stay within the deep doorway, but scarcely knowing what he did, he walked to the very middle of the road, and keeping his eyes fixed upon the door, with but now and then an occasional glance at the window, which he had all along pleased himself with the idea was that of Ada’s room, he trembled again with impatient excitement.