“’Tis an ingenious scheme,” Sir Rufus mused. Halfman laughed grimly.
“Oh, I am a pattern of strategy; this is but a simple ambuscado, a tame trap. You are a sure shot, I know; you cannot miss your bird. You need waste no time in making sure that he is stark. I shall be at hand to make sure, and will soon stick him in a ditch to wait for judgment.”
Sir Rufus clapped Halfman on the shoulder.
“Your wit has a most pleasant invention,” he approved. “She will soon forget this whining wry-face.”
Halfman disengaged himself from the pressure of his companion’s hand.
“It is so to be hoped,” he said, drearily; “it is so to be believed. Woman’s love-memory is a kind of quicksand that can swallow a score or so of gallant gentlemen and show no trace of their passage.”
“A curse on your poppycoddle,” Sir Rufus grumbled. “I must be stirring. I should like him to know that I killed him.”
“If I find any breath in him I will tell him,” Halfman affirmed. “Your honor over-refines your pleasant purpose. The pith is that he be killed. Remember the western gate.”
In another moment Halfman was alone, listening to the sound of spurred heels on the stairway, as Sir Rufus hastened to join the King.
“Love of woman leads us to strange issues,” he said to himself, with a wintry smile. “Cavalier, Puritan, and poor Jack here, we all love the same lady, and here be two of us clapping palms together to kill the third.”