"Ay, ay; he speaks truth at last!" cried Mistress Sheppard, and dashing forward, and squaring up to Rumsey, she shook her clenched fist in his face.
"Woman!" he snarled, retreating a step, and his ashen lips quivering apart, like a half-cowed hyena's.
"Oh! woman me as much as you please," she stormed on. "That don't frighten me much, I reckon. Yes, yes, woman I am, and Ruth here has told me all about it; and how the others being gone away—"
"Others?" wonderingly interrupted the king. "Gone away?"
"Ay, for sure. The other conspirators, your Majesty—being gone down into the vaults with Master Rumbold, to see the way they should escape by, if—when—" She hesitated a moment.
"Go on, my good woman. I understand," said the king, "when their purpose should be accomplished."
"And they left Master Goodenough, who had fallen asleep in the window, alone with this Rumsey here; and Master Goodenough, who was not for—for your Majesty being murdered, but only for being made away with like, across the water—being presently wakened up, picked a quarrel with this fellow—that is, this fellow, who was all for hacking down your Majesty and his grace of York yonder in the lane, like any butcher's oxen, picked it with him, and—Come, Ruth, child;" and seizing Ruth by the arm, Mistress Sheppard dragged her forward. "Those were his words. Tell the king how those were his words."
"Lies!" hissed Rumsey through his livid lips. "Let her bring her witnesses. Just a string of lies!"
"Those are in thy foul mouth," retorted Mistress Sheppard. "Not in this gentle child's, who found courage, Heaven helping her, for the king's sake, to make herself certain of all your evil minds were hatchin'; and then spared not what was best and dearest to her, so only that the king should be apprised of your villainy. Oh, I trow they'll be well mated man an' wife," murmured on Mistress Sheppard, gazing with proud tears in her eager eyes, from Ruth to Lawrence Lee, "when please old Time's good leisure, he shall make her a trifle older."
A parenthesis.