Captain Cavendish said nothing. His fury had turned to black, bitter sullenness, and his handsome face was disturbed by a savage scowl.
"You, gentlemen, and you, Mrs. Cavendish," said Mr. Darcy, bowing to Cherrie, and smiling slightly, "will hold yourselves in readiness to give evidence at the trial. I think we will have no difficulty in bringing out a clear case of willful murder."
An awful picture came before the mind of the scowling and sullen captain. A gaping crowd in the raw dawn of a cheerless morning, a horrible gallows, the dangling rope, the hangman's hand adjusting it round his neck, the drop, a convulsed figure quivering in the air in ghastly agony, and then——Great beads of cold sweat broke out on his forehead, and his livid face was contracted by a spasm of mortal agony. Then he saw the two clergymen, Mr. Blake, and Cherrie standing up to go.
"I think I'll take you home, Cherrie," said Val, "I'll get another cab for you! Won't they open their eyes when they see you, though?"
Mr. Blake and Cherrie departed, followed by the two clergymen; and no one spoke to the ghastly-looking man, sitting, guarded by the constable, staring at the floor, with that black, desperate scowl, that so changed his face that his nearest friend would hardly have known it. Cherrie trembled and shrank away as she passed him, and did not breathe freely until she was safely seated in the cab beside Val, and rattling away through the streets on her way home.
Home! how poor Cherrie's heart longed for the peace of that little cottage where those who loved her, and had mourned her, dwelt. She was crying quietly, as she sat silently away in a corner, thinking what a long, and wretched, and forlorn, and dreary year the last had been, and what a foolish girl she had been, and how much she owed to Val Blake.
Mr. Blake did not disturb her reflections; he was thinking of wronged Charley Marsh, exiled from home, branded as a felon.
The cab, for which Mr. Darcy had sent one of the constables, drew up at the office door, as Mr. Blake's drove away; and the prisoner, between the two officials, with Mr. Darcy following close behind, came down-stairs.
Captain Cavendish had gone down-stairs very quietly between his two guards, neither speaking nor offering the slightest resistance; but his eyes were furtively taking in everything, and the captive's instinct of flight was strong upon him. One of the constables went forward to open the cab-door, the other had but a slight grasp of his arm. The murky darkness, the empty street, favored him.
With the rapidity of lightning, he wheeled round, struck the constable a blinding blow in the face with his fist, that forced him to release his hold, and, like a flash, he sped off, turned sharp round a corner, and was gone! The whole thing had been the work of two seconds. Before any one among them could quite comprehend he had really gone, he was entirely out of sight.