“Bless my heart!” cried the Squire.
“He had seen me sitting with King that afternoon at Malvern, and heard him saying the verses to me. It put his temper up frightful, sir, I being one of their enemies the Frogs; but he says if he’d known it was me that snatched King out of the fight on Saturday, he’d not have minded so much. It must have been him that King saw coming, Master Johnny,” added Ferrar, turning momentarily from the Squire to address me; “when he broke off in the midst of ‘Lord Bateman,’ and told me, all in a hurry, to go away. He waited till I was gone, and then rushed on to King and began abusing him and knocking him about. King was unsteady through his weak leg, and one of the knocks sent him over the bank. Dan says he was frightened almost to death; he caught up Dr. Teal’s green handkercher from a chair and ran to the Well with it; he was too frightened to go and see after King, thinking he had killed him; and he sat down outside the Well and made as if he went to sleep. He never meant to hurt King, he said; it was only passion; but he had drunk a lot of strong ale and some wine upon it, and hardly knew what he was about. He said there was never a minute since but what he had been sorry for it, and he had been always seeing King. He asked me to show him the verses that had been given to me, that King wrote out, ‘Lord Bateman’—for I had got them with me at sea, sir—and he kissed them and held them to him till he died.”
“Dear, dear!” sighed the Squire.
“And that’s all, sir,” concluded Ferrar. “Mr. Conroy wrote out a copy of his confession, which I brought along with me to Worcester. Mr. Dan charged me to tell his father, and my own folks, and any other friends I liked that had thought me guilty, and I promised him. He was as placid as a child all the day after that, and died at sundown, so happy and peaceful that it was almost like heaven.”
Ferrar broke off with a sob. Poor Dan!
And that was the final ending of the Day of Pleasure. He and King are together again.