“But he won't, sir!” reiterated Rake. “You're Lord Royallieu if ever there was a Lord Royallieu, and if ever there will be one.”
“You mistake. An outlaw has no civil rights, and can claim none.”
The man looked very wistfully at him; all these years through he had never learned why his master was thus “dead” in Africa, and he had too loyal a love and faith ever to ask, or ever to doubt but that Cecil was the wronged and not the wrong-doer.
“You ain't a outlaw, sir,” he muttered. “You could take the title, if you would.”
“Oh, no! I left England under a criminal charge. I should have to disprove that before I could inherit.”
Rake crushed bitter oaths into muttered words as he heard. “You could disprove it, sir, of course, right and away, if you chose.”
“No; or I should not have come here. Let us leave the subject. It was settled long ago. My brother is Lord Royallieu. I would not disturb him, if I had the power, and I have not it. Look, the horses are taking well to their feed.”
Rake asked him no more. He had never had a harsh word from Cecil in their lives; but he knew him too well, for all that, to venture to press on him a question thus firmly put aside. But his heart ached sorely for his master; he would so gladly have seen “the king among his own again,” and would have striven for the restoration as strenuously as ever a Cavalier strove for the White Rose; and he sat in silence, perplexed and ill satisfied, under the shelter of the rock, with the great, dim, desolate African landscape stretching before him, with here and there a gleam of light upon it when the wind swept the clouds apart. His volatile speech was chilled, and his buoyant spirits were checked. That Cecil was justly outlawed he would have thought it the foulest treason to believe for one instant; yet he felt that he might as soon seek to wrench up the great stones above him from their base as seek to change the resolution of this man, whom he had once known pliant as a reed and careless as a child.
They were before long in saddle again and off, the country growing wilder at each stride the horses took.
“It is all alive with Arabs for the next ten leagues,” said Cecil, as he settled himself in his saddle. “They have come northward and been sweeping the country like a locust-swarm, and we shall blunder on some of them sooner or later. If they cut me down, don't wait; but slash my pouch loose and ride off with it.”