While they were talking, on the same bank, a few yards off, the farmer and the two detectives were crouching behind the bushes and creeping closer up.
Hardy spoke again, and a painful flush suffused his face.
“It is the revolver you took from me that night. I have kept it ever since. I might have shot you with it. Take it from me again, and keep it, for my sake!”
He handed it up as he spoke, and Ansley took it, turned it round once or twice, and stooped to help his friend to rise.
As he bent forward, a voice called out: “Shoot quick, before he kills him!” Two revolver shots rang together, and with a half-stifled cry, Ansley threw up his arms and dropped at Hardy’s feet. A wild scream of agony burst from Hardy, and, weak as he was, his arms were in an instant round his friend.
“My God!” he cried wildly, “you have murdered him! Stand back I leave him! Speak to me, my boy, speak! Where is it? Where are you hit?”
But Ansley shook his head; his face was drawn and pale, and there was a look of intense suffering in his eyes. His voice quivered as he whispered slowly:
“Home—old chap—home—home—your daughter. I want—to—speak—to—her!”
So they carried him back as gently, as tenderly as they could—the man they had hunted and shot down; they laid him on the bed he had that morning risen from, and three of them left him. Whitton came in and would have tried to stanch the wound, but Ansley shook his head. In broken whispers he told Hardy how he had come to the house and waited for him; how he had met Grace and told her all, excepting only his identity. He asked him to go to her and tell her that, and ask her would she come to him that he might see her once more.
The smile of welcome died on Grace’s lips as she saw her father’s face. He told her all as best he could. There was no attempt at control—it would have been useless. The sorrow-stricken old man, with sobs and tears, tried to break it to her, but it required little telling. Distracted with sorrow, remorse, and love for “his boy,” as he called him, he blamed himself for it. He lost all control of himself.