"No belt, no tino lad, I 'ont tak' it. Zimth laike a ticket for chating. I dunno as I'd tak' the mony, if it warn't for the poor chillers, naine chillers now, and anither a-coomin. Mustn't drink no more beer, but Beany shall have his'n." And his head fell back on my lap, and I felt sure that he was dead. How I screamed and shrieked, till I lay beside him, with Judy licking my face, none can tell but the gamekeepers, who had heard the shots, and came hurrying.
Of this lower end of the lake they happened to be most jealous; for a brood of pintail ducks, very rare I believe in England, had been hatched here this summer, and no one was allowed to go near them. Poor Judy kept all the men aloof, till I was able to speak to him. Then I perceived that he as well was bleeding, wounded perhaps by the poniard as he leaped on his enemy's breast. It had entered just under the shoulder, and narrowly missed the heart.
They took us at once towards the house, carrying the farmer and Judy on the wooden floodgates of the stream called the "Witches' brook," which here fell into the lake. As we entered the avenue, being obliged to take the broad way, though much further round, we heard a carriage coming. It was the one I had sent for Conrad, with a hurried note to break the sad news of his father's death. He had been detained in London by a challenge he found from Lepardo; which was of course a stratagem to keep him out of the way. How delighted I was to see his calm brave face again, as he leaped down, and took my tottering form in his arms. In a minute he understood everything, and knew what was best to be done. He would not allow them to place the poor farmer in the carriage, as they foolishly wanted to do; but laid the rude litter down, examined the wounds by the lamplight, and bound them up most cleverly with the appliances of the moment.
"Oh, Conrad, will he die?"
"No, my darling, I hope not; but he must if they had let him bleed so much longer."
"I never heard that you were a surgeon, Conny."
"Could I call myself a sculptor, without having studied anatomy? My dearest one, how you tremble! Go home in the carriage, and give directions for us. A room downstairs, with a wide doorway, and plenty of air. I will stay with them, and see that they bear him gently. Poor Judy may go with you."
Thus Conrad saw for the first time the hearth and home of his ancestors, with his father lying dead there, and his avenger carried helpless. But I met him at the door. Did that comfort you just a little, my darling?
CHAPTER XII.
The lake was dragged that night, and all the following day, in spite of the gamekeeper's strong remonstrance for the sake of the tender pintails. But nothing whatever was found, except the Italian cap. The "Witches' grave," invisible I am glad to say from the house, is more than forty feet deep, when the water is at its lowest. Three or four years afterwards young William Hiatt caught a monstrous pike in the lake, and sent him, with our permission, to be stuffed at Gloucester. Like the famous fish of Samos, this pike had swallowed a ring, which was sent to Conrad by the Gloucester gun-maker. It was Lepardo's seal-ring, the cross of the family engraved on a bloodstone, with L.D.C. below it.