“Peter Godolphin,” came the answer from lips that writhed in a curious smile.
Never a word said Sir Oliver, but he set his teeth and clenched his hands until the nails cut into his palms. Then he put an arm about this lad he loved above all save one in the whole world, and with anguish in his mind he supported him forward to the fire. There Lionel dropped to the chair that Sir Oliver had lately occupied.
“What is your hurt, lad? Has it gone deep?” he asked, in terror almost.
“’Tis naught—a flesh wound; but I have lost a mort of blood. I thought I should have been drained or ever I got me home.”
With fearful speed Sir Oliver drew his dagger and ripped away doublet, vest, and shirt, laying bare the lad’s white flesh. A moment’s examination, and he breathed more freely.
“Art a very babe, Lal,” he cried in his relief. “To ride without thought to stanch so simple a wound, and so lose all this blood—bad Tressilian blood though it be.” He laughed in the immensity of his reaction from that momentary terror. “Stay thou there whilst I call Nick to help us dress this scratch.”
“No, no!” There was note of sudden fear in the lad’s voice, and his hand clutched at his brother’s sleeve. “Nick must not know. None must know, or I am undone else.”
Sir Oliver stared, bewildered. Lionel smiled again that curious twisted, rather frightened smile.
“I gave better than I took, Noll,” said he. “Master Godolphin is as cold by now as the snow on which I left him.”
His brother’s sudden start and the fixed stare from out of his slowly paling face scared Lionel a little. He observed, almost subconsciously, the dull red wheal that came into prominence as the colour faded out of Sir Oliver’s face, yet never thought to ask how it came there. His own affairs possessed him too completely.