Kenneth looked from one to the other of them.
“Sirs, is this a jest?” he cried, reddening. Then, remarking at length the solemnity of their countenances, he stopped short. Crispin came close up to him, and placed a hand upon his shoulder. The boy shrank visibly beneath the touch, and again an expression of pain crossed the poor ruffler's face.
“Do you recall, Kenneth,” he said slowly, almost sorrowfully, “the story that I told you that night in Worcester, when we sat waiting for dawn and the hangman?”
The lad nodded vacantly.
“Do you remember the details? Do you remember I told you how, when I swooned beneath the stroke of Joseph Ashburn's sword, the last words I heard were those in which he bade his brother slit the throat of the babe in the cradle? You were, yourself, present yesternight at Castle Marleigh when Joseph Ashburn told me Gregory had been mercifully inclined; that my child had not died; that if I gave him his life he would restore him to me. You remember?”
Again Kenneth nodded. A vague, numbing fear was creeping round his heart, and his blood seemed chilled by it and stagnant. With fascinated eyes he watched the knight's face—drawn and haggard.
“It was a trap that Joseph Ashburn set for me. Yet he did not altogether lie. The child Gregory had indeed spared, and it seems from what I have learned within the last half-hour that he had entrusted his rearing to Alan Stewart, of Bailienochy, seeking afterwards—I take it—to wed him to his daughter, so that should the King come to his own again, they should have the protection of a Marleigh who had served his King.”
“You mean,” the lad almost whispered, and his accents were unmistakably of horror, “you mean that I am your—Oh, God, I'll not believe it!” he cried out, with such sudden loathing and passion that Crispin recoiled as though he had been struck. A dull flush crept into his cheeks to fade upon the instant and give place to a pallor, if possible, intenser than before.
“I'll not believe it! I'll not believe it!” the boy repeated, as if seeking by that reiteration to shut out a conviction by which he was beset. “I'll not believe it!” he cried again; and now his voice had lost its passionate vehemence, and was sunk almost to a moan.
“I found it hard to believe myself,” was Crispin's answer, and his voice was not free from bitterness. “But I have a proof here that seems incontestable, even had I not the proof of your face to which I have been blind these months. Blind with the eyes of my body, at least. The eyes of my soul saw and recognized you when first they fell on you in Perth. The voice of the blood ordered me then to your side, and though I heard its call, I understood not what it meant. Read this letter, boy—the letter that you were to have carried to Colonel Pride.”