“In all truth your trials were sore,” said the lad in a voice that contained a note of sympathy. And yet there was a certain restraint that caught the Tavern Knight's ear. He turned his head and bent his eyes in the lad's direction, but it was quite dark by now, and he failed to make out his companion's face.
“My tale is told, Kenneth. The rest you can guess. The King did not prevail and I was forced to fly from England with those others who escaped from the butchers that had made a martyr of Charles. I took service in France under the great Conde, and I saw some mighty battles. At length came the council of Breda and the invitation to Charles the Second to receive the crown of Scotland. I set out again to follow his fortunes as I had followed his father's, realizing that by so doing I followed my own, and that did he prevail I should have the redress and vengeance so long awaited. To-day has dashed my last hope; to-morrow at this hour it will not signify. And yet much would I give to have my fingers on the throats of those two hounds before the hangman's close around my own.”
There was a spell of silence as the two men sat, both breathing heavily in the gloom that enveloped them. At length:
“You have heard my story, Kenneth,” said Crispin.
“I have heard, Sir Crispin, and God knows I pity you.”
That was all, and Galliard felt that it was not enough. He had lacerated his soul with those grim memories to earn a yet kinder word. He had looked even to hear the lad suing for pardon for the harsh opinions wherein he had held him. Strange was this yearning of his for the boy's sympathy. He who for twenty years had gone unloving and unloved, sought now in his extremity affection from a fellow-man.
And so in the gloom he waited for a kinder word that came not; then—so urgent was his need—he set himself to beg it.
“Can you not understand now, Kenneth, how I came to fall so low? Can you not understand this dissoluteness of mine, which led them to dub me the Tavern Knight after the King conferred upon me the honour of knighthood for that stand of mine in Fifeshire? You must understand, Kenneth,” he insisted almost piteously, “and knowing all, you must judge me more mercifully than hitherto.”
“It is not mine to judge, Sir Crispin. I pity you with all my heart,” the lad replied, not ungently.
Still the knight was dissatisfied. “Yours it is to judge as every man may judge his fellowman. You mean it is not yours to sentence. But if yours it were, Kenneth, what then?”