Then Will told him all the tale of the false message and of their home-coming.
"It is Barra's trick—what other?" Wat said, at once; "I saw that he loved her—if such a poisonous reptile can love. But I thought not that even he could devise her wrong, else had I slain him on the spot."
Wat meditated a little while in silence. "Did Kate tell you if he had spoken aught to her of love?"
"He offered her the most honorable marriage, and yet greater things when the prince should come to his own. But she would have none of him," replied Will Gordon.
"It is enough," cried Wat. "Certainly this is an affair of my lord's. Dead or alive, I will trace out his plots till I find his trail. It may be, after all, but a matter of Haxo the Bull, his Calf, and his Killer. Give me no more than a sword and pistols, and my belt with the gold that is in your strong-box."
"Will you not come up with me, Wat?" said Will Gordon. "Come, cousin."
"Nay," said Wat, "there is not time. It is but now that I have escaped from their prison. In an hour there will be the hue-and-cry, and then they will surely search your house. I must be far on the sea-road by daybreak. Only furnish me with necessities, cousin mine, and let me go. My humblest service to your wife—but tell her not till after I am gone!"
Will Gordon went back up the stairs. Presently he was down again with the weapons, with enough and to spare of ammunition, a loaf of wheaten bread, a flask of wine, and the broad leathern belt with the gold-pieces, which slipped down like a weighty serpent as he laid it in Wat's hands. The money had been kept sacred for just such an emergency.
The cousins bade each other a kindly adieu in the fashion of other and happier times, and then Will Gordon returned sadly to his wife.
Wat stepped back to the shelter where he had left Marie, but she was not to be seen. He looked every way and called softly; but the girl had vanished.