Without turning to the right or left, he went direct to the common gaol. There, in the cell which Ralph had occupied between the first trial and the second one, Mark Garth, the perjurer, lay imprisoned.
“You hell-hound,” cried the sheriff, grasping him by the hair and dragging him into the middle of the floor. “I have found out your devilish treachery,” he said, speaking between gusts of breath. “Did you not tell me that it was Ray who struck me this blow—this” (beating with his palm the scar on his brow)? “It was a lie—a damned lie!”
“It was,” said the man, glaring back, with eyes afire with fury.
“And did you not say it was Ray who carried me into their camp—an insensible prisoner?”
“That was a lie also,” the man gasped, never struggling to release himself from the grip that held him on the floor.
“And did you not set me on to compass the death of this man, but for whom I should now myself be dead?”
“You speak with marvellous accuracy, Master Lawson,” returned the perjurer.
The sheriff looked down at him for a moment, and then flung him away.
“Man, man! do you know what you have done?” he cried in an altered tone. “You have charged my soul with your loathsome crime.”
The perjurer curled his lip.