The colour rose to her very brow, but her eyes met his boldly.
“How?” she said. “What do you mean?”
“How?” he repeated. “If you knew, miss, who the man was—your Mr. Stewart—you’d know how—and what you have escaped!”
“Who he was?” she muttered.
“Ay, who he was!” he retorted. “I can tell you this at least, young lady,” he added bluntly, “he’s the man that’s very badly wanted—uncommonly badly wanted!”—with a grin—“in more places than one, but nowhere more than where he came from.”
“Wanted?” she said, the colour fading in her cheek. “For what? What do you mean?”
“For what?”
“That is what I asked.”
His face was a picture of importance and solemnity. He looked at the landlady as much as to say, “See how I will prostrate her!” But nothing indicated his sense of the avowal he was going to make so much as the fact that instead of raising his voice he lowered it.
“You shall have the answer, miss, though I thought to spare you,” he said. “He’s wanted for being an uncommon desperate villain, I am sorry to say. For treason, and misprision of treason, and conspiracy. Ay, but that’s the man you’ve come away with,” shaking his head solemnly. “He’s wanted for bloody conspiracy—ay, it is so indeed—equal to any Guy Fawkes, against my lord the King, his crown and dignity! Seven indictments—and not mere counts, miss—have been found against him, and those who were with him, and him the worst! And when he’s taken, as he’s sure to be taken by-and-by, he’ll suffer!” And Mr. Bishop nodded portentously.