Sim had risen to his feet in obvious excitement.

Ralph calmly shook his head.

“I neither will nor can,” he said emphatically.

Sim sank back into his seat.

A look of surprise in the sheriff’s face quickly gave way to a look of content and satisfaction.

“We know each other of old, and I say there is no love between us,” he observed, “but it is by no doing of mine that you are here.  Nevertheless, your response to this merciful tender shows but too plainly how well you merit your position.”

“It took you five days to bring it—­this merciful tender, as you term it,” said Ralph.

“The King is now at Newcastle, and there at this moment is also Justice Hide, in whom, had you been an innocent man, you must have found an earnest sponsor.  I bid you good day.”

The sheriff rose, and, bowing to the prisoner with a ridiculous affectation of mingled deference and superiority, he stepped to the door.

“Stop,” said Ralph:  “you say we know each other of old.  That is false!  To this hour you have never known, nor do you know now, why I stand here condemned to die, and doomed by a harder fate to take the life of this innocent old man.  You have never known me:  no, nor yourself neither—­never!  But you shall know both before you leave this room.  Sit down.”

“I have no time to waste in idle disputation,” said the sheriff testily; but he sat down, nevertheless, at his prisoner’s bidding, as meekly as if the positions had been reversed.

“That scar across your brow.” said Ralph, “you have carried since the day I have now to speak of.”

“You know it well,” said the sheriff bitterly.  “You have cause to know it.”

“I have,” Ralph answered.

After a pause, in which he was catching the thread of a story half forgotten, he continued:  “You said I supplanted you in your captaincy.  Pehaps so; perhaps not.  God will judge between us.  You went over to the Royalist camp, and you were among the garrison that had reduced this very castle.  The troops of the Parliament came up one day and summoned you to surrender.  The only answer your general gave us was to order the tunnel guns to fire on the white flag.  It went down.  We lay entrenched about you for six days.  Then you sent out a dispatch assuring us that your garrison was well prepared for a siege, and that nothing would prevail with you to open your gates.  That was a lie!”

“Well?”

“Your general lied; the man who carried your general’s dispatch was a liar too, but he told the truth for a bribe.”

“Ah! then the saints were not above warming the palm?”

“He assured our commander we might expect a mutiny in your city if we continued before it one day longer; that your castle was garrisoned only by a handful of horse, and two raw, undisciplined regiments of militia; that even from these desertions occurred hourly, and that some of your companies were left with only a score of men.  This was at night, and we were under an order to break up next morning.  That order was countermanded.  Your messenger was sent back the richer by twenty pounds.”