From speaking of old Ephraim and his sudden taking-off we came to things more nearly present; and at length Dick would lay a finger gently upon the mystery in which he was as yet walking as one blindfolded.

“’Tis not a shameful thing; don’t tell me it is that, Jack,” he would say; and I gave him speedy assurance upon that head.

“No,’tis never shameful; so much I may lay an oath to.”

“Yet you said once—­in that black night when I went mad and would have killed you—­that your life lay between Madge and me.”

“So it did—­and does.  And God will bear me witness, dear lad, that I have worn that life upon my sleeve.”

“Nay,” he said, very gently; “you need not go so high for a witness; have I not seen?”

We fell silent upon that, and there, in the candle-yellowed gloom of our dungeon harbor, I fought the fellest battle of my life; fought it and won it, too, my dears, once and for all.  There was a cold sweat on my brow when I began in low tones to tell him the story of that fateful night in June.  At rising forty ’tis no light thing to lose a friend—­nay, to turn a friend’s love into scorn and loathing and bitter hatred.

He heard me through without a word; and at the end, when I looked to see him spring up and bid me draw and let him have his one poor chance for satisfaction, he still sat motionless, winking and staring at the guttering candle.  And when he spoke ’twas with a quivering of the lip that was not of anger.

“Dear God,” said he; “’tis I who stand in the way.”

“No; for she loves you, Richard, as dearly as she hates me.  And ’tis not so hopeless now, else I had never screwed together the courage to tell you all this.  She has at last consented to the Church’s undoing of the incomplete marriage—­’twas this she wrote me about when we were at the Cowpens, and ’twas her letter that set me upon going to Winnsborough to see the priest.  I missed him there, as you know; but I am here now by her own appointment to meet him in her father’s house.”

He shook his head slowly.  “You’ve killed the hope in me, Jack.  I do think you are all at sea; ’tis you she loves—­not me.”

I could afford to smile at that.

“If you could see how she has ever gone about to prove that she did not love me, you would rest easy on that score, dear lad.”

But he would only shake his head again.

“’Twas to save your life she rode in on us that morning under the oaks in the glade.”

“’Twas a womanly horror of a duel and bloodshed, more belike,” said I.

“But she has saved your life thrice since then, as you confess.”

“Yes; from a strained sense of wifely duty, as she took good care to tell me.”

“None the less—­ah, Jack, you do not know her as I do; she would never have consented to stand before the priest with you had there not been something warmer than hatred in her heart.”