He heard a slight movement behind him, and, turning sharply, found my lord awake and watching him with thoughtful eyes. Both men colored slightly. John Gore turned again, and went on with his work. Then he heard his father speak. “John, how long have I been here?” The son considered. “Three months—or so,” he answered. My lord sighed. “This leg of mine is mending.” The son said nothing. “I am wondering whether it is worth the mending. A man must die some day; though it is better that he should die like a man, not like a dog.” There was a minute’s silence. John Gore could hear his father’s breathing, but he went on doggedly with the cleaning of his pistols. “John.” My lord spoke softly, almost pleadingly. “Yes.” “Will you answer me a few questions?” “Ask them.” Again there was a short pause. “Have you any news from Westminster?” “What news?” “The Catholics, my friends—the rest.” John Gore laid one pistol down and took up the other. “Coleman is dead,” he said, curtly. “Coleman! How?” “The scaffold.” He heard his father mutter indistinctly, and the words sounded like the words of a Latin prayer. “And the rest?” “Some with Coleman, some in the Tower and the jails, some scattered. London has been calling for blood.” My lord lay very still. Then he turned slightly, and his eyes were on his son. “And in Pall Mall?” “My Lady Purcell?” “Yes.” “She died three months ago.” There was another and a longer pause. “John.” And he spoke with effort. “Yes.” “Why did you save me from dying?” The son frowned at the fire. “I do not know,” he said, at last. “John, you were always honest. Yet—God help me—with the irony of the truth.” Stephen Gore asked no more questions, but lay staring at the beams above him, his mouth twitching, his eyes glazed with a film of thought. He seemed to forget the presence of his son. The great dim world of the past, and the vast “beyond” that holds the past world in its shadows, engrossed the life in him, and he made no sound. As for John Gore, his heart was full of a conflict of strong emotions. Nor was his mouth so straight and stern when he turned and glanced at his father over his shoulder. Yet what he beheld moved him more deeply than any words my lord had spoken. For Stephen Gore’s eyes were wet and blurred, and there was the glisten of tears upon his face. John Gore rose suddenly from before the fire, and, taking his pistols with him, went out without a word. He was half angry and half ashamed, for though pity had welled up like blood into his mouth, a rough and scolding bitterness pointed to the meaner motives of mankind, and the leer of a possible hypocrisy hardened his heart. He rode home toward Furze Farm, meeting a strong west wind that made the sky move fast and the ash boughs clash in the thickets. And in the woods north of the farm Barbara met him, where a number of old hollies threw up a wall of dense, green gloom.