“Hang him! I wish I’d killed him!” muttered Stephen. “And I would if I’d known what was coming. Something told me as he caught Zephyr’s rein, and stared up at her, that he’d be after her; that’s why I fired. But why didn’t you tell me all this before, _mami_ Sarah? It’s all along of your promise to me about her that I’m working for you. You know right well you swore by your tricks and magic to make her come to me, and love me, and choose me for her mate before every one. And here I stand by to see her in love with one man, and married to another. I haven’t done your bidding, and your spying, ay, and your _choaring_ and thieving too, if it comes to that, in the pay of a man whose throat I’d like to cut, all these years, to be hocused and laughed at now. I tell you, _mami_ Sarah,” he added, starting from the stool, and stamping heavily upon the ground, having worked himself up to a frenzy, “I won’t be made a fool of any longer!” The man by the fire rolled over, and looked up at him, speaking for the first time. “You talk of wanting to cut Philip Cranstoun’s throat,” he began, slowly. “What call have _you_ to hate him, like I have, and _mami_ here? For eighteen years, come last October, we’ve been waiting, _mami_ and me, to get our knife into him, and our chance has come at last! You’re young and green, lad; we don’t let you into all our secrets. You follow orders, and do as the _nais nort_ tells you--_she’s_ got her head screwed on right. Do you think a man forgets to pay a debt like mine? Think of it, lad! I was younger than you are now, and I loved my sister Clare--Sarah here can tell you how I loved her. When she was brought up grand as a regular _been rawnie_, she used to steal away to see brother Jim on the sly. The girl Stella you’re so sweet on ain’t a patch on her mother--my sister Clare. She’d a pair of eyes like stars dancing in a pool at moonlight, and teeth like little round dewdrops. And he married her, and broke her heart, and swore he’d shoot down any of her relations as he should find loitering about his place. But that night, which was to be my last in England afore I sailed to America, to a splendid opening there with uncle Pete, that’s long ago dead, says I to father, ‘I must have one more look at Clare, for maybe I’ll never come back again.’ Father was against it at first, but I’d take no advice, and he wanted badly to speak to her, seeing she’d written to say she was breaking her heart; so we went. Oh, you’ve heard the story of how, so soon as she’d crept over the grass to us, her father and brother, by the moonlight, all in white silks and satins, to wish us good-by, she was seized and blindfolded, and dragged away, while he, that double villain, that cursed Philip Cranstoun, shot my father down where he stood by my side! No call to tell you how I fought to punish them, nor how, when they’d nabbed me, being three to one, they made a pretence of a trial, and give me five years--five years in prison for seeing my father