“Don’t let her come! Don’t let her come!” the fallen chieftain howled. And he tried to speak further, but his strength failed him and pain overcame him. Something in the woman’s look, in her manner, and in the sound of her voice attracted the earl’s attention and interested him, and he determined that she should have her way. At any rate it should be as Percy said, and so he told her. And she besought her son to suffer her to go in with them, and he could not find it in his heart to refuse her. They bore the litter to the foot of the steps of the main vestibule, and thence took the wounded man in their arms. They carried him into the great hall and into the principal drawing-room,--took him in there because there was in the apartment the largest and softest sofa in the castle, and upon that sofa they laid him, and then brought pillows for his head and pillows for his shoulders. The pseudo-priest, really a surgeon, having found a suitable instrument for a probe, thought to find the location of the bullet, but the pain he caused was so great, with a threatened flow of blood, that he desisted, deciding at once, with perfect assurance, that it could do no good to find the missile and might hasten the fatal end. “How long do you give me to live?” the patient asked, when he had recovered from the pain that had been given him by the probe. “You may live an hour; you may live longer, and you may not live so long.” “Oh! Aha! ha! ha! Where’s the earl? Ha! old man! Don’t forget the joy that is to be yours in the memory of this day’s work! Say--did you love my father?” “Oh, boy! boy! Why were you not like him?” “Ha! He was a saint, was he? Well, if I should chance to meet him in the great hereafter--and who shall say what may happen?--I may meet him, you know. If I do, be sure I’ll tell him who shot me. Aye, and I’ll tell him for why his own father shot his boy. It was to prevent him from dealing out justice to a traitor! Ay!” the pirate shouted in a sudden outburst of fury and mad passion, “where is the traitor?--the low-lived, false-hearted spawn of a low-lived, outlawed smuggler. Where is he? Ho! Earl of Allerdale, will ye mate your fair ward with the--” “Hush!--Poor fool! You know not what you say.” So spake Margery Maitland, advancing to the mad man’s side, and laying her hand over his mouth. She saw that his own weakness would keep him quiet for a time; and she brought a chair and sat near him. And so she sat for a full minute, and during that time the only sound that broke the air was the stertorous breathing of the wounded man. At length she raised her head and looked around, her eyes presently resting upon our hero. “Percy,” she said, her voice low and tremulous. “I have but little to say, especially to you. I did--I did, with my own hands attempt your life! I offered you the death which another had prepared--you know him--let us call him Ralph Tryon. No, I’ll call him by his true name--”