"And Master Rumsey," nodded Ruth, "all for striking him down--unawares--like he has poor Master Goodenough himself." [Sidenote: Honour among conspirators.] "Ay," said Rumbold, "I guessed as much; though he breathed no word of it. I suspected it, I say, to be in his thoughts. Heaven forgive him! I think now, he would not have hesitated at putting poison in--a man's food, be he Charles Stuart, or any other--or stabbing him in his sleep, so only that he might gain his end." "But you, father, you?" almost joyfully cried Ruth. "Nay, we are not assassins. I and my--friends. And this scum of the earth, Richard Rumsey was not fit to consort with men of honour like us--we looked, Walcot and the rest of us, we looked indeed to be the slayers, if heaven blessed our project, or the slain, and it saw fit. A fair fight, front to front--" "Fair!" cried Ruth, "Fair? In that narrow by-way? Where the coach could not pass for the overturned cart!" Rumbold frowned. "You have it all, seemingly, at your fingers' ends, mistress," he said, "and 'tis useless to dissemble with you; or to reason over nice and just distinctions with obstinate young maids' brains. Enough! See only that you make a discreet use of your indiscretion. Keep a silent tongue in your head. Do you hear me, mistress? Or by--" "Father! father! kill me. Do with me what you will," cried Ruth, throwing herself at his feet. "By this time the king knows all!" "Girl!" and in his fury he turned pale as the dead man beside him, and seized her by both wrists. "How? By what means? Who? This is Lawrence Lee's handiwork? Speak." Her lips moved, but she made no answer. [Sidenote: The looming gallows.] "Betrayed!" he wailed forth in a paroxysm of impotent fury, "and brought to naught! Destroyed like any wind-bag. All our holy work--our sacred compact. By the machinations of a frivolous girl, and a love-sick Don Quixote of a boy! Oh, Ruth, Ruth! Little Ruth, was he indeed more to you than your father--and your very faith? Ay, but 'tis so--'tis so. What have you done? And is it nothing to you neither, that this brave night's work of your's must see me swing for it on Tyburn tree?" "Father! father! No, no," shuddered Ruth. "There is time--time yet to escape." "Ho! Is there so?" cried he with a grating bitter laugh. "I protest now, my daughter, you are really too tender and dutiful. Time is there? Time for me to play the poltroon's part, and make a byword and a scorn of myself while the world lasts! No, let them take me here. And yet--" [Sidenote: A father lost.]