"Two wrongs cannot make a right."
"Oh, I do not attempt the impossible, Mistress Pemberthy."
"What will be the end of this – to you?"
"The gallows – if I cannot get my pistol out in time."
He laughed lightly and naturally enough as Sophie shrank in terror from him. One could see he was a desperate man enough, despite his better manners; probably as great an outcast as the rest of them, and as little to be trusted.
"That is a dreadful end to look forward to," she said.
"I don't look forward. What is the use – when that is the prospect?"
"Your father – your brothers – "
"Would be glad that the end came soon," he concluded. "They are waiting for it patiently. They have prophesied it for the last five years."
"They know then?"
"Oh yes; I have taken care that they should know," he answered, laughing defiantly again.
"And your mother – does she know?"
He paused, and looked at her very hard.
"God forbid."
"She is – "
"She is in heaven, where nothing is known of what goes on upon earth."
"How can you tell that?"
"There would be no peace in heaven otherwise, Mistress Pemberthy; only great grief, intense shame, misery, despair, madness, at the true knowledge of us all," he said, passionately. "On earth we men are hypocrites and liars, devils and slaves."
"Not all men," said Sophie, thinking of Reu Pemberthy.
"I have met none other. Perhaps I have sought none other – all my own fault, they will tell you where my father is; where," he added, bitterly, "they are worse than I am, and yet, oh, so respectable."
"You turned highwayman to – to – "
"To spite them, say. It is very near the truth."
"It will be a poor excuse to the mother, when you see her again."
"Eh?"
But Sophie had no time to continue so abstruse a subject with this misanthropical freebooter. She clapped her hand to her side and gave a little squeak of astonishment.
"What is the matter?" asked Captain Guy.
"My keys! They have taken my keys."
And, sure enough, while Sophie Tarne had been talking to the captain, some one had severed the keys from her girdle and made off with them, and there was only a clean-cut black ribbon dangling at her waist instead.
"That villain Stango," exclaimed the captain "I saw him pass a minute ago. He leaned over and whispered to you, Kits. You remember?"
"Stango?" said Kits, with far too innocent an expression to be genuine.
"Yes, Stango; you know he did."
"I dare say he did. I don't gainsay it, Captain, but I don't know where he has gone."
"But I will know," cried the captain, striking his hand upon the table and making every glass and plate jump thereon. "I will have no tricks played here without my consent. Am I your master, or are you all mine?"
And here, we regret to say, Captain Guy swore a good deal, and became perfectly unheroic and inelegant and unromantic. But his oaths had more effect upon his unruly followers than his protests, and they sat looking at him in a half-sullen, half-shamefaced manner, and would have probably succumbed to his influence had not attention been diverted and aroused by the reappearance of Stango, who staggered in with four or five great black bottles heaped high in his arms. A tremendous shout of applause and delight heralded his return to the parlour.
"We have been treated scurvily, my men," cried Stango, "exceedingly scurvily; the best and strongest stuff in the cellar has been kept back from us. It's excellent – I've been tasting it first, lest you should all be poisoned; and there's more where this come from – oceans more of it!"
"Hurrah for Stango!"
The captain's voice was heard once more above the uproar, but it was only for a minute longer. There was a rush of six men toward Stango; a shouting, scrambling, fighting for the spirits which he had discovered; a crash of one black bottle to the floor, with the spirit streaming over the polished boards, and the unceremonious tilting over of the upper part of the supper-table in the ruffians' wild eagerness for drink.
"To horse, to horse, men! Have you forgotten how far we have to go?" cried the captain.
But they had forgotten everything, and did not heed him. They were drinking strong waters, and were heedless of the hour and the risks they ran by a protracted stay there. In ten minutes from that time Saturnalia had set in, and pandemonium seemed to have unloosed its choicest specimens. They sang, they danced, they raved, they blasphemed, they crowed like cocks, they fired pistols at the chimney ornaments, they chased the maidservants from one room to another, they whirled round the room with Mrs. Tarne and Mrs. Pemberthy, they would have made a plunge at Sophie Tarne for partner had not the captain, very white and stern now, stood close to her side with a pistol at full cock in his right hand.
"I shall shoot the first man down who touches you," he said, between his set teeth.
"I will get away from them soon. For heaven's sake – for mine – do not add to the horror of this night, sir," implored Sophie.
He paused.
"I beg your pardon," he said, in a low tone of voice, "but – but I am powerless to help you unless I quell these wolves at once. They are going off for more drink."
"What is to be done?"
"Can you sing, Mistress Pemberthy?"
"Yes, a little; at least, they say so," she said, blushing at her own self-encomium.
"Sing something – to gain time. I will slip away while you are singing, and get the horses round to the front door. Do not be afraid."
"Gentlemen," he cried, in a loud voice, and bringing the handle of his pistol smartly on the head of the man nearest to him to emphasise his discourse, "Mistress Pemberthy will oblige the company with a song. Order and attention for the lady!"
"A song! a song!" exclaimed the highwaymen, clapping their hands and stamping their heels upon the floor. And then, amid the pause which followed, Sophie Tarne began a plaintive little ballad in a sweet, tremulous voice, which gathered strength as she proceeded.
It was a strange scene awaiting the return of Reuben Pemberthy, whose tall form stood in the doorway before Sophie had finished her sweet, simple rendering of an old English ballad. Reuben's round blue eyes were distended with surprise, and his mouth, generally very set and close, like the mouth of a steel purse, was on this especial occasion, and for a while, wide open. Sophie Tarne singing her best to amuse this vile and disorderly crew, who sat or stood around the room half drunk, and with glasses in their hands, pipes in their mouths, and the formidable, old-fashioned horse-pistols in their pockets!
And who was the handsome man, with the long, black, flowing hair, and a pale face, standing by Sophie's side – his Sophie – in a suit of soiled brocade and tarnished lace, with a Ramilie cocked hat under his arm and a pistol in his hand? The leader of these robbers, the very man who had stopped him on the king's highway three hours ago and taken every stiver which he had brought away from Barnet; who had, with the help of these other scoundrels getting mad drunk on his brandy, taken away his horse and left him bound to a gate by the roadside because he would not be quietly robbed, but must make a fuss over it and fight and kick in a most unbecoming fashion, and without any regard for the numbers by whom he had been assailed.
"I did not think you could sing like that," said the captain, quietly and in a low voice, when Sophie had finished her song, and a great shout of approval was echoing throughout the farm and many hundred yards beyond it.
"You