Gladden, querulous and uneasy, moved to the library window and closed it against the rain. Jeffray was standing motionless in the centre of the room, looking at the bands of blood-blotched linen about Dick Wilson’s head. He turned to the table abruptly, picked up the pistols the painter had used so clumsily, and glanced at the flints and the priming-pans. Going to an old armoire that stood in the far corner, he opened it and took out a leather belt that carried a powder-flask, a bag of bullets, and a hunting-knife. He loaded and primed the empty pistol, buckled the belt about his body, and then spoke to Gladden in a quiet and determined voice.
“Order the mare to be saddled,” he said; “she will stand the thunder better than Brown Will.”
Gladden stared at his master incredulously.
“Then obey my orders. Quick with you, and see that the brandy flask is filled and strapped to the saddle with the holsters.”
The butler slouched away, unbuttoning and buttoning his coat in agitation. Wilson, who was weak from loss of blood, and had been listening to Jeffray’s orders, staggered up from his chair, and faced his friend.
“Where are you going, sir?” he asked, almost roughly.
The painter stretched out his hands as though to plant them appealingly on Jeffray’s shoulders. Richard drew two steps back from him with a slight frown.
“They will murder you, sir. I tell you they are desperate men.”
Wilson beat his left fist into his right palm.
“You can’t ride out in such weather. Wait and get help; take your servants with you if you must meddle in this mad business.”
Jeffray appeared unmoved by the suggestion.
“I am taking my own life in my hands, Dick,” he said. “There is nothing else for me to do. They are desperate men, you say; I grant it you. They will murder this woman, Dick, and I, too—am desperate. The law will not help me. I tell you I am going to Pevensel to try and save her, though she be another man’s wife.”
Wilson, with a helpless gesture, sank back into his chair.
“God keep you, sir, from getting your brains scattered for the sake of a green petticoat.”
The sky was breaking in the west when Jeffray mounted his black mare, rode down through the park, and passed the gibbet on Rodenham heath. A splendor of rain-drenched gold streamed from under the lifting edge of the clouds. The whole landscape grew bathed in a flood of slanting light. The moorland and the green woods flashed and glittered; masses of wild tawny vapor crowned the heights of Pevensel. Rain was still falling lightly from the black clouds above, but the mutterings of the thunder and the streaks of fire were passing southward towards the sea.