"Willun't ye be telled?" cried Jonas, groaning at his own impotence to drive the truth home. "Willun't ye fettle up your wits this once, an' hearken to one 'at hes a care for th' Waynes o' Marsh?"
"Naught will strengthen me till I have slept off thy liquor, Jonas--unless 'twere the chill look of the kirkyard as I pass through," said Shameless Wayne, blundering merrily down the passage.
"For th' love o' God, lad, bide where ye are this neet!" cried Jonas. But his guest was already out on the cobblestones that fronted the inn doorway.
Shameless Wayne came to a sudden halt as he gained the lower gate of the graveyard. For the minute bell, driving its deep note through the fumes that hugged his brain, carried a plainer message to the lad than any words of Jonas Feather had done.
"There's somebody dead," he muttered, staring vaguely at the belfry-tower. "Is't--is't father? Did yond old fool talk plain truth, when all the while I thought he jested?" he went on after a moment's pause. And then he tried to laugh, and swaggered up the path, and vowed that the bell was leagued with Jonas in this daft effort to make a laughing stock of him throughout the moorside.
But another sound greeted him from the far side of the yew-trees--the clash of steel, and the hungry, breathless cries of men who were fighting to the topmost of their strength. His step grew soberer; he turned the bend in the path noiselessly, and saw what was doing on the vault-stone. He stood stock-still, and his face was smooth and empty while the wine fumes cleared enough to let him understand the meaning of all this.
And then the meaning took him full, and the anguish in his eyes was strange and terrible to see.
Ratcliffe of Wildwater, meanwhile, maddened by the swordcut that had slit his cheek, made a sudden onslaught on his foe; and Rolf escaped the blade by a bare half-inch; and Ratcliffe stumbled once again, pressed by his own idle blow. Mistress Wayne sprang forward, eager to save the craven who had snared her fancy; but Nell gripped her by the arms, and forced her back, and whispered, "Strike!" But neither of the women had leisure to mark that a loose-limbed lad, with a face as old as sorrow, and a hand that played never-restingly with his sword hilt, had swelled the number of those who watched the fight.