Payton bowed. "If I offend," he said airily, "I am entirely at your service." He tapped the hilt of his sword. "You do not wear one, but I have no doubt you can use one. I shall be happy to give you satisfaction where and when you please. A time and place----"

But James did not stop to hear him out. He turned with an oath and a snarl, and went off--went off in such a manner that Flavia could not but see that the challenge was not to his taste. At another time she would have blushed for him. But his brutal violence had done more during the last ten minutes to depose his image from her heart than years of neglect and rudeness.

Payton saw him go, and, blessing the good fortune which had put him in a position to command the beauty's thanks, he turned to receive them.

But Flavia was not looking at him, was not thinking of him. She had put the key in the lock and was trying to turn it. Her left wrist, however, was too weak, and the right was so strained as to be useless. She signed to him to turn the key, and he did so, and threw open the door, wondering much who was there and what it was all about.

He did not at once recognise the man who, pale and haggard, a mere ghost of himself, dragged himself up the three steps, and, exhausted by the effort, leant against the doorpost. But when Colonel John spoke and tried to thank the girl, he knew him.

He whistled. "You are Colonel Sullivan!" he said.

"The same, sir!" Colonel John murmured mechanically.

"Are you ill?"

"I am not well," the other replied with a sickly smile. The indignation which he had felt during the contest between the girl and her brother had been too much for his strength. "I shall be better presently," he added. He closed his eyes.

"We should be getting him below," Flavia said in an undertone.

Payton looked from one to the other. He was in a fog. "Has he been here long?" he asked.

"Nearly four days," she replied, with a shiver.

"And nothing to eat?"

"Nothing."

"The devil! And why?"

She did not stay to think how much it was wise to tell him. In her repentant mood she was anxious to pour herself out in self-reproach.

"We wanted him to convey some property," she said, "as we wished."

"To your brother?"

"Ah, to him!" Then, seeing his astonishment, "It was mine," she added.

Payton knew that estates were much held in trust in that part, and he began to understand. He looked at her; but no, he did not understand now. For if the idea had been to constrain Colonel Sullivan to transfer her property to her brother, how did her interest match with that? He could only suppose that her brother had coerced her, and that she had given him the slip and tried to release the man--with the result he had witnessed.

One thing was clear. The property, large or small, was still hers. The Major looked with a thoughtful face at the smiling valley, with its cabins scattered over the slopes, at the lake and the fishing-boats, and the rambling slate-roofed house with its sheds and peat-stacks. He wondered.

No more was said at that moment, however, for Flavia saw that Colonel Sullivan's strength was not to be revived in an hour. He must be a.s.sisted to the house and cared for there. But in the meantime, and to lend some strength, she was anxious to give him such wine and food as he could safely take. To procure these she entered the room in which he had been confined.

As she cast her eyes round its dismal interior, marked the poor handful of embers that told of his long struggle with the cold, marked the one chair which he had saved--for to lie on the floor had been death--marked the beaten path that led from the chair to the window, and spoke of many an hour of painful waiting and of hope deferred, she saw the man in another, a more gentle, a more domestic aspect. She had seen the heroism, she now saw the pathos of his conduct, and tears came afresh to her eyes. "For me!" she murmured. "For me! And how had I treated him!"

Her old grievance against him was forgotten, wiped out of remembrance by his sufferings. She dwelt only on the treatment she had meted out to him.

When they had given him to eat and drink he a.s.sured them, smiling, that he could walk. But when he attempted to do so he staggered. "He will need a stronger arm than yours," Payton said, with a grin. "May I offer mine?"

For the first time she looked at him gratefully "Thank you," she said.

"I can walk," the Colonel repeated obstinately. "A little giddy, that is all." But in the end he needed all the help that both could give him. And so it happened that a few minutes later Luke Asgill, standing at the entrance to the courtyard, a little anxious indeed, but aware of no immediate danger, looked along the road, and saw the three approaching, linked in apparent amity.

The shock was great, for James McMurrough had fled, cursing, into solitude and the hills, taking no steps to warn his ally. The sight, thus unforeseen, struck Asgill with the force of a bullet. Colonel John released, and in the company of Flavia and Payton! All his craft, all his coolness forsook him. He slunk out of sight by a back way, but not before Payton had marked his retreat.

CHAPTER XXII

THE SCENE IN THE Pa.s.sAGE

Asgill saw himself in the position of a commander whose force has been outflanked, and who has to decide on the instant how he may best re-form it on a new front. Flavia and Colonel Sullivan, Flavia and Payton, Payton and Colonel Sullivan--each of these conjunctions had for him a separate menace; each threatened either his suit for Flavia, or his standing in the house through which, and through which alone, he could hope to win her. In addition, the absence of James McMurrough at this critical moment left Asgill in the most painful perplexity. If James knew what had happened, why was he wanting at this moment, when it behoved them to decide, and to decide quickly, what line they would take?

Under the shadow of the great peat-stack at the back of the house, whither he had retired that he might make up his mind before he faced the three, Asgill bit his nails and cursed The McMurrough with all his heart, calling him a score of names, each worse than the other. It was, it must be, through his folly and mismanagement that the thing had befallen, that the prisoner had been released, that Payton had been let into the secret. The volley of oaths that flew from Asgill expressed no more than a t.i.the of his rage and his bewilderment.

How was he to get rid of Payton? How prevent Colonel John from resuming that sway in the house which he had exercised before? How nip in the bud that nascent sympathy, that feeling for him which Flavia's outbreak the night before had suggested? Or how, short of all this, was he to face either Payton or the Colonel?

Again a volley of oaths flew from him.

In council with James McMurrough he might have arranged a plan of action; at least, he would have learned from him what Payton knew. But James's absence ruined all. In the end, after waiting some time in the vain hope that he would appear, Asgill went in to supper.

Colonel Sullivan was not there; he was in no condition to descend. Nor was Flavia; whereon Asgill reflected, with chagrin, that probably she was attending upon the invalid. Payton was at table, with the two O'Beirnes, and three other buckeens. The Englishman, amused and uplifted by the discovery he had made, was openly disdainful of his companions; while the Irishmen, sullen and suspicious, were not aware how much he knew, nor all of them how much there was to know. If The McMurrough chose to imprison his strange and unpopular kinsman, it was nothing to them; nor a matter into which gentlemen eating at his table and drinking his potheen and claret were called upon to peer too closely.

The position was singular; for the English officer, partly by virtue of his mission and partly by reason of the knowledge he had gained, carried himself as if he held that ascendency in the house which Colonel Sullivan had enjoyed--an ascendency, like his, grudged and precarious, as the men's savage and furtive glances proved. But for his repute as a duellist they would have picked a quarrel with the visitor there and then. And but for the presence of his four troopers in the background they might have fallen upon him in some less regular fashion. As it was, they sat, eating slowly and eyeing him askance; and, without shame, were relieved when Asgill entered. They looked to him to clear up the situation and put the interloper in his right place. At any rate, the burden was now lifted from their shoulders.

"I'm fearing I'm late," Asgill said, as he took his seat. "Where'll The McMurrough be, I wonder?"

"Gone to meet your friend, I should think," Payton replied with a sneer.

Asgill maintained a steady face. "My friend?" he repeated. "Oh, Colonel Sullivan?"

"Yes, your friend who was to return to-day," the other retorted. "Have you seen anything of him?" he continued, with a grin.

Asgill fixed his eyes steadily on Payton's face. "I'm fancying you have the advantage of me," he said. "More by token, I'm thinking, Major, you have seen that same friend already."

"Maybe I have."

"And had a bout with him?"

"Eh?"

"And, faith, had the best of the bout, too!" Asgill continued coolly, and with his eyes fixed on the other's features, as if his one aim was to see if he had hit the mark. "So much the best that I'll be chancing a guess he's upstairs at this moment, and wounded! Leastwise, I hear you and the young lady brought him to the house between you, and him scarcely able to use his ten toes."

Payton, with his mouth open, glared at the speaker in a manner that at another time must have provoked him to laughter.

"Isn't that the fact?" Asgill asked coldly.

"The fact!" the other burst forth. "No, I'm cursed if it is! And you know it is not! You know as well as I do----" And with that he poured forth a version of the events of the afternoon, and of those leading up to them, which included not only the Colonel's release, but the treatment to which he had been subjected and the motive for it.