The Heart

Between the wound in my leg and various sword-cuts, and a general

soreness and stiffness as if I had been tumbled over a precipice, I

was well-nigh as helpless as a week-old babe.

I called again, but no one came, and presently I quit and lay with

the burning eye of the sun in my face and that pestilent buzz of

flies in my ears, and my weakness and pain so increasing upon my

consciousness, that I heeded them not so much. I shut my eyes and

that torrid sunbeam burned red through my lids, and I wondered if

they had found out aught concerning Mary Cavendish, and I wondered

not so much what they would do with me, since I was so weak and

spent with loss of blood that nothing that had to do with me seemed

of much moment.

But as I lay there I presently heard the key turn in the lock, and

one Joseph Wedge, the jailor, entered, and I saw the flutter of a

woman's draperies behind him, but he shut the door upon her, and

then without my ever knowing how he came there, was the surgeon,

Martyn Jennings, and he was over me looking to my wounds, and

letting a little more blood to decrease my fever, though I had

already lost so much, and then, since I was so near swooning, giving

me a glass of the Burgundy on the stand. And whilst that was

clouding my brain, since my stomach was fasting, and I had lost so

much blood, entered that woman whom I had espied, and she was not

Mary, but Catherine Cavendish, and there was a gentleman with her

who stood aloof, with his back toward me, gazing out of the window,

and of that I was glad since he screened that flaming sunbeam from

me, and I concerned myself no more about him.

But at Catherine I gazed, and motioned to her to bend over me, and

whispered that the jailor might not hear, what had become of Mary.

Then I saw the jailor had gone out, though I had not seen him go,

and she making a sign to me that the gentleman at the window was not

to be minded, went on to tell me what I thirsted to know; that she

and Mary and Sir Humphrey had escaped that night with ease, and she

and Mary had returned to Drake Hill before midnight, and had not

been molested.

If Mary were suspected she knew not, but Sir Humphrey was then under

arrest and was confined on board a ship in the harbour with Major

Beverly, and his mother was daily sending billets to him to return

home, and blaming him, and not his jailors, for his disobedience.

She told me, furthermore, that it was Cicely Hyde who had led the

militia to our assembly at Laurel Creek that night, and was now in a

low fever through remorse, and though she told me not, I afterward

knew why that mad maid had done such a thing--'twas because of

jealousy of me and Mary Cavendish, and she pulled down more upon her

own head thereby than she wot of.