wed my daughter after
pinning me to the wainscot of my own hall may I be for ever damned."

"How?" quoth she. "Do you say that Kenneth did it?"

"Aye, did he. He ran at me ere I could draw, like the coward he is, sink
him, and had me through the shoulder in the twinkling of an eye."

Here was something beyond her understanding. What were they concealing
from her? She set her wits to the discovery and plied her father with
another question.

"How came you to quarrel?"

"How? 'Twas--'twas concerning you, child," replied Gregory at random,
and unable to think of a likelier motive.

"How, concerning me?"

"Leave me, Cynthia," he groaned in despair. "Go, child. I am grievously
wounded. I have the fever, girl. Go; let me sleep."

"But tell me, father, what passed."

"Unnatural child," whined Gregory feebly, "will you plague a sick man
with questions? Would you keep him from the sleep that may mean recovery
to him?"

"Father, dear," she murmured softly, "if I thought it was as you say,
I would leave you. But you know that you are but attempting to conceal
something from me something that I should know, that I must know.
Bethink you that it is of my lover that you have spoken."

By a stupendous effort Gregory shaped a story that to him seemed likely.

"Well, then, since know you must," he answered, "this is what befell:
we had all drunk over-deep to our shame do I confess it--and growing
tenderhearted for you, and bethinking me of your professed distaste to
Kenneth's suit, I told him that for all the results that were likely
to attend his sojourn at Castle Marleigh, he might as well bear Crispin
company in his departure. He flared up at that, and demanded of me that
I should read him my riddle. Faith, I did by telling him that we were
like to have snow on midsummer's day ere he 'became your husband. That
speech of mine so angered him, being as he was all addled with wine and
ripe for any madness, that he sprang up and drew on me there and then.
The others sought to get between us, but he was over-quick, and before I
could do more than rise from the table his sword was through my shoulder
and into the wainscot at my back. After that it was clear he could
not remain here, and I demanded that he should leave upon the instant.
Himself he was nothing loath, for he realized his folly, and he misliked
the gleam of Joseph's eye--which can be wondrous wicked upon occasion.
Indeed, but for my intercession Joseph had laid hi