paid for it, as he told me, and would have got more, if a
quarrel amongst Habershaw's people hadn't stopped them from taking Major
Butler's life. So I have heard from the men myself."

"Well, sir?"

"That's all," replied Adair.

"Do you know nothing about the court-martial?" asked Robinson.

"Nothing, except that as the Major wasn't killed at the Ford, it was
thought best to have a trial, wherein James Curry and Hugh Habershaw, as
I was told, had agreed to swear against the Major's life."

"And were paid for it?"

"It was upon a consideration, in course," replied Adair.

"And Captain St. Jermyn contrived this?"

"It was said," answered Adair, "that the captain left it all to Curry,
and rather seemed to take Major Butler's side himself at the trial. He
didn't want to be known in the business!"

"Where is this Captain St. Jermyn?" demanded many voices.

This interrogatory was followed by the rush of the party towards the
quarter in which the prisoners were assembled, and, after a lapse of
time which seemed incredibly short for the performance of the deed, the
unhappy victim of this tumultuary wrath was seen struggling in the
agonies of death, as he hung from one of the boughs of the same tree
which had supplied the means of the other executions.

By this time Butler and Henry Lindsay, attracted by the shouts that
reached them at the cottage, had arrived at the scene of these dreadful
events. Wat Adair was, at this moment, undergoing the punishment for
which his first sentence was commuted. The lashes were inflicted by a
sturdy arm upon his uncovered back; and it was remarkable that the
wretch who but lately had sunk, with the most slavish fear, under the
threat of death, now bore his stripes with a fortitude that seemed to
disdain complaint or even the confession of pain. Butler and Henry
hurried with a natural disgust from this spectacle, and soon found
themselves near the spot where the lifeless forms of the victims of
military vengeance were suspended from the tree.

"Gracious Heaven!" exclaimed Butler, "is not that St. Jermyn? What has
he done to provoke this doom?"

"It is Tyrrel!" ejaculated Henry. "Major Butler, it is Tyrrel! That
face, black and horrible as it is to look at, I would know it among a
thousand!"

"Indeed!" said Butler, gazing with a melancholy earnestness upon the
scene, and speaking scarce above his breath, "is it so? Tyrrel and St.
Jermyn the same person! This is a strange mystery