it was forfeit. Ye're not aware of the reason, to be sure; but
it may comfort ye to know that it exists. At the same time I'll warn
ye not to put too heavy a strain on my generosity, which resides at the
moment in my trigger-finger. Ye mean to hang me, and since that's the
worst that can happen to me anyway, you'll realize that I'll not boggle
at increasing the account by spilling your nasty blood." He cast his
cane from him, thus disengaging his left hand. "Be good enough to give
me your arm, Colonel Bishop. Come, come, man, your arm."

Under the compulsion of that sharp tone, those resolute eyes, and that
gleaming pistol, Bishop obeyed without demur. His recent foul volubility
was stemmed. He could not trust himself to speak. Captain Blood tucked
his left arm through the Deputy-Governor's proffered right. Then he
thrust his own right hand with its pistol back into the breast of his
doublet.

"Though invisible, it's aiming at ye none the less, and I give you my
word of honour that I'll shoot ye dead upon the very least provocation,
whether that provocation is yours or another's. Ye'll bear that in mind,
Lord Julian. And now, ye greasy hangman, step out as brisk and lively as
ye can, and behave as naturally as ye may, or it's the black stream
of Cocytus ye'll be contemplating." Arm in arm they passed through the
house, and down the garden, where Arabella lingered, awaiting Peter
Blood's return.

Consideration of his parting words had brought her first turmoil of
mind, then a clear perception of what might be indeed the truth of the
death of Levasseur. She perceived that the particular inference drawn
from it might similarly have been drawn from Blood's deliverance of Mary
Traill. When a man so risks his life for a woman, the rest is easily
assumed. For the men who will take such risks without hope of personal
gain are few. Blood was of those few, as he had proved in the case of
Mary Traill.

It needed no further assurances of his to convince her that she had
done him a monstrous injustice. She remembered words he had used--words
overheard aboard his ship (which he had named the Arabella) on the night
of her deliverance from the Spanish admiral; words he had uttered when
she had approved his acceptance of the King's commission; the words he
had spoken to her that very morning, which had but served to move her
indignation. All these assumed a fresh meaning in her mind, delivered
now from its unwarranted preconceptions