captors,
remained staring at the dying man, in sudden and ghastly fear.

Those men in whom emotion has the effect of quickening circulation
of the blood reason rapidly in moments of danger, and in the terrible
instant when his eyes met those of Lord Bellasis, Richard Devine had
summed up the chances of his future fortune, and realized to the full
his personal peril. The runaway horse had given the alarm. The
drinkers at the Spaniards' Inn had started to search the Heath, and had
discovered a fellow in rough costume, whose person was unknown to
them, hastily quitting a spot where, beside a rifled pocket-book and a
blood-stained whip, lay a dying man.

The web of circumstantial evidence had enmeshed him. An hour ago escape
would have been easy. He would have had but to cry, "I am the son of Sir
Richard Devine. Come with me to yonder house, and I will prove to
you that I have but just quitted it,"--to place his innocence beyond
immediate question. That course of action was impossible now. Knowing
Sir Richard as he did, and believing, moreover, that in his raging
passion the old man had himself met and murdered the destroyer of
his honour, the son of Lord Bellasis and Lady Devine saw himself in
a position which would compel him either to sacrifice himself, or to
purchase a chance of safety at the price of his mother's dishonour and
the death of the man whom his mother had deceived. If the outcast son
were brought a prisoner to North End House, Sir Richard--now doubly
oppressed of fate--would be certain to deny him; and he would be
compelled, in self-defence, to reveal a story which would at once bring
his mother to open infamy, and send to the gallows the man who had been
for twenty years deceived--the man to whose kindness he owed education
and former fortune. He knelt, stupefied, unable to speak or move.

"Come," cried Mogford again; "say, my lord, is this the villain?"

Lord Bellasis rallied his failing senses, his glazing eyes stared into
his son's face with horrible eagerness; he shook his head, raised a
feeble arm as though to point elsewhere, and fell back dead.

"If you didn't murder him, you robbed him," growled Mogford, "and you
shall sleep at Bow Street to-night. Tom, run on to meet the patrol, and
leave word at the Gate-house that I've a passenger for the coach!--Bring
him on, Jack!--What's your name, eh?"

He repeated the rough question twice before his prisoner answered, but
at length Richard Devine ra