"I know not," he replied, doggedly.
"Nay, ye know well," returned Dick. "Seek not to put me by."
"I tell you I know not," repeated Carter.
"Then," said Dick, "ye shall die unshriven. Here am I, and here shall stay. There shall no priest come near you, rest assured. For of what avail is penitence, an ye have no mind to right those wrongs ye had a hand in? and without penitence, confession is but mockery."
"Ye say what ye mean not, Master Dick," said Carter, composedly. "It is ill threatening the dying, and becometh you (to speak truth) little. And for as little as it commends you, it shall serve you less. Stay, an ye please. Ye will condemn my soul--ye shall learn nothing! There is my last word to you." And the wounded man turned upon the other side.
Now, Dick, to say truth, had spoken hastily, and was ashamed of his threat. But he made one more effort.
"Carter," he said, "mistake me not. I know ye were but an instrument in the hands of others; a churl must obey his lord; I would not bear heavily on such an one. But I begin to learn upon many sides that this great duty lieth on my youth and ignorance, to avenge my father. Prithee, then, good Carter, set aside the memory of my threatenings, and in pure goodwill and honest penitence give me a word of help."
The wounded man lay silent; nor, say what Dick pleased, could he extract another word from him.
"Well," said Dick, "I will go call the priest to you as ye desired; for howsoever ye be in fault to me or mine, I would not be willingly in fault to any, least of all to one upon the last change."
Again the old soldier heard him without speech or motion; even his groans he had suppressed; and as Dick turned and left the room, he was filled with admiration for that rugged fortitude.
"And yet," he thought, "of what use is courage without wit? Had his hands been clean, he would have spoken; his silence did confess the secret louder than words. Nay, upon all sides, proof floweth on me. Sir Daniel, he or his men, hath done this thing."
Dick paused in the stone passage with a heavy heart. At that hour, in the ebb of Sir Daniel's fortune, when he was beleaguered by the archers of the Black Arrow and proscribed by the victorious Yorkists, was Dick, also, to turn upon the man who had nourished and taught him, who had severely punished, indeed, but yet unwearyingly protected his youth? The necessity, if it should prove to be one, was cruel.
"Pray Heaven he be innocent!" he said.
And then steps sounded on the flagging, and Sir Oliver came gravely towards the lad.
"One seeketh you earnestly," said Dick.
"I am upon the way, good Richard," said the priest. "It is this poor Carter. Alack, he is beyond cure."
"And yet his soul is sicker than his body," answered Dick.
"Have ye seen him?" asked Sir Oliver, with a manifest start.
"I do but come from him," replied Dick.
"What said he? what said he?" snapped the priest, with extraordinary eagerness.
"He but cried for you the more piteously, Sir Oliver. It were well done to go the faster, for his hurt is grievous," returned the lad.
"I am straight for him," was the reply. "Well, we have all our sins. We must all come to our latter day, good Richard."
"Ay, sir; and it were well if we all came fairly," answered Dick.
The priest dropped his eyes, and with an inaudible benediction hurried on.
"He, too!" thought Dick--"he, that taught me in piety! Nay, then, what a world is this, if all that care for me be blood-guilty of my father's death? Vengeance! Alas! what a sore fate is mine, if I must be avenged upon my friends!"
The thought put Matcham in his head. He smiled at the remembrance of his strange companion, and then wondered where he was. Ever since they had come together to the doors of the Moat House the younger lad had disappeared, and Dick began to weary for a word with him.
About an hour after, mass being somewhat hastily run through by Sir Oliver, the company gathered in the hall for dinner. It was a long, low apartment, strewn with green rushes, and the walls hung with arras in a design of savage men and questing bloodhounds; here and there hung spears and bows and bucklers; a fire blazed in the big chimney; there were arras-covered benches round the wall, and in the midst the table, fairly spread, awaited the arrival of the diners.