friend, get ye to the buttery,” replied Sir Daniel. “Ye shall swim first of all in nut-brown ale.” And with that he turned back into the hall.

“Sir Daniel hath a wise tongue,” said Hatch, aside, to Dick. “See, now, where many a lesser man had glossed the matter over, he speaketh it out plainly to his company. Here is a danger, ’a saith, and here difficulty; and jesteth in the very saying. Nay, by Saint Barbary, he is a born captain! Not a man but he is some deal heartened up! See how they fall again to work.”

This praise of Sir Daniel put a thought in the lad’s head.

“Bennet,” he said, “how came my father by his end?”

“Ask me not that,” replied Hatch. “I had no hand nor knowledge in it; furthermore, I will even be silent, Master Dick. For look you, in a man’s own business there he may speak; but of hearsay matters and of common talk, not so. Ask me Sir Oliver—ay, or Carter, if ye will; not me.”

And Hatch set off to make the rounds, leaving Dick in a muse.

“Wherefore would he not tell me?” thought the lad. “And wherefore named he Carter? Carter—nay, then Carter had a hand in it, perchance.”

He entered the house, and passing some little way along a flagged and vaulted passage, came to the door of the cell where the hurt man lay groaning. At his entrance Carter started eagerly.

“Have ye brought the priest?” he cried.

“Not yet awhile,” returned Dick. “Y’ ’ave a word to tell me first. How came my father, Harry Shelton, by his death?”

The man’s face altered instantly.

“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 

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