The soldiers trailed out by the door leading to the
interior. Mr. Blood was thrust by his guards
into the courtyard, where Pitt and Baynes already
waited. From the threshold of the hall, he looked
back at Captain Hobart, and his sapphire eyes were
blazing. On his lips trembled a threat of what
he would do to Hobart if he should happen to survive
this business. Betimes he remembered that to
utter it were probably to extinguish his chance of
living to execute it. For to-day the King’s
men were masters in the West, and the West was regarded
as enemy country, to be subjected to the worst horror
of war by the victorious side. Here a captain
of horse was for the moment lord of life and death.
Under the apple-trees in the orchard Mr. Blood and
his companions in misfortune were made fast each to
a trooper’s stirrup leather. Then at the
sharp order of the cornet, the little troop started
for Bridgewater. As they set out there was the
fullest confirmation of Mr. Blood’s hideous
assumption that to the dragoons this was a conquered
enemy country. There were sounds of rending timbers,
of furniture smashed and overthrown, the shouts and
laughter of brutal men, to announce that this hunt
for rebels was no more than a pretext for pillage
and destruction. Finally above all other sounds
came the piercing screams of a woman in acutest agony.
Baynes checked in his stride, and swung round writhing,
his face ashen. As a consequence he was jerked
from his feet by the rope that attached him to the
stirrup leather, and he was dragged helplessly a yard
or two before the trooper reined in, cursing him foully,
and striking him with the flat of his sword.
It came to Mr. Blood, as he trudged forward under
the laden apple-trees on that fragrant, delicious
July morning, that man — as he had long suspected
— was the vilest work of God, and that only
a fool would set himself up as a healer of a species
that was best exterminated.
CHAPTER III
THE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE
It was not until two months later — on the 19th
of September, if you must have the actual date —
that Peter Blood was brought to trial, upon a charge
of high treason. We know that he was not guilty
of this; but we need not doubt that he was quite capable
of it by the time he was indicted. Those two
months of inhuman, unspeakable imprisonment had moved
his mind to a cold and deadly hatred of King James
and his representatives. It says something for
his fortitude that in all the circumstances he should
still have had a mind at all. Yet, terrible
as was the position of this entirely innocent man,
he had cause for thankfulness on two counts.
The first of these was that he should have been brought
to trial at all; the second, that his trial took place
on the date named, and not a day earlier. In
the very delay which exacerbated him lay — although
he did not realize it — his only chance of avoiding
the gallows.
