What then more natural than his taking with him the man who had helped him to escape, and who shared his own danger of recapture?
And with so plausible a motive for admission to Castle Marleigh, how easy would not his vengeance become?
He might at first wean himself into their good graces, and afterwards-- Before his mental eyes there unfolded itself the vista of a great revenge; one that should be worthy of him, and commensurate with the foul deed that called for it.
In the other scale the treacherous flavour of this method weighed heavily.

He proposed to bind the lad to a promise, the shape of whose fulfilment he would withhold--a promise the lad would readily give, and yet, one that he must sooner die than enter into, did he but know what manner of fulfilment would be exacted.

It amounted to betraying the lad into a betrayal of his friends--the people of his future wife.

Whatever the issue for Crispin, 'twas odds Kenneth's prospect of wedding this Cynthia would be blighted for all time by the action into which Galliard proposed to thrust him all unconscious.
So stood the case in Galliard's mind, and the scales fell now on one side, now on the other.

But against his scruples rose the memory of the treatment which the lad had meted out to him that night; the harshness of the boy's judgment; the irrevocable contempt wherein he had clearly seen that he was held by this fatuous milksop.