Then he stopped abruptly as if smitten by a sudden thought.

Presently--"Kenneth," he continued in a different tone, "a while ago I mind me you said that were your liberty restored you, you would join hands with me in punishing the evildoers who wrecked my life." "I did, Sir Crispin." For a moment the knight paused.

It was a vile thing that he was about to do, he told himself, and as he realized how vile, his impulse was to say no more; to abandon the suddenly formed project and to trust to his own unaided wits and hands.

But as again he thought of the vast use this lad would be to him--this lad who was the betrothed of Cynthia Ashburn--he saw that the matter was not one hastily to be judged and dismissed.
Carefully he weighed it in the balance of his mind.

On the one hand was the knowledge that did they succeed in making good their escape, Kenneth would naturally fly for shelter to his friends the Ashburns--the usurpers of Castle Marleigh.