As he stepped out on the path he heard voices, and presently
some dozen men, one of whom held a horse, burst out upon him,
and, with sudden fury, seized and flung him to the ground.

At first the young man, so rudely assailed, did not comprehend
his own danger. His mind, bent upon one hideous explanation of the crime,
did not see another obvious one which had already occurred to the mind
of the landlord of the Three Spaniards.

"God defend me!" cried Mr. Mogford, scanning by the pale light
of the rising moon the features of the murdered man,
"but it is Lord Bellasis!--oh, you bloody villain! Jem, bring him
along here, p'r'aps his lordship can recognize him!"

"It was not I!" cried Richard Devine. "For God's sake,
my lord say--" then he stopped abruptly, and being forced on his knees
by his captors, remained staring at the dying man, in sudden and
ghastly fear.

Those men in whom emotion has the effect of quickening circulation
of the blood reason rapidly in moments of danger, and in the terrible instant
when his eyes met those of Lord Bellasis, Richard Devine had
summed up the chances of his future fortune, and realized to the full
his personal peril. The runaway horse had given the alarm.
The drinkers at the Spaniards' Inn had started to search the Heath,
and had discovered a fellow in rough costume, whose person was unknown
to them, hastily quitting a spot where, beside a rifled pocket-book
and a blood-stained whip, lay a dying man.