Captain Luvaine--misanthrope, ascetic, wiry as a ferret and
disciplined on a drum-head--had fallen asleep at his post. No doubt
the exhaustion induced by cold, hunger, and the emotion to which he
had lately been subjected, was responsible for this lapse into a
condition quite humanly natural. It was unfortunate for all, however,
and very particularly for the unfortunate gentleman himself, that it
should have occurred in the place and at the moment most fatal to the
cause he had to serve.
For half-an-hour--his pistol cuddled in his left arm as if it were a
wakeful baby--he measured his monotonous tramp in the little
circumscribed chamber where was situated the “Priest’s Hole.” Upon a
bracket on the wall a single candle burned, its flames shrugging
peevishly in the cold draught that came through the high grating in
the masonry. The trap of the vault was thrown open, the woodwork lying
flat upon the floor; but the stone below was swung to upon its pivot,
and at every recurring wheel in his march, he glanced down to see that
this stone held its place, and that no stealthy pressure was applying
to it from the tunnel-side. For, an extreme probability that the
rogues would follow in the tracks of their escaped victim (no fresh
snow having fallen to obliterate them) as far as the ice-house in the
clearing, and would so learn of the existence of the underground
passage, had led all engaged in the defence of the house to accept
this quarter of it as the one most open to attack, and therefore to be
more jealously watched than any other.
Often the soldier would bend and listen acutely for any least murmur
of voices or rustle of secret footstep whispering into the blank
deadliness of the pit beneath him. He heard nothing; was conscious of
no sound he could set apart from the distant noises of the house as
suspicious and unaccountable. Yet the voices were there and the
footsteps; but muffled so completely by the thick stone as to be
inaudible to the solitary man above.
Presently he found something irresistibly attractive in the swaying
flame of the candle on the wall. It was an aspen leaf blown by the
wind. A certain fever in his blood seemed to temper the cutting
draught to the caress of a summer zephyr. He was on a breezy common he
had known in childhood, eagerly hunting over a familiar poplar tree
for the moth (he remembered all at once, it went by the name of the
“Sycamore”) that lay cunningly hid by day in the furrows of the bark,
from which in colour it might scarcely be distinguished. He put out
his hand with a smile, staggered on the brink of the pit, recovered
himself and resumed his tramp with a curse at his own folly. But by
and by the flame fixed his attention once more. Tibbie! Who was she,
and why should he associate her with the jumping light? He remembered
all at once. It was the queer name of a little Scotch girl he had
worshipped as a boy. She had had hair golden as barley straw, and he
had begged a curl and had put it in his Bible, where it was always
connected in his mind with the tongues of flame. Good God! how long
ago was that? And would Tibbie give him a curl now, if she knew? Quite
suddenly his eyes were thick with tears. He pressed his hand to them
fiercely, and went up and down again--up and down. What strange
caprice of memory was renewing for him these shining ghosts of his
past? The new emotion, with a touch of ancient sorrow in it, sang in
his brain like restful music. Standing, he leaned against the wall,
shut his eyes--and immediately, with a throb and swerve of ecstasy, he
was asleep.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Mr. Fern had set his snare with fine tact. In his desperation (for he
had, indeed, come to that condition) he was resolved to win or lose
all by a single _coup de main_. His statement of his case--so far as
it went--was unexaggerated. His rascal improvidence had provided
against no contingencies. His gang was mutinous from cold and
hunger--most of all from the failure of liquor-supply through the
impossibility of communicating with Mr. Breeds of the “Dog and Duck.”
Baulked by the unexpected return of the master of “Delsrop”; baulked
in his design to “rush” the house at the very outset of his daring
swoop upon the estate; out-manœuvred in his attempt to make capital
of the hostages that a fickle rogue’s Providence had flung into his
arms, he must exercise all his diplomacy of scoundrelism to quiet the
rebellion that had broken out in his own ranks. The discovery of the
escape of the prisoners was the critical moment of his authority; and
it was only when pursuit led to the revelation of the subterranean
passage, that he found a new argument to the favour of his fellows,
and to the postponement of the sacrifice of his life to their fury.
Very noiselessly, he had in person explored the tunnel, and satisfied
himself that a guard was stationed at its outlet. The trap also (so it
happened at the time) was closed and bolted; and it was evident that
this must be forced, at the crucial moment, by means instant and
effectual. Now, though he was ignorant of the real numerical strength
of the garrison, he could not doubt that so obviously weak a position
would be strenuously cared for by the enemy. A single man, indeed,
properly posted and armed, might account for his entire gang, one by
one, as it issued into the pit through the narrow aperture (the secret
of whose revolving stone he had, with superior craft, easily
unravelled); and a mere struggle to force this point was therefore out
of the question. He would conceive a subtler plan. He would himself
venture into the stronghold and would engage its defenders in talk,
while Brander and the rest made their silent way under the house to
the vault-opening. Here a bag of powder was to be fastened under the
trap and fired by a train run up a stick. The sentry would be either
killed or disabled by the explosion--the way burst clear for the
uprush of his fellows; and, in the terror and confusion that should
ensue, he would take the enemy in the rear and complete its
demoralization.
A very pretty plan, and a bold--but, alas! we know what “gang aft
agley.” A very significant accident was to frustrate it--a
characteristic piece of recklessness to hoist him and his with their
own petard. For as to the latter, it would not satisfy the rogues but
that they must bring all their store of powder in a barrel along with
them, as they looked to quarter themselves snugly in fine linen for
the night, and their ammunition as a precaution must not be left
behind; and, as to the former, lo! when Brander cautiously shifted the
stone and looked out, there was light shining into the pit and the
trap flung open.
Here was a heavy to-do--nothing to blow up and the guard above
probably on the alert!
The rascal motioned his crew to intense silence, and dared to creep a
step forward into the vault. The two that were carrying the powder
slung between them, softly lowered the barrel a little back from the
entrance, and all stood waiting.
Brander cocked his flapless ears. Dead quiet reigned above and about
him. He dreaded he knew not what ambush, and the suspense was
intolerable. Desperately he took his courage in hand and climbed out
of the pit. In the dim and gusty light he thought the place deserted;
for Luvaine leaned asleep in a dark angle of the wall and was not
readily distinguishable to a rapid survey.
He was on the point of summoning his men to the surface, when
something in white, that flitted by the doorway and paused and looked
in, caught his eye. He gasped, hesitated, and followed in pursuit. Was
it a snare. There was a pregnant silence about the place that peopled
every corner with watchful eyes. He felt the sweat under his clothes
and a fright of superstition in his heart.
As he came softly out of the chamber the phantom-shape was speeding
before him. Suddenly it turned, nodded to him, put a finger to its
lips, and again sped on. His hand closed rigidly on his pistol-butt;
his teeth clipped an oath of fury. He had recognized her--the mad girl
that had evaded his clutches. She had escaped from the stable, it
seemed, and was mounting to her eyrie. She went lightly up the stairs,
and for an instant a great longing seized him to follow and kill her.
Then, all in a moment the danger of his position rushed upon him. In
the act of turning to retreat, however, he became conscious of the
sound of voices issuing from a room down the passage at the further
end of which he was standing--voices, and amongst them that of his
leader. Immediately he was impelled to creep thither, inform himself
of the state of affairs, and make his plans accordingly. A pistol-shot
from an unexpected quarter through the brain of the master of the
house, and the situation might resolve itself without any larger
appeal to violence. He stole forward, and went to his fate.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Luvaine came to himself with a shock. Something had rung out, and
there was a distant flurry of shouting in his ears. He started
forward, amazed at his own abuse of the trust committed to him. With
eyes yet clouded with the fumes of sleep, he looked down into the
vault. One of the irresolute company a little bolder than his fellows
to solve the reason of the inaction that had befallen, and of the
noise that suddenly swooped down upon them, was crept out into the
pit; but seeing the face staring down he re-dived for his burrow like
a rat. It was his jump that sprung the mine. The soldier, his aim like
a drunken man’s, snapped up his muzzle and fired at the retreating
figure. There followed a monstrous burst of flame--a booming
crash--and he was blown against the wall like a leaf, and his spine
broken. Shrieking in his agony he fell, tearing with his nails at the
boards of the floor; then a merciful oblivion came to him, and the
convulsion of his limbs relaxed in whatever position they had assumed,
and he lay sprawled and breathing out his life.
His ball had pierced the powder-barrel, and the fate of the wretches
crowded in the tunnel was a thing to recognize and forget--if one
could.