CHAPTER III.THE REBEL DISAPPEARS.
I sawat once that the moon was come, but for my enterprise’s sake I wished it absent. Here she was, however, framed in cloud, with a star or two about her, and a very tell-tale eye. The roof of the woods freezing across the park was a mass of dusky silver that her beams had thrown, and so bold and sharp her glow was on every twig that slept that individual things stood forth and stared at me, and seemed endowed with the hue of noon in the middle of the night. And I am sure the hour was laid for an adventure, and crying for a deed. The light of the moon was made of pale romance, and bade the princess bare her casement, and the minstrel on the sward to sing. This was the disposition of my thoughts as I looked out of the window, and I was so captive to their poetry that a soft touch upon my shoulder startled me as greatly as a blow. I glanced round quickly and found Emblem at my side.
“He hath drained it to the dregs, my lady,” says she, brandishing the coffee-pot.
“Faith! you startled me,” says I. “Emblem, your foot is lighter than a cat’s.”
“’Tis almighty cold under the moon, ma’am,” says the maid, “and you would be well advised, I think, to put a stouter garment on.”
“Ha! sly minx,” says I, “you fear that my employment will be the enemy of soft, white satin, and that it may take a soil or two.”
I followed her advice, however, and got into a winter dress, and sent her meanwhile to seek a file in the region of the kitchen. This was a tool I had forgot, but highly necessary, you will believe, when a pair of stout handcuffs are to be encountered. I dressed and cloaked myself with care, and pulled two pairs of stockings on, for slippers on a frosty night are the tenderest protection. I had just perched the vizard on my nose when Emblem brought the file. I picked the pistol up, set it at her head, and made her deliver up that file with a degree of instancy which hath not been excelled by the famous Jerry Jones, of Bagshot. Thereupon I loaded that dark weapon, pocketed its adjuncts, and, leaving the faithful Emblem white and trembling with the excitement of the hour, set out upon a deed whose inception was so simple, yet whose complex development was destined to commit a great havoc in the lives of several, and to change entirely the current of my own.
Had I foreseen these ultimate occurrences, I should not have set out at one o’clock of winter moonlight in the spirit of an urchin on a holiday. Should I have set out at all? Faith! I cannot say, for the more beautiful a woman is the less restrainthath reason on her. But this I’m sure of: had my Lady Barbarity only known the strange form the business of that night was to take for herself and others, she had certainly said her prayers before she embarked upon it.
Two clocks were telling the hour together in the hall when I rode down the broad backs of the bannisters and attained the mat below without a sound, this seeming the quietest and most expeditious way of overcoming the obstinacy of stairs, who creak at no time no louder than at one o’clock at night—that is, unless it is at two. I glided across the tiles and entered the servants’ part without so much as waking up a beetle, such is the virtue that resides in dainty slippers, wedded to dainty toes. Emblem had left one of the scullery doors unbarred, and through this I stole forth to the stable. The air was still as any spectre, and I observed its sacred calm so implicitly that a fox actually stalked across the yard, not twenty paces off, with his nose upon the ground, inquiring for poultry.
I was much too wise to take the stable from the front, but by dodging round divers of the kitchen offices, I was able to outflank it, and could peep upon the sentry by the door under cover of a friendly wall. Every beam of moonlight seemed gathered on that bayonet. When that naked steel looked at me thus, and seemed to say “Come on if you dare!” the spirit of my mischief was pretty badly dashed, and began to seek a pretext to retire. There was Emblem, though, and who shall endure the secretlaughter of her maid? But while I paused, a gentle snore crept out into the frost and soon was mingling with my ears. The coffee had performed. In an instant what a lion I became! How promptly I stepped up to the sentry’s side and took that bayonet from him, for I could not be myself so long as that blade menaced me. I ran across the yard and cast it in an ashpit—’twas the utmost indignity I could bestow upon that weapon—and counted the feat a triumph for wit over insolence and power. Mr. Sentry had been drugged so heavily and thoroughly that he was now sleeping more deeply than the earth, as I doubt whether even morning would have waked him. The posture of his body, though, was most unfriendly to the scheme I had prepared. His head was jammed in the top corner against one door post, whilst his heels resided in the bottom corner of the other. The misfortune was that his ribs were in such a situation that they covered up the keyhole. Now unless I could obtain a fair access to that, my labours were in vain. But when engaged on a dangerous escapade, ’tis a sterile mind that lacks for an expedient. Therefore I gave back a yard or two into the stable’s shadow, and looking up, saw precisely what I had hoped to find. Our stables I had remembered were of two storeys, the second chamber being an open hayloft, which was only covered by the roof, the sides being composed of rails alone, and set wide enough apart for persons of an ordinary stature to squeeze through with ease. How to reach it was the problem, asthe floor of it was suspended ten feet from the ground. It did not remain a problem long, for I stole to a disused coach house a little distance off, and groped among the odds and ends there collected for a ladder. The brightness of the moon permitted me to find without the least ado a short one, exactly corresponding to my needs. I bore it to the prison, laid it against the coping stone of the second storey, and hopped thereon as lightly as a robin hops on rime. I was soon at the top and through the bars, and battling with the armies of hay and straw assembled on the other side, that strove with might to thrust out all intruders. This one was rather more than they could manage though. Having made my footing good inside the loft, I began to search for one of those trap-doors that are employed to push the fodder through into the mangers underneath. This involved a deal of patient exploration, for it was very little light that penetrated this encumbered place. But I was now so eager and so confident that I was fit for deeds of every character, and I do not doubt at all that had my task been to find a lost needle amongst this endless mass of provender, I should have discovered it in less than half an hour. Thus coming at last in the course of my search to a spot well cleared of straw, one of my slippers trod upon an iron ring, and, much as I regretted the pain that act involved, I rejoiced the more, since I had stumbled on the trap. Getting my fingers to this ring, I tugged the door up, and then prepared to scramblethrough the hole into the manger. I calculated that the distance I had to make was a comparatively short one. However, I was compelled to be cautious in the matter of the hayrack, as should I become involved in cages of that sort, I must experience many a stubborn obstacle in getting out again. I should like the reader to conceive at this point, if he is able, of Lady Barbara Gossiter, the reigning Toast, whose imperious charms had played the deuce with every embroidered waistcoat in the town; I say I want you to conceive, dear Mr. Reader, if you have imagination equal to the task, this exquisite young person scrambling through trap-doors into mangers in the middle of the night! Yes, it staggers you, and you say it is impossible. I quite agree with that, and confess that when I started on this mischief, or this deed of mercy, call it what you will (for I certainly will not pretend to be better than I am), I had not included feats like these in my adventure. Now I had not, unfortunately, the faintest claim to be called an acrobat, but when the hounds have got scent, and the whole field is in full cry, one does not tarry for the widest and greenest pond, or the quickest set of fences. Therefore clinging tightly to the trap, I lowered myself with insidious care, inch by inch, into the manger. ’Twas not possible to perform an act of this sort without committing some little noise. Thus the poor lad pinioned to the manger heard the creaks of my descent.
“What the devil!” he exclaimed, starting up as I could tell by the brisk rustling of his straw.
“No, child, not the devil,” I says, “a person handsomer by far. But hush! lad, hush! I am here to save your neck.”
He strangled a natural cry at this injunction, though an emotion of surprise caused him to strain unconsciously against his bonds. The rattle of the manger ring to which the unhappy creature was secured cut me keenly to the quick. They prate of the cruelty of us women, but I wish some of these men would consider their own gifts in this direction, ere they tax us for our drawing-room barbarities. Now Captain Grantley, in his haste to take me from the window on the occasion of my visit earlier in the night, had forgotten to reshutter it, and his omission was now a friend we could not well have done without. It let a lively flood of moonlight in, which had the cunning to show me not only my precise locality, but how one was affected to the other, the work that was before me, and the fairest means by which it could be done.
At first the poor prisoner dare not accept the testimony of his eyes, nor could he trust his ears.
“I—I cannot understand,” he said.
“Men never can,” I whispered. “But if we are silent, speedy, and ingenious I think I can save you from Tyburn, sir.”
For these words he invoked God’s blessing on me, which was quite a new experience, as the invocations of his sex are much the other way in mycase. Then he tried to pierce my vizard with his eyes, and then rose with slow pain to his feet and pushed his handcuffed wrists towards me, for he had seen me take forth the file. I attacked at once the stout chains by which they were clinched together, and in which the cord was looped. ’Twas no light employ, let me assure you. The file rasped without surcease on the steel for the best part of an hour, and I put such an energy in the task that long before I had bitten through the gyve my fingers ached most bitterly, and I could feel the sweat shining in my face. Whoever it was that had put those fetters on, ’twas plain he was no tyro in the art. But that winter night, had my business been to reduce a castle with my single hand I could have razed it to the earth, I think. Therefore, at last I overcame the stubborn bonds, and in something less than a minute afterwards the desperate rebel had all his members free. I am not sure but what a bond was forged about his heart though. For in the stern assaults I had directed on his chains the spring that held my vizard fell away, the patch of velvet dropped into the straw, and lo! at the lifting of my eyes, I stood unmasked before him. And perhaps I was not sorry for it, since—the charming fellow!—no sooner did he discover that his hands were out of durance than he uttered a low cry of pleasure and of gratitude, and when he regarded his deliverer his eyes became so bright that they must have been sensible of joy. But I was determined that in this present instance, no matter howmuch beyond the common, my native power should yet assert itself. Wherefore I drew myself to my fullest inches, tipped up my chin and throat a little to let him see what snow and dimples are, and what a provocation poets sometimes undergo. Then I met those fine eyes of his fully with mine own. On this occasion ’twas his that did recoil. Nor was this at all remarkable, since Mr. Horace Walpole had informed me but a week before, for the fifteenth time, that if these my orbs should confront the sun at any time, the sun would be diminished and put out. Thus the rebel’s own high look yielded reluctantly to mine, and I judged by the twitching of his mouth that ’twas as much as he could do to suppress his wonder and his thankfulness. But he did in lieu of that a thing that was even yet more graceful.
Without a word he fell on his knees before the feet of his releaser, and when I deigned to give my hand to him that he might touch it with his lips, as I thought his delicious silence not unworthy of reward, my every finger thrilled beneath the one burning tear that issued from his fine, brave eyes and plashed upon them softly.
“Madam,” he said then, with his voice all passion-broken and shaking so that it must have given him an agony to speak, “a word can never thank you. May I thank you some time otherwise?”
The moonlight was much our friend in this strange passage, here amongst the straw of a cold, gloomy, and unclean stable at an unheard-of hour of night. Pouring through the window it wrappedour figures in a sweet vague hue that was as beautiful as it was subdued. It had a mellow holiness about it too, I thought.
We lost scarce a minute, though, in matters of this character. There was much to do if the rebel’s escape was to be effected and him to be hence a mile or two ere his flight was known. Wherefore I commanded him to leave his knees at once, and made him do so brisker than perhaps otherwise he might have done by saying that his attitude was extremely laughable. Next minute I had committed the loaded pistol to his care, and had informed him that as the door of the ground storey was locked and a sleeping sentry was huddled against it, egress was cut off utterly thereby. I proposed, however, that we should get out along the route by which I had arrived—namely, by climbing up into the manger, scrambling through the trap into the loft, and descending thence by the ladder I had left.
I was the first to make the trial, as I should naturally require the most assistance in ascending to the second storey, and preferred to be pushed up by the heels from underneath than to be hauled up by the arms from overhead. ’Twas here that I was glad that the sun was not about yet, since I do not doubt that in my attempt to overcome that ugly trap, I was guilty of showing off a trifle more of petticoat and stocking than consists with the gentility of Saint James’s Park. Still, I was willing to pay a reasonable price for these present delightfulissues. Alas! I did not know that I was only at the threshold of this affair, and that those that lay ahead were to hold more of terror than enchantment.
We soon managed to swing ourselves from the manger to the loft, and when we got amongst the straw I fell to further instructing my companion. It was of the first importance that he should have a horse, and I proposed to present him with Rebecca, a blood mare of my own, who was stabled near at hand. However, as we were to discover all too soon, we had reckoned without our host considerably.
Being the better acquainted with our bearings, I went ahead and led the way through the hay and straw, and in the sequel ’twas quite as well that I was foremost. For I was just come to the place where the ladder rested, with Mr. Anthony pressing on my heels, when:
“Down, sir, into the straw!” I whispered, and smartly as that command was breathed, I was but just in time.
A stream of light rising slowly higher from the ladder was the cause of this alarm. The next thing that I saw was a lantern swinging from the topmost rung, and immediately behind it the face of Captain Grantley outlined dimly in the gloom. His eyes were fixed steadily on mine, yet the keen though quiet smile of greeting with which he met my look, and it must have been a guilty one, appeared to me a miracle of breeding and propriety.
I had to admire this soldier. Not the quivering of a muscle, not the quaking of a tone informed me of the depth of his astonishment. As for me, after the first paralysis of bewilderment I met his gaze with the large, wide look of innocence. I understand that I have a genius for dissembling. But lord! ’twas needed now. I had gone so far in the affair that I could not now withdraw. Besides, I had not the inclination. The lad was handsome, never a doubt of that. He might be the son of a baker, nevertheless he promised to make an extremely proper man. Thus I felt my heart grow small with fear, while we continued to survey each other with an ingenious and smiling care. As for my poor terrified companion, I could tell by the soft rustling of straw behind me that he was disposing his body as far beyond the ken of that lantern and the pair of eyes that were the background to it as his situation would permit.
At first the imperturbability of the Captain’s mien put me in some hope that he had not as yet suspected the presence of his prisoner. But he contrived to alarm as greatly as he reassured, since he pitched his voice in the very key of drawling languor that only the fops of Kensington routs and drawing-rooms employ.
“Lord! my Lady Barbara, a magnificent evening, don’t you think?” says he.
“Do you suppose I would be out of my bed enjoying it unless it was, my dearest Captain?” saysI, with a countenance of the most simple girlishness in the world.
The trembling prisoner burrowed the deeper in the straw.
Now it would have been a perfect piece of comedy, had not that poor lad been breathing so hard and quick behind me. His life was suspended on a hair, and this he knew, and I knew also. Otherwise I should have enjoyed the acting of this play in a fashion that my jaded appetite seldom enjoys anything. Therefore I continued to regard the Captain with a gravely whimsical look; but if he twitched an eyelid, altered the position of a finger, or shifted the altitude an inch at which the lantern hung, I began to speculate upon the fact, and wrote it in my heart. We played a game of cat and mouse, and for once the Captain was the cat. Conceive me the grey and frightened little mouse, trying to dodge the deathly paw that any instant might descend and mutilate it.
“Captain,” says I, “are you also interested deeply in the study of astronomy?”
“Astronomy!” cries he, “why astronomy?”
He was a wonderfully clever cat, but trembling little mousie had got him, by her cunning ways, a trifle off his guard you see.
“Why, my dearest man,” says I, putting a world of surprise into my tone lest the moonlight should not properly reflect the amount that was inserted in my face, “do you suppose for an instant now that a woman wholly in possession of her wits would quita warm bed at three o’clock of a winter’s night to gaze at a full moon from a hay loft if a question of the heavenly bodies had not summoned her. Do you think for a moment, sir, that I am here without a reason? Or rank somnambulism you may consider it?”
You would have laughed at the amount of indignant heat, as though I were hurt most tenderly, that I contrived to instil into my accents.
“Oh dear no, dear Lady Barbara!” says the horrid creature as silkily as possible; “that you are here without a reason I do not for a moment think. You misjudge me there, dear lady.”
Captain Grantley was become the devil! I fairly raked his smiling face with the fierceness of my eyes, but when they were driven from it by the simplicity of his look, it was smiling still, yet inscrutable as the night in which we stood. His language was so ordered that it might mean everything; on the contrary it might mean nothing. This was the distracting part. The man spoke in such an honest, unpremeditated fashion that who should suspect that he knew anything at all? But why was he here? And why could at least two interpretations be put upon every word he uttered? These the ruminations of a guilty mind!
Hereabouts an idea regaled me. If I could but coax the Captain up into the loft, it would leave the ladder free. The prisoner then might make a dash for liberty, and if he had an athlete’s body and sound wind and limbs to serve him in hisflight, all was not yet lost, and he had still a chance of life.
“Captain,” says I, taking a bearing cautiously, “is the supposition right that a matter of the heavenly bodies hath also brought you into the night at this unpropitious season?”
“Well, scarcely,” says the Captain. “’Tis my duty, madam.”
That word in its solemnity made me start. And it was spoken in a voice so pregnant and so deep that it frightened the trembling prisoner too. The violence of his emotion caused him to stir uneasily, and make the straw crack.
“Dear me!” I cried, “did you hear that mouse?” And I gathered my skirts up in my horror, and huddled my ankles one against the other in the extremity of fear.
“A mouse?” the Captain says; “must have been a very big one, dear lady. Say a rat now; liker a rat, I’m thinking.”
“Oh no,” I shivered, “’twas a mouse, I’m positive. I felt his little tail against my shoe. I have no fear of rats—but a mouse, it is a frightful creature.”
“That shoe must be highly sensitive, dear lady,” says the Captain, with a laugh and holding down the light. “Ah! I see that shoe is a carpet slipper. A carpet slipper on a frosty night. How odd!”
I repeat, the Captain was become the devil.
“Odd? They are indeed,” says I. “That carelessmaid of mine actually crammed my feet in her haste into two rights instead of left and right. But a carpet slipper is a very elastic article, you know.”
“Very,” says the Captain, “and very secret also.”
“I should think it is,” says I, with an air of simple candour. “I would not use one else. You see my papa, the Earl, objects to these moonlight trips of mine. I thus use carpet slippers that he shall not hear me pass his door or walk across the hall. And I must implore you, sir, not to betray me in this matter.”
Here I set such a wistful, pleading gaze upon the Captain that it nearly knocked him backwards from the ladder.
“My dearest lady!” and he laid his hand upon his heart.
Meanwhile I had not forgotten my design.
“I daresay,” says I, “you would like to have one glimpse, sir, of Luna and her satellites. I have an apparatus with me. See, here’s my telescope. A little darling of a creature, is it not?”
Twisting half round to where the prisoner was, I began to fumble in my pocket for it. Of course I must bend my head to do so.
“When he leaves the ladder,” says I to the lad, in the softest whisper ever used, “leap out and down it like the wind; then it’s neck and heels to Scotland!”
Thereupon I took the file forth from my cloak, and so disposed my hands about it that in the insufficientlight it became a very creditable telescope. I fitted the point into my eye, and jutted forth the handle with great nicety.
“Venus is in trine,” says I, with this strange telescope trained upon the stars.
“And how is Mars to-night?” says the Captain, with a gallant interest.
“Mars is out of season, sir,” says I. “He is at no advantage. But Saturn and some others are wonderfully bright. Come up and gaze, sir. ’Twill interest you rarely, I am certain, and I have here the finest little instrument that was ever fashioned by the artifice of Italy; besides, the situation of my observatory is most admirably good.”
But the very watchful cat upon the ladder betrayed no disposition to come up and hunt minutely for the mouse.
“If you will lend me the telescope,” says he, “I think I shall find my present station equally excellent for the purposes of observation.”
When he uttered the phrases “for the purposes of observation,” he looked as simple as a child. But I had a desire to strike him from the ladder all the same. Not by a single word had he let me know as yet whether design or accident had brought him of all places to this particular ladder at this particular hour. Long as I had fenced he was as inscrutable as his solitaire. I was not wiser in one instance than when I had begun. Yet I was entitled to a guess, and alas! it was a gloomy one.
“Captain Grantley,” says I, with a foot-tap ofpetulance, “I have invited you to my observatory.”
“In the middle of the night,” says he. It was so deftly couched that for my life I was not certain whether it was intended for a stinging insult or a very neat evasion. But though forced to admire a hit so delicate and so palpable, I was extremely angry, too, for circumstances had left me entirely to his tender mercies. Yet the rebel, having heard his speech, jumped at once to the opinion that it was rather an insinuation than a subterfuge, and being a boy and therefore hot with his heroics, was mighty impetuous for what he considered the honour of his champion. And although the act would certainly have involved his life, he was quite prepared to retaliate upon the Captain’s person, that I might be avenged.
Happily I divined his intention just in time. I caught the cracking of the straw, gave back a step and screamed a little, drew my petticoats together, and set one heel as heavily as I could on the uprising rebel’s breast.
“The mouse!” I cried; “there it is again. Did you not hear it, sir? Oh, I am in such horrid fear! Captain, do come up and catch it for me by the tail!”
Now my mind was so involved in the escape of this staunch and honest lad, that you will see it was quite heedless as to the degree these requests might implicate myself. In the end, however, the Captain himself proved sufficiently a gentleman toredeem me from this unlucky situation. Grantley, the town-bred fop, had just pierced me keenly with his wit; but next moment Grantley, officer of the King, and defender of his country, came bravely to my aid.
“My Lady Barbara,” says he, mildly, but abating somewhat the mincing accents of the exquisite, “I think this mummery hath gone on long enough. ’Tis a very dangerous game for us both to play; and, madam, I think the more especially for you, since the more beautiful a woman is, the more perturbed the world is for her reputation. And, my dear lady, you really should consider the limitations of us poor susceptibles; we are very frail sometimes, you know. But let us have an end to the acting of this play.”
“Play!” says I, with sweet surprise; “sir, to what do you refer?”
I gazed at him with perfect innocence, but I thought I heard sounds of hard, deep breathing issue from the straw behind me.
“My Lady Barbara,” the Captain said, and setting the lantern a point the nearer to my face to mark the effect of his words upon it, “your conduct in this matter, I will confess, hath been exceeding creditable to your heart. But in the name of the King I summon one Anthony Dare, lying there behind you, to stand forth from that straw.”
Now there was not a word in this demand beyond what I should have anticipated from the first; but my adversary had fenced and toyed with meso long, that he had almost weaned my mind from thinking that he knew of my attempt and the poor prisoner’s situation. And in the very breath of this avowal he let me see that he had ordered his tactics with so complete a skill that the prisoner’s doom was sealed. Before the final word was uttered a cocked pistol was pointed at the straw. The lad concealed amongst it, feeling that all was over, made an attempt to rise. Perhaps his idea was to throw himself upon his wary foe, but that, I saw, was certain death. He would have been shot down like a dog. Thus by the renewed pressure of my heel upon his breast, I was able to still restrain him. Indeed, I was already ploughing up my wits to find another plan. It is a part of my character never to surrender until I am compelled. Till my adversary wins, I have not lost, and the nearer he be to victory, the greater the danger that besets him.
“Captain,” says I, with a meek, sad smile, “I have played my game, and I have lost it. Victory sits with you. Let me compliment you on your superior skill, sir, and crave your leave to now withdraw.”
I said this as humbly as you please. I hung my head, and the limp dejection of my form betrayed how utterly I was beaten. Every spark of spirit was gone out of me, apparently. The Captain was not ungenerous, and seeing me so badly gravelled and that I took thus sincerely my reverses, was kind enough to say:
“My Lady Barbara, you have played a boldand skilful game, and I tender you my compliments upon it.”
My cunning gentleman I could see had been taken off his guard a little by my lowliness of bearing. He did not discern that ’twas in my mind, despite the fact that both the prisoner and myself were utterly at the mercy of his pistol, to attempt quite the boldest stroke of all.
It was now that I withdrew my slipper from the prisoner’s breast and walked up in the most natural way one could imagine to within a foot of where the Captain stood upon the ladder, smiling with something of the air of Alexander. I took my steps with such discretion and feigned a simple negligence so well that he suspected nothing. My Lady Barbara being my Lady Barbara, he had of course nothing to suspect.
“I wish to descend if you will allow me, sir,” says I, “for I cannot bear to stand by and see my unhappy friend retaken.”
He was preparing to accommodate me in this perfectly humane request when, tightening my fingers on the file, I struck the butt of his pistol with all my strength, and straight the weapon dropped from his hand and clattered ten feet to the stones below. The prisoner at my back was marvellously quick. In almost the same instant as the pistol tinkled on the yard the lad was up. He flew at the astonished Captain like a cat, and struck him full and neat just underneath the jaw. ’Twas a murderous blow, and the horrid thud it made quiteturned my stomach over. But it was not a time for niceties. The Captain tumbled backwards down the ladder, neck and heels; his lantern was shattered to a thousand atoms; and in two seconds he, the pistol, broken glass, and much good benzoline were in a heap upon the stones. The prisoner waited for no courtesies. He did not even give his foe the chance of a recovery; for, disdaining to use the ladder, he jumped to the ground in such a calculated way that he descended with his hands and knees upon the Captain’s prostrate person.
Now it was evident that much more than this was required to provide the Captain’s quietus, for so soon as the prisoner fell upon his body he clasped him by the waist and clung to him with the tenacity of a leech. For a full minute they fought and wrestled on the ground and felt for one another’s throats. But the Captain underneath found the arguments of the man on the top too forcible. Thus by the time that I was down the ladder the rebel had managed to extricate himself, and was running away as hard as he was able.
And here it was that Fortune treated him so cruelly. The hours he had passed in prison with limbs cramped up and bound had told too sure a tale. He was unable to move beyond half the pace a healthy and clean-limbed youth should be able to employ. And the Captain was a person of the truest mettle. Despite the several shocks he had undergone and the bruises he had suffered, he was up without a moment’s pause and running therebel down with rare agility. In his haste, though, there was a highly necessary article that he had failed to regard. That was the pistol lying on the ground beside him. And it will prove to you that I was still playing the prisoner’s game with all my wits when I say that I pounced on it and threw it up into the hay loft, where it could be no use to anybody. Then I sped after the pair of runners to see what the outcome was to be. They were racing through a gate that led into the park, which slept in a pale, cold silence beneath the peaceful moon.
I had not run a hundred yards when, alas! the issue grew too plain. Yard by yard the Captain bore down upon his foe. It was only a matter of minutes ere he once more had him at his mercy. But observing their movements eagerly as I went a thrill of horror trembled through my heart, for I clearly saw the fugitive clap his hand into his coat, and even as he ran, withdraw something from it secretly. He concealed it with his hand. But in a flash it was in my mind that this was the loaded pistol I had given him. And the Captain was unarmed.
If you give rein enough to mischief it may lead you into many and strange things. But I think it should always draw the line at murder. Much as I would have paid for the prisoner’s escape, ’twas more than I could endure to witness a stark and naked murder. Mind, I did not enter into the merits of the case at all. I would have the lad escape at every cost, but none the less, murder must beprevented. And now I saw that the holder of the pistol was tailing off in his speed so palpably that he must soon be overtaken. There was a reason for his tardiness, however. He was waiting till his pursuer should come within a yard or two; then he would whip round and discharge the pistol straight into his body.
This idea, together with the thought that I had armed him for the deed, was more than I could suffer. A wretched sickness overtook me. But it made me the more determined to save the Captain if I could. Therefore, I knit my teeth upon the weak cries of my terror and ran, and ran, and ran till I came within hailing distance of them, for both had now much slackened in their running. Happily the Captain had at last observed the weapon of his enemy and had interpreted his bloody motive. Thus, while the one awaited the coming of his foe, the other warily approached, but with no abatement of his courage: whilst I, profiting by these manœuvres, was soon at the place where they had disposed themselves for their battle.