CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XTHE CROWBAR IN THE WOOD

We sat so long that I grew hungry. And then forethought was rewarded. For as I well knew, Agnes Anne had much ado to keep the house supplied (and the larder too often bare with all her trying!), I had done some trifle of providing on my own account. I had a flask of milk in my pouch—the big one in the skirt of the coat that I always wore when taking a walk in the General’s plantations. Cakes, too, and well-risen scones cut and with butter between them, most refreshing. I gave first of all to Irma, and at the sound of the eating and drinking Agnes Anne awakened and came forward. So I handed her some, but with my foot cautioned her not to take too much, because it was certain that she would by no means do her share of the fighting.

Both were my sisters. We had agreed upon that. But then some roses smell sweeter than others, though all are called by the same name.

We had just finished partaking of the food (and great good it did us) when Agnes Anne heard a sound that sent her suddenly back to her corner with a face as white as a linen clout. She was always quicker of hearing than I, but certain it is that after a while I did hear something like the trampling of horses, and especially, repeated more than once, the sharp jingle which the head of a caparisoned horse makes when, wearied of waiting, it casts it up suddenly.

They were coming.

We said the words, looking at each other, and I suppose each one of us felt the same—that we were a lot of poor weak children, in our folly fightingagainst men. At least this is how I took it, and a sick disdain of self for being no stronger rose in my throat. A moment and it had passed. For I took “King George” in hand, and bidding Irma see that little Louis was sleeping, I ran up the stairs to the open tower-top. Here I had thought to be alone, but there before me, crouched behind the ramparts and looking out upon a dim glade which led down towards the landing-place at Killantringan, was Agnes Anne. In answer to my question as to what she was doing there, she answered at first that she could see in the dark better than I, and when I denied this she said that surely I did not think she was going to be left down there alone, nearest to the assailants if they should force a passage!

One should never encourage one’s real sister in the belief that she can ever by any chance do right. So I said at once that whether she was behind the door or sitting on the weathercock at Marnhoul Tower would make no difference if the people were enemies and once got in.

“Hush!” she said. “What is that I hear now?”

And from away down the glade came slow and steady blows like those which a man might make as he lifts his axe and smites into the butt. There was a sort of reverberation, too, as if the tree were hollow. But that might only be the effect of the night, the stillness, and the heavy covert of great woods which lay like a big green blanket all about us, and tossed every sound back to us like a wall at ball-play.

“Oh, if we could only see what they were doing—who they are?” I groaned. “I could go out quite safely by the door in the tower, but then who would fire off ‘King George’?”

“Toc! Toc!” came the sounds. And then a pause as if the woodsman had straightened himself up andwas wiping his brow. The timing of the strokes was very slow. Probably, therefore, the labour itself was fatiguing. Sometimes, too, the axe fell with a different swing, as if other hands grasped it, but always with the same dull thudding and irritating slowness.

Then Agnes Anne made an astonishing proposition.

“See here, Duncan,” she whispered, “letmeout by the little postern door at the foot of the tower. Miss Irma can watch behind it to let me in if I come running back, and you stay on the top ready with ‘King George.’ I will find out for you everything you want to know.” And I got ready to say, brother-like, “Agnes Anne, you are a fool—your legs would give way under you in the first hundred yards.”

But somehow she saw (or felt) the speech that was coming, and cut me short.

“No, I wouldn’t either,” she said hurriedly and quite boldly. “You think that because I hate that great thing there filled with powder and slugs (which even you can’t tell when it will go off, or what harm it will do when it does) that I am a coward. I am no more frightened than you are yourself—perhaps less. Who was the best tracker when we played at Indians and colonists, I should like to know? Who could go most quietly through the wood? Or run the quickest? Just me, Agnes Anne MacAlpine!”

Well, I had to admit it. These things were true. But then they had little to do with courage. This was serious. It was taking one’s life in one’s hand.

“And pray what are we doing here and now?” snapped Agnes Anne. “If they are strong enough to break in one of the doors, or get through one of the windows, what can we do? Till we know what is coming against us, we are only going from one blunder to another!”

Now this was most astonishing of our Agnes Anne.So I told her that I had known that Irma was plucky, but not her. And she only said, very shortly, “Better come and see!”

So we went down and told Irma. At first she was all against opening any door, even for a moment, on any account. The strength of these defences was our only protection. She would rather do anything than endanger that. But we made her listen to the slow thud of the axe out in the wood, and even as we looked the figure of a man passed across the glade, black against the greyish-green of the grass, on which a thick rise of dew was catching the starlight.

This figure wrapped in a sea-cloak, with head bent forward, passing across the pale glimmer of the glade, sufficed to alter the mind of Irma. She agreed in a moment, and locking the door of little Louis’s room, she declared herself willing to keep watch behind the little postern door of the tower, ready to let Agnes Anne in again, on the understanding that I should be prepared from the open window above to deal with any pursuer.

I admit that in this I was persuaded against my judgment. For I felt certain that though Agnes Anne could move with perfect stillness through woods, and was a fleet runner, her nerve would certainly fail her when it came to a real danger. And so great was the sympathy of my imagination that I seemed already to feel the pursuer gaining at every stride, the muscles of my limbs failing beneath me and refusing to carry me farther, just as they do in a dream.

But Agnes Anne was serious and determined, and in the end had to have her way. I can see the reason now. She knew exactly what she meant to do, which neither Irma nor I did—though of course both of us far braver.

We got the door open quite silently—for it was theone Irma had used in her few and brief outgates. Then, shrouded in her school cloak of grey, and clad, I mean, in but little else, Agnes flitted out as silent as a shadow along a wall.

But oh, the agony I suffered to think what my father, and still more my grandmother, would say to me because I had let my sister expose herself on such an errand. Twenty times I was on the point of sallying forth after her. Twenty times the sight of the pale face of Irma waiting there stopped me, and the thought that I was the only protector of the two poor things in that great house. Also after all Agnes Anne had gone of her own accord.

All the same I shivered as I kneeled by the window above with the wide muzzle of “King George” pointing down the path which led from the glade. Every moment I expected to hear the air rent with a hideous scream, and “King George” wobbled in my hands as I thought of Agnes Anne lying slain in the glow-worm shining of that abominable glade, with that across her white neck for which my conscience and my grandmother would reproach me as long as I (and she) lived. One thing comforted me during that weary waiting. The hollow thudding as of axe on wood never ceased for a moment. So from that I gathered (and was blithe to believe) that the alarm had not been given, and that wherever Agnes Anne was, she herself was still undiscovered.

My eyes were so glued to that misty glade that presently I got a great surprise. “There she is!” cried Irma, looking round the door, and I saw a figure flit out of the dusk of the copse-covert within two yards of the postern door. The next moment, without advertisement or the least fuss, Agnes Anne was within. I heard the sliding of bolts, the hum of talk, and then the patter of returning feet on the stair.

CHAPTER XIAGNES ANNE’S EXPERIENCES AS A SPY

“Well, at first I did not think much about anything” (said Agnes Anne), “except keeping quiet and doing what Duncan did not believe I could do. But I knew the wood. It was not so dark as one would think, and once out of the echo of the house walls I could hear far better. I leaned against a larch, holding on to the trunk and counting the sticky rosettes on its trailers to keep me from thinking while I listened. Twice I thought I had made out exactly from which direction the sound came, and twice I found I was mistaken. But the third time I followed the ditch under the sunk fence till I came to the mound which is shaped like a green hat at the end next the house. The thudding came from there—I was sure of it. When I could hear men talking, I was (and I am not saying it to put Duncan in the wrong) more glad than afraid.

“The bottom of the ditch was full of all sorts of underbrush—hazel and birch roots mostly—growing pretty close as I found when once I got there, but rustling horribly while I was getting settled. However, there was nothing for it, if I wanted to find out anything, but to go on. So on I went. I was close to the mound now, and could hear the voices.

“‘Quiet there a moment!’ said some one, ‘I’ll swear I heard a noise in the ditch!’

“And as I crouched something like a blade of a sword or maybe a pike came high above me stabbing this way and that. Twigs and leaves pattered down,but I was safe behind the stump of a fallen tree. Presently the steel thing I had seen glinting struck the dead and sodden wood of the tree-trunk, and snapped with a sharp tang like a fiddle-string—a hayfork it may have been, or one of the long thin swords such as are hung up in the hall.

“But another and deeper voice—like that of a man somewhat out of breath, said gruffly, ‘Better get the job done! ’Tis only a fox or a rabbit—what else would be out here at this hour?’

“And then, with the noise of spitting on the hands, the sound of the heavy tool began again. It had a ring in it like steel on stone. I think they had been chopping something with a pickaxe and had got through. For now the clink was quite different, though that again might be because I was nearer.

“‘Have you found the passage? Surely it is long in showing?’

“That was the first voice again, the better educated one, I take it. He spoke like a gentleman, like the General or even the Doctor himself, though there was much rudeness in the voice of the other when he answered him.

“‘D’ye think I am breaking my back over this stone-door for fun?’ growled the man in panting gasps. ‘If I imagined you were any hand at a tool, you should have a chance at this one quick enough!’

“‘Steady, Dick!’ said the first, always in his pleasant tone, ‘it can’t be far away at the farthest now!’

“‘Hang it, it may not be there at all. Did you ever hear of a mouldy old castle but had its tale about a secret passage? And did anybody ever see one? Better make the woman speak, I tell you!’

“‘Well,’ argued the first suavely, ‘it may come tothat, of course. But let us give this a good trial first. To it, Dick—to it!’

“‘Aye, “To it, Dick—to it!” And your own arm up to the elbow in your blessed pocket,’ he grunted, and I could hear him set to work again with an angry snarl. ‘If this doesn’t fetch it—well—there’s always the woman!’

“‘Aye—but itwilldo it this time,’ said the man with the soft voice. ‘I hear by the clink of the crow that you are nearly through. My uncle used often to tell me about this. The big green mound is the ice-house of Marnhoul. It was his father that made it, and the passage also to connect with the cellar. See where it drains sideways into that ditch. That is what makes the green stuff grow so rank about there!’

“Between the noise of the heavy crowbar and the dispute, I ventured to edge a bit closer, so that at last I could make out the two men, and beyond them something that looked like a figure of a woman lying under a cloak. But all was under the dimness of the stars and the twinkling dew, so that I could see nothing clearly.

“But what I had heard was enough, for in the middle of the worker’s gasping and cursing there came a sudden crash and a jingle.

“‘She’s through—I told you so. Uncle Edward was right!’ cried the first and taller man, while the other only stared at the sudden disappearance of his tool, and stood looking blankly at his own empty hands.

“‘What’s to be done now?’ said the tall man.

“‘Lever it up with the nose of the pick!’ growled the short thick man; ‘here, you—hang on to that!’

“And then I knew that the sooner Duncan and‘King George’ were down in the cellar of Marnhoul House, the better it would be for our lives.”

When Agnes Anne finished we sat a moment agape. But very evidently there was no time to be lost. They would be among us before we knew it, if once they got down into the passage. We tried to find out from Irma where the cellar was, but she was sunk in terrible thoughts, and for a long while she could say nothing but “Lalor Maitland—it is Lalor Maitland, come to kill my poor Louis!”

And indeed it was difficult to get her aroused sufficiently to help us. Left to herself I do not doubt that she would have gone up-stairs and fled with the child in her arms in the hope of hiding him in the wood.

At last we got it out of her that the keys of the cellar were in the great cupboard behind the door. She directed us to a double flight of broad stairs. Irma had only looked into the cellar when she first came, and had found it rifled, the barrels dry and gaping, full of dust, dry-rot and the smell of decay.

But she too had heard her father tell of the passage to the ice-house, and how he and his brothers had used it for their escapades when the house was locked up and the keys taken to their father’s room.

We went down—I leading with “King George” under my arm and the two girls following. But on the stairway a sudden terror leaped upon Irma. While we were all down in the cellar, might not Lalor and his companion enter by the front door, or by some unguarded window. So she turned and ran back to the little boy’s room to defend him with an old pistol I had found on the wall and loaded for her with powder and ball.

Then Agnes Anne and I made our way into thecellar. We had taken with us the lantern, which we had hitherto kept covered, lest by the moving of the light about the house we might be suspected of being on our guard.

Hastily I made the tour of the great cellar. The back of the place was full of thedébrisof ancient barrels, some intact, some with gaping sides, many held together with no more than a single hoop. But packed together in one corner and occupying a place about one third of the whole area of the floor was something very different. Tarpaulined, fastened together by ropes, and guarded from damp by planks laid below them, were some hundreds of kegs and packages—all, so far as I could see, marked with curious signs, and in some cases the names of places. One I remember, “Sallet Ooil—Apuglia,” gave me a sense of such distance and strangeness, that for a moment I seemed to be travelling in strange countries and seeing curious sights, rather than going down to risk my life in Miss Irma’s quarrel with men I had never seen.

It was very evident that there could be but one place where the passage Irma had spoken of (on her father’s information) could debouch upon the great cellar of Marnhoul. In the angle behind the mass of kegs was an open space of some yards square, so clean that it looked as if it had been recently swept.

Beyond this again and quite in the corner, there was a step or two downwards, as if it were into the bowels of the earth. This was stopped with a door of stone accurately arranged and fitted with uncommon skill. And I could see at a glance that it was probably one of the same kind that the men whom Agnes Anne had seen were engaged in bursting by stroke of crow. I understood more than that. For there was all thewinter in Eden Valley scarce any other subject of talk than the Free Trade (which is to say, plainly, smuggling), and concerning the various “ventures” or boats and crews attached to some famous leader engaged in it.

There was, in fact, no particular moral wrong attaching to the business in Eden Valley or along the Solway shore high and low—rather a sort of piety, since the common folk remembered that the excise had first been instituted by that perjured persecutor of the Church, Charles II. Even the Doctor, though he denounced the practice from the pulpit in befitting words, did so chiefly on the ground that the attractions of Free Trade, its dangers even, carried so many promising young men forth of the parish, and a goodly proportion of them to return no more.

But for all that, I never heard that he refused to partake of the anker of Guernsey which his lady found by chance in the milk-house among the creaming-pans, or by the tombstones of his predecessors in the “Ministers’ Corner” of the kirkyard.

I looked at the means of defence, and hidden among the packages at the back I found two good muskets and one or two very worn ones—yet all bearing the marks of recent attention. So, since the smuggled casks formed a kind of breastwork right round the steps—up from the passage that was blocked by the stone door—it came into my head that I could there set up a kind of battery and run from one to the other of them, firing—that is, if the worst came to the worst and the passage were forced. So, having plenty of powder and shot and the wrappings of the lace packages making excellent wads, I set about loading all the muskets. I knew that Agnes Anne would be afraid of what I was doing, having had a horror offirearms ever since, as a child, she had seen Florrie, our old dun cow, shot dead by Boyd Connoway to be our “mart” of the year, and salted down for the winter’s food in the big beef barrel. Agnes Anne would never be induced to eat a bit of Florrie, though indeed she was very good and sweet, because forsooth she had been used to milk her and give her handfuls of fresh grass. Since then she had never forgiven Boyd Connoway, and had never been able to look upon a gun with any complaisance.

Yet when I told her to stand back and keep away from the powder horn and the lantern (for it is none of the easiest to charge strange pieces in a dark cellar) she said that she would stand by “King George” while I was at hand—yes, and fire him off, too, if need were. Only I must show her how to pull the trigger, and also adjust the muzzle so as to bear on the steps by which the villains would come up!

This I relate to show how (for the time being) Agnes Anne was worked upon. For, as all have seen, she was naturally of a very timorsome and quavering disposition. At any rate I did get the muskets, all five of them, loaded, and set in position with their noses cocked over the squared bulwarks of Mechlin and Vallenceens, of Strasburg yarn, and Italian silver-gilt wire.

And I can tell you they looked imposing in the light of the lantern, though I was more than a little doubtful about some of them going off without blowing themselves up. But it was no time to cavil about small matters like that, and I said nothing about this to Agnes Anne, who, for her part, continued to glance along the barrel of “King George” at the stone door with the fixity of my father viewing a star through his large brass spy-glass. Only Agnes Anne, beingunable to keep one eye shut and the other open, had to hold the lid of the unoccupied organ hard down with her left hand, as if it too were about to bounce out on us like the two men she had seen in the ice-house mound by the edge of the sunk fence.

We waited a good while with the light of the lamp smothered—all, that is, but barely sufficient to give air to the flame. And I tell you our hearts were gigotting rarely. Even Agnes Anne had taken a sudden liking to “King George,” and would not let him go as I proposed to her, now that all the other muskets were loaded and ready.

“You would do better service with the lantern,” I told her, “you could hold it up to let us see them better.”

But she answered that the lantern could take care of itself. She was going to do some of the real fighting, and so I should not scorn her any more. But I knew very well that it was only a kind of hysteria and would all go off at the dangerous moment. Down she would go on the floor like a bundle of wet rags!

However, to encourage Agnes Anne (as one must do to a girl), I said that she was not to fire till she saw the white of their eyes. I remembered that my father, in speaking of some battle or other, told how the general had given his men that order, so that they might not miss. I thought it very fine.

But Agnes Anne said promptly that she would not wait for the white of anybody’s eyes. She would fire and run for it as soon as she saw their ugly heads coming up out of the ground. This shows how little you can do with a girl, even if she have occasional fits of bravery. And I do not deny that Agnes Anne had, though not naturally brave like myself and Miss Irma.

It was anywhere between five minutes and a century before we heard the first stroke of the crow behind the barricade. It sounded dull and painful, as if inside of one’s head. At first we heard no talking such as Agnes Anne had described at the entrance of the ice-house.

Also, as they had been a good while on the way; I believe that they had found other difficulties which they had not counted upon in traversing the passage. But they were very near now, for presently, after perhaps twenty strokes we could hear the striker sending out his breath with a “Har” of effort each time he drove his crow home.

It was very dark in the cellar, for we had covered the lamp more carefully and almost ceased to breathe. But we saw through certain chinks that our assailants had a light of some sort with them. We could discern a faint glimmering all round the upper portion of the stone, and stray rays also pierced at various places elsewhere.

The long line of light at the top suddenly split and seemed to break open in the middle. There came a fierce “Hech” from the assailant, and the point of his crowbar showed, slid, and was as sharply recovered. Next moment it came again.

“Lever it!” cried the gruff voice, “if you have the backbone of a windlestraw, lever!”

And after a short, hard-breathing struggle, the stone door fell inwards, the aperture was filled with intense light, dazzling, as it appeared to us—and in the midst we saw two fierce and set faces peering into the dark of the cellar.

CHAPTER XIITHE FIGHT IN THE DARK

One of the peering faces was hot and angry, bearded too, which few then used to do except such as followed the sea. The other was dark and beaked like a hawk, so that the shadow of an aquiline nose fell on the man’s chin as he held the lantern high above his head.

At first we could only see them to about the middle of the breast, as for a little space of time they stood thus, hearkening with their heads thrust forward.

“Not a ratton—forward there, Dick!” said the man behind, and the man with the bushy beard advanced, rising as he did so till I could see the ties of tarry cord with which he looped up his corduroy small-clothes.

Now it was high time to act. The game had been played far enough.

“Hold there—stand!” I cried. “Not a step further or we fire!”

I suppose my voice was echoed and fortified by the hollow vault. Certainly in my own ears it roared like the sound of many waters. At any rate the men stood, dumb-stricken, the tarry sailorly man a little in front with his mouth open and his yellow dog-teeth gleaming. The other, he who had given the orders, held the lantern higher in the air almost against the stones of the vault, so as to see over the barricade of boxes and barrels.

“’Tis no more than the——” he was beginning. But he never got the sentence completed. For I took good aim from a rest upon a package of cloth, and let fly with the best of the muskets—but at the clear loweof the lantern, not at the man’s face, as I had at first intended. Somehow, a kind of pity came over me. I did not want to slay such men, who, taken in their iniquity, must go right to their accounts. But the lantern was hit clean, and the glass went jingling to the ground in a hundred fragments.

I judge also that some of the slugs must have strayed a little, for out of the darkness came curses and the voice of the commander crying on Dick to get back—that they were too strong for only two men. But the sailor man advanced till I could hear him actually pulling himself over the breastwork, gasping (or, as we say, “pech-”ing) with the effort. Then I ran along my battery, and directing the next two of the old muskets to the arched roof, I fired them off, bringing down with a crash handfuls of rough lime and small bits of stone, mingled no doubt with the ricocheted bullets themselves. At any rate our tarry Galligaskins soon had enough of it. He turned and made good his retreat towards the stairs up which he had forced his way.

Then Agnes Anne, who had no chivalrous ideas of sparing anybody who came assaulting the house of her friends, pulled the trigger of “King George,” and in a moment all lesser sounds were drowned in a roar loud as of a piece of ordnance.

The blunderbuss had been trained on the opening with some care, and it was lucky for the men that they happened to be in retreat, and so presenting their backs at the time—lucky, also, that only buckshot had been used instead of the bullets and slugs with which the other guns were loaded. But even so it was enough. She was always careless and scattery, our old “King George.” And from the marks on the lintels afterwards she had sprinkled her charge prettyfreely. Also there were tokens, besides the yells and imprecations of the assailants and the threats of Galligaskins to come back and do for us, that both of them (as Constable Jacky would have said) “carried off concealed about their persons an indictable quantity of my father’s good lead drops.”

So far, good. Better than good, indeed—better than we had the least reason to expect, all owing to my presence of mind, and the fortunate nervousness of Agnes Anne—which, however, in the case under review, Providence directed to a wise and good end. I was for running immediately back up the stairs to put the mind of Miss Irma at rest, but Agnes Anne, with that stubbornness which she will often manifest throughout this history, withstood me.

“What is it now?” I asked her, somewhat impatiently, I am bound to admit. For I was all in a sweat to tell Irma about my victory, and how I fought—and also, of course, about Agnes Anne pulling the trigger of “King George” at random in the dark.

“This is the matter,” said she, “Irma can wait. But if we do not improve our victory, they will be back again with a whole army of men before we can wink.”

“Well,” I answered, “I will load the guns first and then go up!”

“Loading the guns is good,” said Agnes Anne. “But before that we must blind up this hole by which they climbed in. We will give them something more difficult to break through in this narrow passage than a stone door which they can make holes in with a crowbar!”

And I caught at the idea in a moment, wondering how I had not thought of it myself. But of course,though I did not actually suggest it, Agnes Anne could never have carried it through without me.

We set about the work immediately. I took the big stone they had loosened with their tools and tumbled it down the well of the stairway, where, after rebounding once, it stuck at the turn and made a good foundation for the barrels, boxes and packages we threw down till the whole space was choke full, and then I danced on the top and defied the lantern-man and Dick to get through in a week.

“Nowgo and tell your Irma!” said Agnes Anne, and I went, while she stopped behind with the lantern and a gun to watch if anything should be attempted against the cellar.

But I knew right well that no such thing was possible. Nothing short of such a charge of gunpowder as would rive the whole house of Marnhoul asunder would suffice to clear the staircase of the packing I had given it. So Agnes Anne might just as well have come her ways up-stairs with me. Still, I do not deny that it was thoughtful of her; Agnes Anne meant well.

Irma had heard the firing, and I found her with her little brother in her arms, sitting by the window of the parlour overlooking the pilasters of the front door. She held little Louis wrapped in a blanket, and kept both herself and him out of sight as much as possible behind the curtain. But she had the horse pistol I had given her on the ledge of the sill close at her hand.

She listened to my tale with a white intensity which was very pitiful. Her eyes seemed so big that they almost overran her face, and there were little sparks of light like fairy candles lit at the bottom of each.

“Lalor Maitland—it was no other man!” she said in an awed voice. “And now he is wounded he willbe furious. He has many men always in his power. For he can make or mar a man in the Low Countries, and even bad men will do much for his favour. He will gather to him all who are waiting. They will be here immediately and burst in the doors. Oh, what shall we do? My poor, poor Louis!”

“There is the woman whom Agnes Anne saw,” I said. “Can you guess what she has to do with it? They said they would try her if they did not succeed.”

“Why not light the beacon now?” said a voice from the door. It was Agnes Anne, who, being left to herself, the thought had come to her in the dark of the cellar, and had run up to propose it. For me, I was too much occupied with Irma, and I am sure that Irma was far too troubled concerning her brother to think about the beacon. Yet it was the obvious thing to do, and if I had had a moment to spare I would have thought of it myself. So Agnes Anne had no great credit, after all, when you come to look at it rightly.

But the effect of the suggestion on Irma was very remarkable. It was as if the voice of my sister actually raised her from the place where she had been listlessly sitting with her brother in her arms. She snatched the lantern from the hands of Agnes Anne and put little Louis back on his pillow, bidding him stay there till the time should come for him to get up.

“Are the bad men all killed, Irma?” he asked.

“We are going to bring the good people to help us!” she cried. And with that she ran up-stairs, and I after her, in a great pother of haste. For the candle in her hand was the only bit of fire we had, and I did not want it blown out if I could help it.

CHAPTER XIIIA WORLD OF INK AND FIRE

The idea of Irma’s danger on the open house-top and in the full glare of the beacon acted on me like a charm—yet people will say that there is nothing at all in such a relationship as ours. Why, I would not have been half as much concerned for Agnes Anne! And as a matter of fact, I had not been so anxious down there behind the barrels and packages in the cellar, when Lalor Maitland and Galligaskins were coming at us.

Besides which, I knew that Irma, being unused to fire-building, would only waste the excellent provision of kindling, and perhaps do us out of our beacon altogether.

So having joined her, it was not long till we had the tarred cloth off, and, through the interstices of the iron bucket, the little blue and yellow flames began chirping and chattering. But as I pulled the basket up to the height of its iron crane, the wind of the night sent the fire off with a mighty roar. The tops of the nearer trees stood out, every leaf hard and distinct, but the main body of the woods all about Marnhoul remained dark and solid, as if you could have walked upon them without once breaking through.

I stood there watching, with the chain still in my hand, though I had run the ring into the hoop on the wall. We had been very clever so far, and I was full of admiration for ourselves. But a bullet whizzing very near my head, struck the basket witha vicious “scat,” doing no harm, of course, but extending to us an urgent invitation to get out of range, that was not to be disregarded.

Irma was close beside me, following with her eyes the mounting crackle of the beacon, the sudden jetting of the tall pale flames that ran upward into the velvet sky of night. For from a pale and haunting grey the firmament had all of a sudden turned black and solid. Middle shades had been ruled out instantly. It was a world of ink and fire.

But that sharp dash of danger cooled admiration in my heart. I caught Irma by the shoulders and, roughly enough, pulled her down beside me on the platform behind the stone ramparts. For a moment I think she was indignant, but the next thankful. For half-a-dozen balls clicked and whizzed about, passing through the square gaps that went all round the tower, as if the wall had had a couple of teeth knocked out at regular distances every here and there.

Very cautiously we crawled to the stair-head, leaving our invisible enemies cracking away at the fire basket, knocking little cascades of sparks out of it, indeed, but doing no harm. For the beacon was thoroughly well alight, and the chain good and strong.

As we descended the ladder I went first so as to help Irma. She was a little upset, as indeed she might well be. For it was quite evident that the number of our assailants had singularly increased, and we did not in the least know whether our signal would do us any good or not.

“It may waken Boyd Connoway,” I thought, “but that will be all. He will come sneaking through the wood to see what is the matter so as to tell about it,but he never used a weapon more deadly than a jack-knife with a deer-horn handle.”

As Irma’s foot slipped on the bottom rung of the ladder, I caught her as she swayed, and for a moment in that dark place I held her in my hands like a posy, fresh and sweet smelling, but sacred as if in church. She said, without drawing herself away, at least not for a moment longer than she need, “Duncan, you saved my life!”

I had it on my tongue tip to reply, “And my own at the same time, for I could not live without you!”

When one is young it is natural to talk like that, but my old awe of Miss Irma preserved me from the mistake. It was too early days for that, and I only said, “I am glad!” And when we got down there was Agnes Anne, with her finger on her lip, watching little Sir Louis sleeping. She whispered to me to know why we had made such a noise firing on the top of the tower.

“It isn’t like down in the cellar,” she said, “you came as near as you can think to wakening him!”

I was so astonished that I could not even tell Agnes Anne that she would soon find it was not we who had done the firing. The most part of the guns were in the cellar any way, as she might have remembered. Besides, what was the use? She had caught that fell disease, which is baby-worship.

Instead, I posted myself in the window, my body hidden in the red rep curtain, and only my eyes showing through a slit I made with my knife as I peered along the barrel of “King George.” I had resolved that with an arm of such short “carry,” I would not fire till I had them right beneath the porch, or at least coming up the steps of the mansion.

It was in my mind that there would be a brutal rush at the door, perhaps with pickaxes, perhaps with one of the swinging battering-rams I had read of in the Roman wars, that do such wondrous things when cradled in the joined hands of many men.

But in this I was much mistaken. The assailants were indeed rascals of the same tarry, broad-breeched, stringfasted breed as Galligaskins of the cellar door. But Galligaskins himself I saw not. From which I judge that Agnes Anne had sorted him to rights with the contents of “King George,” laid ready for her pointing at the top of the steps by which an enemy must of necessity appear.

But they had a far more powerful weapon than any battering-ram. We saw them moving about in the faint light of a moon in her last quarter just risen above the hills—a true moon of the small hours, ruddy as a fox and of an aspect exceedingly weariful.

Presently there came toward the door two men with a strange and shrouded figure walking painfully between them, as if upon hobbled feet. I could see that one of the men was the tall man of the cave, he in whose hand I had smashed the lantern. I knew him by a wrist that was freshly bandaged, and also by his voice when he spoke. The other who accompanied him was a sailor of some superior grade, a boatswain or such, dressed in good sea cloth, and with a kind of glazed cocked hat upon his head.

It was a very weird business—the veiled woman, the dim skarrow of the beacon, the foxy old moon sifting an unearthly light between the branches, everything fallen silent, and our assailants each keeping carefully to the back of a tree to be out of reach of our muskets.

They came on, the two men leading the woman bythe arms till they were out of the flicker of the flames both outside and under the shadow of the house.

Then the tall man, whom in my heart I made sure to be Lalor Maitland, as Irma said, held up his bandaged hand as a man does when he is about to make a speech and craves attention.

“I have been ill-received,” he cried, “in this the house of my fathers——”

“Because you have striven to enter it as a thief and a robber!” cried Irma’s voice, close beside me. She had passed behind me, slid the bolt of the window, and was now leaning out, resting upon her elbows and looking down at the men below. She was apparently quite fearless. The appearance of her cousin so near seemed somehow to sting her.

“Your brother and yourself are both under my care—I suppose, Mademoiselle Irma, you will not deny that?”

“We were,” Irma answered, in a clear voice; “but then, Lalor Maitland, I heard what the fate was you were so kindly destining for me after having killed my brother——”

“And I know who put that foolishness into your head,” said Lalor Maitland; “she regrets it at this moment, and has now come of her own will to tell you she lied!”

And with a jerk he loosened the apron which, as I now saw, had been wrapped about the head of the swathed figure. I shall never forget the face of the woman as I saw it then. The uncertain flicker of the flames and sparks from our beacon (which, though itself invisible, darkened and lightened like sheet lightning), the dismal umbery glimmer of the waning moon, and the pale approach of day over the mountains to the east, made the face appear almost ghastly.But I was quite unprepared for the effect which the sight produced upon Irma.

“Kate,” she cried, “Kate of the Shore!”

The woman did not reply, though there was an obvious effort to speak—a straining of the neck muscles and a painful rolling of the eyes.

“Yes,” said Lalor calmly, as if he were exhibiting a curiosity, “this is your friend to whom you owe your escape. She was doubtless to have received a reward, and in any case we shall give her a fine one. But if you will return to your protector, and come with me immediately on board the good shipGolden Hind, which in some considerable danger, is beating off and on between the heads of Killantringen—then I promise you, you will save the life of our friend Kate here. If not——” (He waved his hand expressively.)

“You dare not kill her,” cried Irma; “in an hour the country will be up, and you will be hunted like dogs.”

“Oh, it is not I,” said Lalor calmly, “I do not love the shedding of blood, and that is why I am here now. But consider those stout fellows yonder. They are restive at having to wait for their pay, and the loss of their captain, wounded in aiding me in obtaining my rights in a quiet and peaceable manner, has by no means soothed them. I advise you, Mistress Irma, to bring down the boy and let us get on board while there is yet time. No one in the house shall be harmed. But listen to Kate—Kate of the Shore. She will speak to you better than I! But first we must perform a little surgical operation!”

And with that he whipped out a bandanna handkerchief, which had been knotted and thrust into her mouth in the manner of a gag.

“Now then,” he said, “put a pistol to her head,Evans! Now, Kate, you have told many lies about your master, the late Governor of the fortress of Dinant. Speak the truth for once in a way. For if you do not tell these foolish children that they have nothing to fear—nay more, if you cannot persuade them to quit their foolish conduct and return to their rightful duty and obedience, it will be my painful duty to ask Evans there, who does not love you as I do, to—well, you know what will happen when that pistol goes off!”

But even in such straits Kate of the Shore was not to be frightened.

“You hear me, Miss Irma,” she said, “I know this bad man. He is only seeking to betray you as he betrayed me. Defend your castle. Open not a window—keep the doors barred. They cannot take the place in the time, for they have the tide to think of.”

“I expected this,” said Lalor, with a vaguely pensive air, “it has ever been my lot to be calumniated, my motives suspected. But I have indeed deserved other things—especially from you, Irma, whom (though your senior in years, and during the minority of my ward Sir Louis, the head of the house), I have always treated with affectionate and, perhaps, too respectful deference!”

“Miss Irma,” cried Kate of the Shore, “take care of that man. He has a pistol ready. I can see the hilt of it in his pocket. You he will not harm if he can help it, but if that be your brother whom I see at the fold of the window-hanging, bid him stand back for his life.”

“Drop your pistol, Evans,” commanded Lalor Maitland, “this part of the play is played out. She will not speak, or rather what she says will do us no good. Women are thrawn contrary things at the best, Evans,as I dare say you have noticed in your Principality of Wales. But take heed, you and your precious defenders, I warn you that in an hour the house of Marnhoul shall be flaming over your heads with a torch that shall bring out, not your pitiful burghers from their rabbit-holes, but also the men of half a county.

“Hear me,” he raised his voice suddenly to a strident shout, “hear me all you within the house. Give up the girl and the child to their legal protectors, and no harm shall befall either life or property. We shall be on shipboard in half-an-hour. I shall see to it that every man within the castle is rewarded from the Maitland money that is safe beyond seas, out of the reach of King George! Of that, at least I made sure, serving twice seven years for it in the service of a hard master. I offer a hundred pounds apiece to whoever will deliver the boy and the maid!”

This was a speech which pleased me much, for it showed that from the stoutness of our defence, and the many guns which had been shot off, Lalor was under the impression that the house was garrisoned by a proper force of men—when in truth there was only Miss Irma and me—that is, not counting Agnes Anne.

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