“Think again; any loud noise?”
“I cannot remember any.”
Sir John again paced up and down as if communing with himself.
“Was there aught unusual, sir?”
“Yes, I distinctly heard a door shut with a loud clang.”
“May have been the wind.”
“Nay, that would not have startled me; the fact is, the sound was not that of any door about this place; it shut with a clang as of a dungeon door falling into a framework of stone.”
“There is no such door, save in the old oubliettes below the towers; I wish we had Cuthbert in one, and his reverend father in another.”
“No there is none; the fact startled me, and a strange thrill, which I cannot account for, went through me as I heard it.”
Sir John paused, and a visible tremor passed over him, which was strange in a man of his iron constitution.