The call of the night rider

by Albert Lee

The man was silent and still, as though he had been stone, and the girl gazed at him in wonder.

"Do you not hear me?" she cried.

She clutched at his robe and shook his arm, as if to compel him to do something that was human, and not stand there in baleful silence as though he were made of stone. He caught her hand in his, and with a rough wrench that made her cry out with pain, he tore it away from his robe, and thrust her from him with such force that she staggered and fell heavily on the straw.

The other Familiar was meanwhile passing round the cell, looking at everything intently, and especially at the window-bars, as if to satisfy himself that they had not been tampered with, and that there was no possibility of the prisoner's escape. He, too, was silent, and, going to the door when his investigation was ended, he passed away with the other. The door closed noisily, and those sounds which followed made Margaret feel the more how impossible it was to hope for escape.

For a time the bread and water remained untouched, but hunger and thirst compelled her to eat. The coarse black bread, the like of which she had never eaten before, was so dry that she had to soak it in the water. The food satisfied her hunger and took away her sense of weakness, but there was the long night coming, with its loneliness and uncertainty, perhaps its horrors.

The darkness began to enshroud the place, so little was the opening through which the sunset light could come. Somewhere outside, Margaret could hear the birds singing their evening songs, but these grew less and less until the last note came, and the silence of the night began.

Gradually what was in the cell grew indistinct. The image of the Saviour on the cross faded away; and although she had watched it disappear, bit by bit, there was nothing of the crucifix at last for her to see. She turned to the window, but that, too, with its bars, lost its shape, and the night came on so blackly that she would not have known where to look for it. After some hours had gone the cell began to look less dark. The things that had been hidden began to appear, dimly and indistinctly, until the moon came away from the horizon and later shone out clearly while she took her silent night ride through the heavens. This silver light, stealing in, made the cell seem less lonely.

At last, after shaking up the straw, to lie more easily, she threw herself down upon it, after prayer, and fell into a dreamless sleep. When she awoke it was day, and the world was alive and beautiful in the sunshine, although she had no token of what was going on save from the songs of the birds. In the cell itself there was silence but for the scramble of a rat at odd times across the floor. Then she knew what the creature's errand was, for it had eaten some of her bread. All else was quiet, and the stillness of the house to which her cell belonged was such that it appalled her. She would have welcomed the slam of a door, or the sound of a human voice, however harsh, or the tramp of a man's feet.

The thought came to her that possibly a part of her torture was this intolerable loneliness. What might it not mean to her if it continued many days and nights?