Who was it that had shut “Delsrop” against the besieging rascals? and would his household, deprived of its legitimate head and in ignorance as to his fate, exhibit the nerve to conduct and sustain an effective resistance?
What member of his personnel had been shot that morning? A man, it appeared. Then, if not Dunlone——
He ran over in his mind the names of those in his service—two grooms, one of them a mere boy, and the imported Jim. These, with Betty, Darda, possibly Angela, and three maids, were the sum total of the defenders. Half-a-dozen girls, two men and a boy; and one of the latter already accounted for.
He groaned, and set to tramping to and fro like a wild, caged beast. His impotence, the impossibility of resolving any one of these problems that tortured him, set his brain reeling. His hands had been corded behind him so tightly that the flesh swelled and lapped over the knots. Yet it was not his personal discomfort that chiefly perturbed him, or any apprehension of the force of coercion his captors would be brutal enough to employ. That he was condemned, in the midst of a stirring episode in his career, to a pitiful inaction, was what galled him like a rowel.
Almost simultaneously with his interlocutor’s withdrawal from the room, a sentry, of a villainous cast, had made his appearance outside the window, where he took his stand, flint-lock on shoulder. Another (by token of his hard breathing and the intermittent click of a hammer against his coat-buttons as he shifted his position from time to time) was stationed outside the door.
From the room opposite came fitfully the sound of voices in low discussion. The fire upon the hearth died upon itself and consigned the stark little room to a perfect apathy of chilliness. Frost gathered on the diamonds of the casement and turned the stolid sentry into a phantom of himself. And still the dull hours sped onwards and not a soul came to lighten his depression.
He had long before drawn the marrow, in his monotonous tramp hither and thither, from every object of slightest interest that the small ruined chamber could boast. Here was the crazed girl’s museum, arranged on worm-eaten shelves—a medley of grotesque rubbish that superstition had thought fit to respect. It was a gruesome litter—skins, stones, and petrified vegetables; and he had cursed his own high precipitancy over the thought of how a little forbearance on his part might have saved to the collection its most notable item, and so rendered nugatory all the present evil that encompassed him.
Once he had stooped to examine a certain object amongst the trash—a round pebble that seemed familiar to him. It was the scrawled stone that had been slung through a window for Dennis’s behoof, and he peered at it with an emotion commingled of curiosity and remorse. So Darda it was had secured the treasure—to her, no doubt, a veritable message from the shadows. And had the rascal that threw it recognized his handiwork amongst these other fetishes and chuckled to see it reserved for such high distinction? It was probable enough, for the room bore signs of late occupation by some very rough company. Gnawed crusts, onion-skins, tobacco-ashes lay scattered about the hearth. In one corner was a litter of twigs and broken branches, hastily collected, it would appear, for fire-wood, and cast down beside them was an old canvas-bag, striped pink and drab, that had been stuffed with dead leaves for fuel. In another a greasy gridiron and a dinted tin pannikin or so were evidence of a certain commissariat foresight on the part of the besiegers; while an empty rundlet, thrown aside like a discharged cartridge-case, was earnest of that species of baggage without which no knight of fortune can be brought to take the road.
Each and all of these objects the prisoner dwelt upon, and passed by, and reviewed again and again, till his brain learnt to loathe their inevitability at the turning-points of his wearisome sentry-go. And still the icy hours closed upon themselves and no soul came near him.
By and by, as an acute accent to his long trial of cold and anxiety, extreme hunger asserted itself the overpowering sensation. He had not touched food then for more than thirty hours, and his frame had been submitted during the whole of that time to severe and exhausting experiences. When at last, from thoughts otherwise preoccupying, he woke to an amazed realization of the fact that he was being starved into submission, he strode to the door and kicked at the panels in an excess of furious indignation. To the very thundering noise of his onset a low voice across the passage returned like an echo.