The Lake of Wine

by Bernard Capes

With regard to the present predicament, the morning of his restoration to his friends saw much barren counsel and a dearth of decision. Therefore, dispensing with informal advice, he went to examine his defences and his commissariat. Given his adequate garrison, the former were impregnable to any assault the rogues could venture; and, locked in the coach-house was such store of fallow-deer meat as would provision the company for months. The difficulty of feeding these poor brutes was a matter that bothered him. They may have been a score in number; and, should they once eat him out of hay and corn, there would be nothing for it but to make a battue of them, and salt or smoke as much of their flesh as circumstances would permit. As for the human needs, his larder was for the present well stocked.

For protective purposes he could now number in all—not counting Dunlone and the women—six men and a boy, a fighting strength sufficient to justify him in taking action on his own account, did he care to risk the lives of honest people in so indifferent a business. He did not, of course. What need was there to put a termination to conditions whose favour was all for the besieged? And he was conscious, moreover, of that weakness of his party that lay in a lack of fire-arms. Three fowling-pieces and a brace of duelling pistols—such was his artillery, and a very limited supply of ammunition to the back of it.

But they could afford to lie, and snugly, in these their winter quarters till the snow should melt. When he came to look at the great drifts piled all about the house; when he had made himself acquainted with the excellence of Master Cutwater’s defences; when he compared his position with that of the ruffians in their broken sty, and thought of the improvidence of the typical bravo, and of how there, in the lodge, food and fire would be sure to fail in the course of a day or two—he could only marvel at the audacity of villainy that could ever have dreamed of prevailing in a contest of such unequal forces—of the desperate courage, or the magnificence of a cupidity, that could still wait on in the face of so stubbornly forlorn a hope. Yet surely, were Fern once acquainted of the extent of his opponent’s resources, he would elect to withdraw his troop of cut-throats.

Still, he would not concede anything to a sense of security. He had had his sufficient lesson, and he took his little garrison in hand masterfully. The guns he committed to Sir David, to Jim, and the elder groom, while he and Luvaine took a pistol apiece. A guard was constantly posted upon the roof, and another in the hall, and every man was enjoined to be awake to surprises of whatever description.

Satisfied on all these points, he could condescend to some relapse into the social conditions; and three o’clock saw him ushering his company into the dining-hall, where a meal was served.

The master of the house was the last to enter the room, and he led in by the hand no less a person than his pretty maid of the inn. Miss Royston stared amazed at the sight; but Betty herself—a very Hebe, for all her homely gown—looked ready to burst into tears. For any shame-faced agony she might suffer, her dear lord’s word was become a thing to be answered to like a whistle to a dog; and at his nod she sank into a chair at his right hand and drooped her sweet head, while he stood erect, the light shining on his face.

“I wish to tell you all,” he said, in a clear, bold voice, “that this lady hath included herself in her gift to me of my life, and that we are plighted maid and man.”

Angela fell back in her chair, very white and smiling.

“For what we are about to receive,” she whispered to the Viscount who sat next to her. “Why does the creature take us into his confidence? We will accent the lady’s character on trust, though she dips her fingers into the dish.”

“He’s always so cursed convinced we’re thinking about him,” said the lord.