“Tush! good Marvin. Methought thee far too bold for frightening with old wives’ tales. Come! I’ll go before thee bearing a candle to fright away thy imaginings.”
“Spoken like a true Montmorency,” said my mother with a strange little laugh, “truly, Dickon, thou’lt shame us all.”
Then she rose and reached to the shelf behind her for a candlestick.
“Oh, now, my lady!” cried old Dame Franklin. “Go not to the dungeons on such a night. The men can better want their sup of ale. ’Tis an ill night for all uneasy sprites. Bide here by the fire, for soon we go to the battlements again.”
But my lady already stood with her hand on the great latch of the door at the head of the stairway which led to the donjon keep. I took my cross-bow.
“If any of the Imps of Darkness challenge us,” I said, “I’ll see whether or no they can stand before a good steel bolt.”
But even in the midst of my confident words, I had a thought anent the spectral tappings which chilled the blood in my veins. Ghostly visitants I was ready then to challenge; but I had heard my father tell how the Crusaders took one Saracen stronghold by means of a mine or tunnel, dug with weeks of toil under the walls and into the passages of the ancient keep. Why should not the Old Wolf of Carleton have planned a like attack? During the weeks when his men had seemed so quiet and had given the Mountjoys scarcely a chance for a long bowshot, might they not have been driving such a tunnel under their very feet? Suppose that tapping that Gavin thought the work of the Evil One were the sound of the tools of the servants of one scarcely less evil and with even more cause to wish us ill!
“Come then,” said my mother, her face white but firm. Opening the great oak door, she led the way toward the dungeons.
Cross-bow in hand, I followed; and just behind me came Dame Franklin. As she moved toward the door, Old Marvin picked up his cross-bow, made sure of the poniard in his belt and followed also, mumbling the while, as best he might, the words of a Latin prayer.
We came to pause amid the stillness of the vault which was like unto that of the Mountjoy tomb at Kirkwald Abbey to which one day, with my hand tightly clasping my father’s, I had paid a well remembered visit. The candle wavered and guttered in a faint draught, and the light gleamed on the wide eyes of the old dame and the trembling hands of the archer. I was standing full still with my eyes on my mother’s face. For long we stood while I could hear no sound save the beating strokes beneath my doublet. Then, suddenly, from the floor beneath or the solid wall beside us,—