I could hear him breathing heavily.
And thereupon, on a sudden, I was felled by some one who had crept upon me from behind. I was felled like an ox. A single blow upon the back of the head sent me over like a ninepin, and I lay stretched at my full length upon the ground, but half-conscious, with a singing sensation in my head.
Presently I sat up and looked about me. There was Amos, still upon his knees, as green as ever. And immediately above me stood one whom I did well to recognise as Mr. Gilbert Forsyth.
That place was dimly illumined by the white light of the newly-risen moon, turning the leaves upon the trees above us to a glistening silver.
Forsyth was wearing the remnants of a pair of trousers, the legs of which ended in a tattered fringe a little below his knees. He was naked to the waist, around which was a belt, crammed with knives and pistols.
I remembered his curled whiskers and his pomaded moustache on the morning when I had first set eyes upon him, when I lay hidden in the gorse-bush. His fair hair now had grown so long that it reached to his shoulders; and his whiskers had spread into a short, shaggy beard, which was divided somewhat in the middle like that of a Frenchman or a Sikh. I had thought of him always as a very immaculate gentleman; but here was a desperate, piratical blade who, one might easily believe, chewed glass and compelled his unhappy victims to walk the plank.
He looked at me and folded his arms; and then spoke in a voice quite calm.
"And who the blazes are you?" he asked.
I was wise enough not to answer. Ghosts--so far as I knew--could never speak. And was I not a ghost?
If I had been a fool to go down into the Tomb, I showed at least a little wisdom in now holding my tongue. For this, however, I take no credit. I could not foresee the course that events would take. I had been surprised and mastered, and cursed myself because I had not killed Amos out of hand, when the man was in my power. Disappointed, disgusted with myself, I was stubborn as a mule. They might do what they would, they might torture me, but still I would not speak.