"If he's got aught to say, your honour, best hear it. You may not have another chance."
"Never! He has nothing to do with my daughter. Is she not a Malherb? Hang the lying, infamous scoundrel! Take him from my sight. Let all such be hanged. I would say it if he was my son!"
A moment later he rode away full charged with frenzy: while Lee and Knapps passed into the War Prison.
CHAPTER X
A GOD OF GLASS
It had been Lovey Lee's part to keep guard during the operations beneath her cottage, and, on the morning of discovery, while Knapps was underground and John Lee lay in a heavy sleep, she stood at her door and scanned the morning. Her mind was on money; within eight-and-forty hours she would receive her reward; and now every glittering dewdrop of the dawn shone beneath her eyes like a gold piece. Then it was that another scintillation—that of steel—struck upon Lovey's sight, and she saw the flash of bayonets and the gleam of red coats. They approached swiftly across the Moor, and, divining their significance, the old woman instantly fled out at the rear of her cottage, and climbed and crept with amazing speed into the lonely fastnesses of North Hisworthy Tor above Prince Town. Here, safe as a fox in earth, she remained close hidden until nightfall, and then started for her holt at Hangman's Hollow. The fate of the men she had deserted troubled her not at all. To have informed them of danger would have been to lessen her own chance of escape by a full minute, and she had felt no temptation to take such risk. Now was all lost but her liberty; and as she stalked along the nocturnal Moor, like a dark and gigantic bird, the miser swore aloud and cursed fortune at every step. A live thing in the path reminded her that she had not eaten food for six-and-thirty hours; stooping, therefore, she picked up a luckless frog, tore it asunder, and stayed her stomach with its quivering hind legs. Never had Lovey fallen into a temper more ferocious and brutal. Months of patient fraud were thrown away, and she found herself actually out of pocket upon the venture. This reflection maddened her. In a delirium of disappointment she strode forward, and once, when an owl screeched out of the coppice at Tor Royal, she screeched back at it like a fury, and swung her long arms, and cursed the stars because they looked like good money scattered and wasted upon the sky. She sank into a calenture of crazy wrath; frantically she longed for some object upon which to vent her mania of disappointed hope; and every moment she hastened unconsciously nearer a victim.
Grace Malherb grew weary of the long hours that separated her from John Lee's next visit. An eternity of time crawled by, and the very hands of her watch appeared to drag as she sat with it before her. Only once a sound fell on her ears through that protracted day. Then she heard a bell, the fall of many feet and the bleat of flocks. Soon the grazing sheep wandered away and silence fell again. The tinkle of the dropping water and the throb of her own heart were all her company. The gloom and the chill of her hiding-place crept to her bosom and froze the hope there. She fell to weaving fearful fancies; she pictured failure in a thousand shapes. The rusty and glimmering gold of the moss upon the walls grew hateful to her eyes. Yet it attracted them and held them, so that hour after hour she scanned the luminous cavern, and saw faces in it and read words scrawled in dull fire there, like the Handwriting on the Wall. She ate and drank a little, but her appetite failed her. All her emotions merged into intense longing for John Lee. Her watch told her that it was noon at last. Then she fought with herself to escape forebodings and set about occupying time with a search for the amphora. That treasure possessed none of the old fascination now; yet, thinking upon her father, she much desired for his sake to discover it, and made a diligent search both high and low. Her explorations revealed two other boxes tied with cords; and these she opened, only to find Sheffield plate in them.
An eternity of twelve more hours crawled by; then, when midnight had passed, Grace began to strain her ears for footsteps. It was a close, black night, with thunder in the air; but as yet no elemental murmur broke the stillness.
At three o'clock, worn out and full of foreboding, the girl crept to her fern bed and prayed long prayers. Finally she slept, soothed by a determination to fly from this hated hole in the morning and hide elsewhere, if John Lee did not come. Her last waking thought turned to her father. "I will continue as firm as he is firm," she whispered to herself. "Would I had been different—for his sake; but not for my own."
Within an hour she slumbered, and when Lovey Lee sank silently down into her den, the girl heard nothing. Grace was hidden within a deep alcove of the wall, and she slept without a light. The miser, once in safety, stood silent and listened. It was for a growl of thunder that she waited; nor did she expect another sound. Heavy drops of rain began to fall, but as yet no storm awoke, though so inky was the east that dawn seemed delayed.