Terrible was the temptation to Gilbert Boyd as he was held there in the half-sportive, half-brutal grasp of the dragoons. Yet might one bold falsehood save everything! How easy to cry out, "That wing of my house was burnt to the ground years ago!" or to declare that the Mouse's Nest itself had been opened up and its secrecy destroyed—one of a half-dozen other excuses, proffered with the dignity of a man in his own house might avert the calamity precipitating. Hospitality—the saving of a guest's life—did not these cry out for a lie?
But he did not utter it. Not he, Gilbert Boyd, of Windlestrae. It was not because with the thought of falsehood he remembered that those beside him would probably exact proof. It was because too keenly upon his conscience pressed the acted-out departures from strict truth of which this bitter evening had already made him guilty. These must be none worse henceforth. He would obey his God; and God would sustain him and his. Nevertheless he was mortal man enough to protest, as he wrested his wrist from the familiar grasp of the leering Dawkin and stood commandingly before the trio: "Gentlemen—Captain Jermain—you have forgotten yourselves! It—it is impossible! The room—the room is all in unreadiness. Mistress Annan hath charge of it—I cannot take you into it to-night. Let me go, I beg, Captain! You carry your wild humors too far."
"Oh, no, Boyd, not a step too far," retorted Roxley, "provided you carry us upstairs with you."
"But—but—I assure you, gentlemen, the—the Nest is wholly unfit for the purposes of a prison. Listen to me, Captain Jermain, I pray. Only be reasonable, Mr. Roxley! It is not in repair; and we have under our roof another, a much securer place of the sort, if you insist on one——"
"Hardly, Mr. Boyd, I dare wager," interrupted Captain Jermain, laughing afresh at what he counted Gilbert's absurd annoyance over the "family secret."
"A strong, well-barred room in the East Wing, overhead, that was fitted up for a gaol, and hath been so employed before now. I will send and have it made ready to show you, gentlemen. Release my arm, Captain, I insist! I will not consent."
Jermain, Dawkin, and Roxley seemed the more amused at his annoyance. It was plain that only forcible resistance would check their folly, and forcible resistance was not to be, for an instant, considered.
Had Lord Armitage been listening? Ought not he to be within the Mouse's Nest—out of earshot? He must be warned and extricated. Andrew responded to that intense look from his father's eyes by a quick step toward the hall-door, frantic to dash headlong up the dark stairs and transmit an alarm through the panel in the Purple Chamber. Ah, by his own pledge he had made more certain the doom of his friend! By his own pledge!
But the captain interrupted him by a single stride. "Hold there, friend Andrew, my bonny Highland chiel! No dodging upward to warn any pretty faces that have shut themselves into this same old room. They shall be gallantly surprised by a serenade before their portal. Here!" continued Jermain, snatching a candle from the elder Boyd, and bestowing it in Andrew's unwilling grasp; "you shall head the exploring party! Huzzah!"
With one arm about Boyd's neck, and holding Andrew between Roxley and himself, Jermain set the unsteady procession on the march from the dining-parlor and out into the hall, the three shouting boisterously: "Above-stairs, all of us! Huzzah!" and singing, like the caricature of a death-hymn, as they approached the first step, that roystering refrain: