So it is. Stillness, stillness, all through the Manor House. Dull comes the sound of one o'clock. Jermain sleeps; Roxley and Dawkin sleep; Saville and Tracey sleep. Boyd and Andrew are hidden in the garret until an appointed signal; the lad's eyes shut involuntarily from pure fatigue. Geoffry, Lord Armitage, in what of peril thou must yet meet before this wonderful night shall give place to dawn, may the Lord of the defenceless be thy helper!
CHAPTER VIII.
MEETING—FLIGHT.
Again came the muffled chime of the antique clock down-stairs; the quarter-hour.
Strange sight—the sentinel in the East Room moves. He cautiously lays aside his cutlass; his brogans he had taken off, as if to ease his feet, when he sat down.
Like a thief, he walks from his stool to the bed, then to the sofa. The sleepers are as those dead. He goes to the old door of the strong-room and lays his ear to each crevice.
"Too well-joinered yet," he says to himself, "for me to try opening my lips from here, were he close beside it. Will he hear this, I wonder!"
Gradually augmenting the sound, he imitates with his nails the scratch of a rat in the wall. But no responsive signal traverses the barrier. Nevertheless, when he repeats it he fancies that there filters to his ear, from the stillness within, a faint, prolonged whistle.
"It is the only way," he decides, raising himself from the floor.
The bolt is on the hall-door, as Captain Jermain directed. Our disguised knight need dread no interruption thence. He advances again, on tiptoe, to the motionless figure on the bed.
Drunken Roxley! Shake off your stupor, for one instant! Turn over, man! Murmur; do something that will startle this robber who is picking your pocket with the caution and address of one who realizes that his life is between his thumb and finger. But no; you merely snore, Roxley, and you do not start at the hand that by quarters of inches draws the key from its hiding-place. It is too late now; for he has glided from your side with it.