"Captain! Captain Jermain!" spoke Roxley, in an agitated tone. The trooper was rummaging his clothes excitedly. "I can't find that key. Did you give it to me?"
"Of course I did," said Jermain, with a laugh. "I remember well enough. You pocketed it somewhere. We were all in a bad way, weren't we?"
"H'm—where is it? Where is it?" muttered Roxley. The last pocket went inside out; and just then Roxley started, for at his feet he saw lying two pieces of leathern thong.
He uttered a cry of consternation, as things all at once suggested themselves in their true light.
"Save us, captain! I fear there has been treachery—an escape!" he called, hoarsely, running to the oak-door.
"Escaped! what? who?" cried the confused Dawkin, staggering to his feet. "Was the prisoner shut up yonder? Where am I? I remember nothing—what has happened?"
"Happened? Sots and dullards that you are!" cried Jermain, at once putting two and two together. "Alarm the place with me, ye sluggards! Bid them bring an axe and a crow. Where, where be Boyd's ears—or his people's? Halloa again! The house! The house!"
Not long after, the morning sunshine lighted up a scene of mortal confusion in the East Room, the halls, and gardens of the old Manor House. Jermain, in his first surprise and bitter anger, was not able to make an intelligible inquiry of anyone—either of his following or the household. It was Chaos come again. He questioned without listening to replies, swore furiously at his men, and seemed disposed to think only of the superficial details of affairs. This was not for long. When into the upset room, streaked with sunshine, came Gilbert Boyd, firm of step and hollow-eyed from his long vigil, in which he had wrestled with his God for guidance and support in the desperate crisis now involving him and his house—then was it that Jermain turned upon him like a baited bull.
For, Boyd's reputation at Fort Augustus, or elsewhere, might be as Tory as tongues had made it. Possibly a wary Highland prisoner had cunningly corrupted his guard, and the two vanished together, leaving no soul under the Manor's roof responsible for the trick. One chain of thought forbade Jermain to go deeper than this theory, or consider his host as in collusion. But another one instantly asserted it, link by link, and turned the accepted partisanship of Gilbert Boyd, Master of Windlestrae, into a ridiculous error; and, instead of having divined that error, he, Captain Lionel Jermain, stood there, hoodwinked, entrapped, a laughing-stock to the regiments! Oh, his puerile taking all for granted last night—his unsoldierly debauch, that lay also at the bottom of his predicament! The grosser wits and tastes of Roxley and the rest might seem pardonable; his behavior, never!
"You have heard of this miserable business, Mr. Boyd?" he demanded, breathlessly, of Gilbert.