The burning, wiry grip, the eager, stinging tones were those of Annella Wilder. But before he could reply to her words, almost indeed, before he had recognized her, she had vanished.
And the next minute he was joined by the warder, who had only lingered behind to lock the door, and who now attended him down the stairs and saw him fairly outside the prison walls.
He heard the great gate close with a loud clang, the key turn, the bolts shove into their grooves, the bars fell into their places, and he knew that the prison was closed up for the night.
But where was Annella?
He looked up and down the highway and all around, in expectation of seeing that strange creature, whom he supposed must have left the building before he did, and with whom, as the despairing and the frenzied snatch at the faintest shadows of hope, he wished to confer. But he looked in vain; she was nowhere visible.
He well understood the meaning that her words were intended to convey. But were they not the words of madness? Who could tell?
“Be on the watch to-night at the appointed place,” she had said.
Be on the watch? Aye, that he surely would, without the need of warning; for could he go home and go to rest upon this last bitter night? Ah, no! The only thing that he could bring himself to do was to pace up and down the road beneath the prison walls, praying for her—praying for himself—until the dawn of the fatal day should compel him to keep his promise to Eudora, and throw himself into the first morning train, to fly from the scene of her martyrdom.
But with the constant echo of Annella’s last words in his ear came the memory of the promise he had made her—an insane promise, but otherwise harmless and certainly binding. A part of it he had already kept.
There was a small vessel anchored in a quiet cove, five miles from Abbeytown, and a boat chained at the beach. There was his fast horse, Fleetfoot, in the stables of the Leaton Arms. There was not one chance in a billion, not the shadow of a hope, not the faintest indication of a possibility that any of these preparations would be of the least use; yet he had madly promised to complete them, and he must keep his promise. Still half stunned, blind, and dizzy with despair, he went on to the town, got his horse from the stables, rode slowly through the woods until it was quite dark, then tied Fleetfoot in the thicket behind the prison, and went round and resumed his walk and watch before the front gates.