He had just roused from one of these brief snatches of sleep, and had had time to remember once more where he was, when a low rumble made him spring up and look around. Then the man in the next cell gave an awful cry—a cry that rang in Leonard’s ears for many a day—and at the same moment the grated door of his prison slowly began to move. In his demented terror he banged himself against the partition between the two cells, tried to get his fingers into the slits that he might cling to it; then climbed up on to the wooden block in the middle of the cell. But the rustling branches neared him, sought for him on every side, and soon mounted the log and caught him in their deadly embrace. Slowly, but irresistibly, while he never ceased his cries or his vain struggles and clutchings, the coils around him tightened and dragged him out into the darkness, where his cries gradually became weaker, and were finally heard no more; and when they ceased, and he heard the door rolling back, with dull rumbling, to its place, Leonard tottered to the pile of rugs in the corner of his cell, and fell upon them in a swoon.
When he returned to consciousness a bright light was shining through the grated door. He got up and, like one who is but a helpless on-looker in a fevered dream, he went to the bars and gazed out. It was bright moonlight outside, and there he saw the same ghastly scene repeated that Templemore had witnessed a short time before. He saw the dead body of the latest victim of the tree’s insatiable thirst for blood dangling amongst the branches; caught up, now by the neck, and now by the feet, and passed on from one branch to another in what seemed a new dance or sport of death; and finally carried off by the great crawling reptiles that had come up to claim their share in the repast.
While the scene lasted, Leonard seemed incapable of volition; his limbs refused to obey the will of his reeling brain and to bear him away from the sight. But, when the creatures had disappeared, he turned and made his way once more to the low bed, where he remained in a state of torpor till the day was far advanced.
After what seemed a long interval, he sat up and rubbed his eyes, after the manner of one just awakened from the horror of a nightmare. Then he saw the woman who occupied the next cell standing with her eyes fixed on him; and, when she found he was once more awake and conscious, she addressed him.
“I am sorry for you,” she said. “Even in my own misery I am not so blinded but that I can see that your burden of sorrow is a heavy one—more than you can bear. Yet methinks, were I a man, I would not thus give way to it. I am but a woman, but my greatest wish—since nothing else is left me—is that I may see Coryon once more—stand face to face with him—and show him that all his calculated cruelty and subtle ingenuity of torture have not subdued my spirit, nor the scorn that a heart conscious of having done no wrong can feel for such as he. I would give him back look for look, hate for hate, as I have before to-day; and make his wicked eyes quail before mine with the consciousness that the spirit of one he has unjustly oppressed can show itself greater than his own. But with you—he will but laugh at you—for I feel, somehow, you will be taken from here to meet him. I suspect he has sent you here first to crush your spirit with the sight of the horrors that are perpetrated here. He—have you ever seen him?”
“No,” Leonard answered, staring at her in amazement.
“Ah! then you know not what he is like. I tell you,” the strange woman went on, her eyes lighting up with unexpected fire, “he is a man whose mere glance strikes terror into the souls of ordinary men. There is that about him that makes you shrink as from some unearthly incarnation of all the powers of evil; and in that he delights, yea, more, even, than in torturing his victims.”
Here she broke off abruptly; then resumed, in a different manner.
“I have been wondering whether you are he who was to have wedded the princess?”