Nevertheless the door was locked on the inside, and the jailer’s fingers kept an instinctive grasp upon his keys. Once, catching Maxwell’s eye fixed on these implements, he shifted them suddenly into the hand farthest from his prisoner, although in the act he interrupted himself in an elaborate description of a certain blue velvet surcoat, by which Norman Leslie set much store, and did not again recover the thread of his recollections until he had discovered that the wine was done, and it was time for him to be gone.
But it was obviously necessary to lull his suspicions and induce him to remain a few minutes longer.
‘I should like to hear how that surcoat was finished and embroidered,’ said Maxwell, with an affectation of interest. ‘The time of my release is drawing near,’ he added, ‘and when I go out I should wish to have one of the same colour and conceit.’
He spoke in so matter-of-fact a tone that old Ralph was thrown completely off his guard.
‘Oot!’ said he, ‘it’s the first time ever I heard it, lad. I’ll no say but I’ll miss ye! Oot! Gude presairve us! Was there ever the like o’ that?’
‘I told you when I came in,’ replied his prisoner, yawning and stretching himself lazily the while, ‘the full turn will be out the day after to-morrow at noon.’
Old Ralph laid down his keys and scratched his head.
That instant Maxwell pounced upon them like a tiger. Almost with the same motion he seized the old man round the body, completely pinioning him, heavy and powerful as he was, till he had sent him staggering to the farthest extremity of the cell. Then, with one rapid turn of the key, that key at which he had often looked so longingly, and of which he knew every ward, he was through the door, as rapidly he locked and bolted it on the outside. His hand never trembled; his nerves were as true to him now in the moment of success as they had been through all the dangers and disasters he had overcome.
‘Ah!’ thought Maxwell, as he sped down the winding-stair like a lapwing, ‘you may holloa your heart out, as many a poor prisoner has done before, but nobody will come near you till supper-time. If you get not free for a week you’ll have had a lighter captivity than mine. And now for liberty and life, and—Mary Carmichael!’
He believed he had schooled himself to think of her no more, but she came back to him with the first gleam of the summer sun, the first breath of the summer air.