He listened, and could hear shouts in the distance; but no one came to his help, and he could not avoid feeling that if he had been dependent upon aid from without he must have lost his life. Fortunately for him, just at a time when his fate seemed sealed, the flames from the burning straw reached their height, and though they blackened the ceiling they did no worse harm, but exhausted from the want of supply they sank lower and lower. There was not a scrap of furniture in the place, or salient piece of wood to catch fire, and so as the spirit burned out, and the blazing straw settled down into some blackened sparkling ash, Hilary’s spirits rose, and with the reaction as he clung there by the window came a feeling of indignation.
“If I don’t be even with some of them for this!” he muttered. “They half starve me, and then try to burn me to death.”
“Yes, that’s right,” he cried. “Bravo, heroes! Come, now the danger’s over.”
For as he sat there he could hear hurrying feet, the rattle of a key in the chapel door, and shouts to him to come out.
The smoke was so dense that the fresh comers could not possibly see him where he sat in the window, and they cried to him again to come out.
“I sha’n’t come,” said Hilary to himself; “you’ll only lock me up somewhere else, and now I have found out as much as I have, perhaps I shall be better off where I am.”
“There’ll be a pretty noise about this when Sir Henry comes back,” cried a voice, which Hilary recognised as that of the ill-looking fellow Allstone. “You clumsy fool, dropping that keg!”
“It was as much you as me,” cried another. “I sha’n’t take all the blame.”
“The lad’s burned to death through your clumsiness,” continued Allstone.
“And a whole keg of the strongest brandy wasted,” said another dolefully.