“Oh, impossible! Impossible!” muttered the lad wearily. “Who could sleep at such a time as this?”
He rose upon his elbow and said those words in a hoarse whisper, as if he were questioning the shadows that surrounded the great curtained bed.
There was no reply from the weird and shadowy forms, uncouth, strange, and distorted; but he answered his piteous, despairing question himself.
“I can,” he said, “and—”
There was a pause of a few moments, and then he muttered between his set teeth:
”—and I will.”
With a quick movement he drove his clenched fist two or three times into the great down pillow, making it purl up into a hillock, upon which he laid his cheek, and into which it softly sank, while, closing his eyes, he strove to force himself into a heavy sleep, till his strong effort joined with his bodily weariness, and he sank into a deep dreamless trance.
How long this lasted he never knew, but all at once he lay wide awake and wondering, striving to realise where he was, and what the meaning of that heavy distant tramp, tramp, as of soldiery coming nearer and nearer, till it ceased outside the farther door in obedience to a hoarse command.
There was another order, followed by a close fusillade-like sound of the butts of halberds planted upon the floor. Then a few moments’ silence, and as the lad strained his eyes in the direction of the doors, that farthest was suddenly flung open and the outer chamber was filled with light which emphasised the gloom of the inner, where, fully alive to his position, Denis lay still, closing his eyes and pressing his face farther into the pillow, as a stern voice shouted as if in warning, for all to hear: “His Majesty the King!”