“Upon the moat.”
“Hah! Good-night to you.”
He strode out, and Roy stood where he had been left, with his head throbbing as if it would burst from the terrible thoughts that invaded it.
Directly after he heard the tramp of heavy feet, a few words delivered in an imperious tone, and there was the heavy rap, rap of a couple of musket butts upon the oaken floor, telling him that guards had been placed at his door. His despair now knew no bounds, for he had determined to go straight to his mother’s chamber, and ask her if Master Pawson’s words were true. Now all communication was cut off, for he was a prisoner.
But his agony had reached its greatest height, and in a short time he grew calmer; for light came into his darkened brain, and he told himself he was glad that he had not been able to go and insult his mother by asking such a question.
“It is horrible!” he said to himself; “and I must have been mad to think such a thing possible. Liar! traitor! wretch! How could I think there was the faintest truth in anything he said!”
Utterly exhausted, he took off his armour and laid it and his sword-belt and empty scabbard aside.
“Done with now,” he said, bitterly; and he sank upon the couch to try and think whether he was to blame for not searching more for the passage leading out beyond the moat.
“But I did try, and try hard,” he muttered. “No; I could not foresee that the man chosen by my father would betray us. It was my duty to trust him. It was not my fault.”
Through the remainder of that night he sat there thinking. Now listening to the tramp of the sentries at his door and overhead upon the ramparts, starting from time to time as he heard them challenge, and the word passed on, till it died away; now thinking bitterly of the ease with which they had been beaten, and of the men who must have fallen in their defence. Then, from utter exhaustion, his eyes would close, and consciousness leave him for a few minutes as he sank back.