Sir Mark glanced at his niece, and then passed his hand over his beaded forehead.
“Yes, yes, my dear,” he faltered; “he is free.”
“Ah! and he will come here and claim me, and then—”
She reeled as if to fall, but her force of will was too great, and she mastered her emotion again, stepped forward, and seized the paper, her senses swimming as she turned it again and again, till the large type of the telegram caught her attention.
Then she closed her eyes for a few moments, drew a long breath, and they saw her compress her lips and read without a tremor:
Daring attempted Escape.
Serious Affray.
Our correspondent at Grey Cliff telegraphs of a desperate attempt made by three of the convicts at The Foreland last night about eight o’clock. By some means they managed to elude the vigilance of the warders after the cells had been visited and lights were out, reached the yard, and scaled the lofty wall. Then, favoured by the darkness of the night, they threaded their way among the sentries, and reached the cliffs of the dangerous rocky coast, where, their evasion having been discovered, they were brought to bay by a party of the armed warders. In the affray which ensued two of the warders were dangerously wounded with stones, and the convicts were making their way down the cliffs to the sea when orders were given to fire. One of the men was shot down, while, in the desperate attempts to escape recapture, the others went headlong down the almost perpendicular precipice which guards the eastern side of The Foreland.
Upon the warders descending with ropes, two of the men were brought up, one with a shot through the leg, the other suffering from a badly fractured skull, while, in spite of vigorous search by the boats of H.M.S. Merlin, the body of the third man, which had been heard to plunge into the sea, was not recovered. We regret to add that the man injured by his fall expired in the ambulance on the way back to the prison. He was the notorious convict Barron, or Dale, sentenced to seven years’ penal servitude, about a twelvemonth ago, for the daring fraud upon the Russian government by the issue of forged rouble notes.
The paper fell from Myra’s hands as she stood there motionless, and apparently unmoved by the tidings she had read. Then turning slowly, she held out her hand to Edie, who obeyed the imploring look in her eyes, and led her from the dining room to her own chamber without a word.
“Myra,” she whispered then, and she pressed closely toward her cousin, whose lips now parted, and she heard almost like a sigh:
“Free—free!”
“Talk to me, dear, talk to me,” whispered Edie. “It frightens me when you look like that.”