“But what was she doing overhead?” said M. Goefle, returning to the staircase and addressing the major, while the two young girls conducted the family of the danneman into the guard-room. “Nothing will get it out of my head that we shall find in this room, walled up by Stenson with so much care, some secret even more important, some proof even more unanswerable than the memories of Karine, and the declaration of Stenson. Come, Christian, we must absolutely—but where are you then?”
“Christian?” cried Margaret, returning hastily from the guard-room; “he is not with us. Where is he?”
“He has already gone up above,” said the major, running up the wooden staircase.
“Damnation!” cried M. Goefle, who ascended with Osmund into the walled-up room; “he has gone! He has slipped through this crack like an adder. Is not that he running along the wall? Christian!—”
“Not a word,” said the major. “He is running along the edge of an abyss! Do not startle him. Now—I can no longer see him; he is lost in the fog. I should like to follow him, but I am larger than he. I could never pass through there.”
“Listen!” rejoined M. Goefle. “He has jumped down!—He is speaking!—Listen!—”
Christian’s voice was distinctly audible in the silence of the night; he was saying to the soldiers:
“It is I! It is I! The major sends me to the chateau.”
“Ah! the foolhardy, the brave boy!” cried M. Goefle. “He takes counsel only with his own heart. He has gone all alone to face his enemies, and deliver Stenson.”
In fact, Christian had flown away, to use the danneman’s expression, like the bird of the night, through the crack of an old wall. The name of Stenson, pronounced by Karine, had pierced his heart.