The stars that mark the midnight hour are fast hastening into the zenith. The sentinels walk their beats with weary pace. The relief guards will soon be on the rounds. Faith and Sophia stir in their sleep uneasily as though dimly conscious that the whistle will soon call them to duty. There is a soft touch, as the touch of an angel's finger, upon their cheeks. It seems to rest upon their eyes, their lips. It is pressed against their nostrils. It stays their breathing. They turn restlessly on their couch. They toss their arms, but the soft touch is on them, too. Cannot they awake?
Yes, their eyes are open now. Is it a dream? Is it the vision of a nightmare? Two forms, the terrible forms of their foes, the Pixies, are bending over them, wrapping them around in the silken folds of their snares!
Alas! it is no dream. The most dreaded of all their enemies, Spite the Spy, chief of the Pixies, and Hide the son of Shame, are crouching at their bedside. The maidens start from their pillows, but fall back again hopeless. They are bound hand and foot as with grave-clothes. They are wrapped in a winding sheet of gossamer; enshrouded alive.[Z]
Spite reckoned truly that the next impulse of the Nurses would be to scream. He thrust his hairy face close against their cheeks, and hissed from between his lips, "Utter one sound and you die! Keep still and you shall not be harmed."
The Boy's Illustration.
Fig. 42.—Spite and Hide Carry off the Nurses.
Sophia swooned quite away. Faith closed her eyes and waited in an agony of fear. She felt Spite's strong arms placed around her. She was lifted from her couch; was borne through the tent. She was in the open air, and the breeze blowing upon her cheeks revived her. She opened her eyes. In the clear moonlight she could see Hide pushing through the side of the covered gangway, close by the rear door of the marquée, carrying Sophia in his arms. With an instinct of hope that no terror could check she lifted her voice and screamed with the energy of despair. She felt the Pixie's hot breath upon her cheek; an awful oath sounded in her ear, and a rude hand smote upon her mouth. She fell back unconscious.
Let us follow backward the thread of our story into the Pixie's camp where we left Spite keeping his solitary watch, that we may account for this sudden appearance in the heart of the Brownie encampment. Spite could not sleep. Anger, mortification, hate, disappointed ambition, all the evil passions were ablaze within him, as he thought of what the Brownies had already gained, and of their assured victory on the morrow. His troops discouraged, provisions cut off, Madam Breeze (for aught he knew) ready to side again with the Brownies,—his utter defeat, the loss of the fort, and the massacre of his people seemed certain.
"If we could abandon the fort," he muttered; "if we could quietly steal out and leave the enemy watching an empty camp? That would be our salvation! But we can't; those troopers of MacWhirlie's are patrolling the plain, and the woods in the rear are swarming with pickets. But—I don't know?—"