There was a loud knocking at the door below.
Mattina clung desperately to Kyra Polyxene’s skirts.
“Do you hear?”
“I hear,” said the old woman grimly. “Come, I tell you! Come!”
She pushed Mattina first through the half-open door and followed, closing it softly behind her and turning a rusty key on the other side. They were standing in a small dark room filled with cases and lighted by one candle. Kyra Polyxene took up the candle. Then she clasped Mattina’s hand tightly in hers, and together, treading very softly, they crossed a long narrow passage outside the room, passed through a glass door, went down a flight of stone steps into a cellar where piles of wood were stacked, and then went up three or four steps again to a little back door that opened on the pavement.
The night air that blew in their faces felt fresh and cool.
“Listen, my daughter!” said the old woman. “Now you go straight to your uncle’s house! You know the way. If to-morrow dawns well, I will come and tell you what is happening. Go! Run! And the Holy Virgin be with you!”
At that moment loud voices came to them from the open window of the house which they had just left. Mattina thought she caught her name, and then she heard her master say very distinctly:—
“Go upstairs, now!…” but she did not hear the end of the sentence.
The men of the police must have come, and they were going upstairs to look for her!