“You will not be gone for some hours yet,” I said as I opened the door.
“One of us may,” the Captain said.
Had I been in a brighter frame of mind I should have perhaps heeded this mysterious speech more closely, and found in it a prophecy of that which followed. But I went dismally to bed without thinking of its import. Despite the extremity of the hour, I found Emblem the picture of woe, sitting beside the fire in my chamber. Her customary smiling prettiness was faded with weeping; she hung her head, and rose on my entrance with a peculiar frightened air. Clasping her hands, she whispered:
“They’ve ta’en him, my lady.”
“And a very right thing, too,” says I.
“But will they not carry him to London to be hanged?” she asked, seeking for hope where hope was not.
“I am trusting so,” says I, so cheerfully that my tears began to flow.
I soon came to the conclusion that my mood forbade repose, and therefore, instead of undressing and attempting to obtain a much-to-be-desired sleep, I dismissed poor Emblem, cast a cloak round my shoulders, took a chair by the hearth, and settled there for the remainder of the night, to doze, to think, and to repine.
However, this plan did not answer. It only induced a sickening course of meditation that was less endurable than the foulest nightmare. No matter what my posture, my agonies of mind grew unsupportable, and at last I cast the cloak off wearily, got up, and began to pace the chamber. It was while I was thus wrestling with my pains that I heard the far silence of the house disturbed by the closing of doors below. By the weight of the sounds and the jangling of the chains I presumed them to be those of the great hall, and as my window commanded the whole frontage of lawn and gravel sweep, I promptly pulled aside the curtains. Lanterns were twinkling immediately below, and by their aid and that of the clear-shining moon I was able to read the identity of two persons issuing from the house. They were the Captain and his prisoner, walking side by side across the lawn in a south-westerly direction. They were heading for the open meadows, and appeared perfectly amicable and to be talking in low tones; but the briskness of their pace and their air of strung activity proclaimed that they had some definite end in view. For the moment I had not the remotest notion what this end could be, but while I stood at gaze and musing to discover it, a horrible idea crept into my brain. Surely nothing could be more unnatural than two sworn enemies working harmoniously together towards a common end, if that end was peace? But was it peace? In a convulsion of alarm I recalled the incidents of that hateful night, and amongst them was the calculated blow which surely the prisoner was the last man in the world to take with meekness. I then remembered the Captain’s prophetic “One of us may,” and at once attached to it a most sinister significance. Having reached this dark conclusion, my first desire was to defeat their wicked purposes. I cloaked myself at once for another night excursion, and having done so stole down the stairs as formerly, opened the great hall door with wondrous care, then peered ahead to discern the course of the receding lanterns.