'Horsemen are coming up the hollow way,' said a peasant, entering in haste.
'Horsemen!' exclaimed Cecil, starting up and looking at once to his pistols.
'Armed, too—Montenegrins—I saw them by a glimpse of the moon.'
'Guebhard and his gang—my pursuers. I am lost!' cried Cecil, leaping from the table and buckling on his sword, as he looked hurriedly around him for concealment, defence, or escape.
His evident emotion and admission that he had pursuers renewed at once the inborn mistrust of the Servian household, who all shrank from him. Despite his uniform and the gold cross of Takovo, they imagined he must be a culprit, and felt neither disposed to conceal nor defend him. Even the gentle hostess eyed him now with horror, mistrust and affright.
Cecil saw in a moment that he had nothing to hope for from his host, or the servants, among whom were four stalwart Servians; and just as he heard the noise of horsemen dismounting at the door, and the unmistakable voice of Guebhard summoning the house, he hurried away to the upper story, and locking two doors behind him, resolved with his sword and his pistols to sell his life as dearly as possible.
By the noise and din below he became aware that his pursuers had greatly increased in number, and now indeed a violent death seemed close to him—terribly so, and his heart beat wildly.
'One can die but once,' thought he; 'and why should we shrink from what we cannot shun?' he added, involuntarily quoting Byron. If he perished in that obscure and secluded place, who would there be to regret him, save Mary? And then he thought of his comrades of the old Cameronians; but none would ever know his fate. There was something very bitter in that reflection, yet the memory of the regiment, and of his comrades, seemed to nerve him anew at this terrible crisis.
In the dark he sought about for furniture to barricade the room-door, if it was forced, and to form a barricade to fire over. A chest or two, a table and chairs, he piled against it, and then examined the window—it was small, narrow, far from the ground, apparently; but all was obscurity and darkness without, and unknown to him, there was immediately beneath it a deep hole, formed by the farmer when digging for copper ore. But now two minutes had barely elapsed, when shouts and execrations fell upon his ears, together with the din of blows upon the first door he had closed.
It was speedily beaten in, and then the door of the room was assailed. It seemed stronger, and for a time resisted the blows that were rained upon it.