As he crept stair after stair up the dark flight of steps the sound of pursuit seemed to come nearer and nearer, and he could hear the hum of many voices, although he could not distinguish exactly what was said. Only one word came perpetually as clearly and distinctly to his ears as if it had been spoken at his side, and that word was murder!
“They—they have found the body,” he gasped. “Yes, they have found the body now. My life hangs on a thread!”
The cold perspiration of fear rolled down his face, and notwithstanding his great exertions which would ordinarily have produced an intolerable sense of heat, he was as cold and chilled as if he had suddenly awakened from sleep in the open air. His teeth chattered in his head, and his knees smote each other. He was fain to clutch with both hands the crazy banisters of the staircase for support, or he must inevitably have fallen.
“This is dreadful,” he whispered to himself, “to die here. They have hunted me to death—I—I feel as if a hand of ice was on my heart. This must be death.”
Slowly the cold sensation wore off, and like the flame of a taper, which suddenly renews its origin most unexpectedly, when apparently upon the point of dissolution, Gray gradually revived again, and his vital energies came back to him.
With a deep sigh he spoke,—
“’Tis past—’tis past. They have not killed me as yet. It was, after all, but a passing pang. They have not killed me yet.”
Again the cry of murder echoed in the court, and, with a start, Jacob Gray set his teeth hard, and continued to ascend the dark staircase. Suddenly, now, he paused, for a sound from above met his ears—it was some one singing. How strangely the tones jarred upon the excited senses of Jacob Gray: the sound was low and plaintive, and to him it seemed a mockery of his awful situation.
He now by two more steps gained the landing, and he was sure that the singing proceeded from some room on that floor. The voice was a female’s, and by the softness and exquisite cadences of it evidently proceeded from some person not far advanced in life.
Gray held by the banisters at the top of the stairs, and for some minutes he seemed spell-bound, and to forget the precarious situation in which he stood as those low, soft strains came upon his ear.