Ned disdained to reply, but, instead, as the door closed behind the men who had planned such a refinement of cruelty, he fixed his eyes on the candle in the barrel. Pulsifer had taken the lamp when he and the others withdrew. The light of the waxen illuminant, that was rapidly growing shorter and nearer to the powder, was the only radiance in the room.
"In three minutes," Pulsifer had said.
Ned's eyes regarded the flickering candle with a look of despair.
It grew lower and flickered. One more such wavering of its steady flame and the end must come.
[CHAPTER XXVI.]
A BLUFF CALLED.
Ned cast his eyes despairingly this way and that, in the hope of spying something that might promise even a faint hope of salvation.