After our first prison meal, Lestrade and I betook ourselves to bed, and being a heavy sleeper, I knew no more until a hand shook me roughly by the shoulder. Now I could never abide being broken of my rest, a thing which was the less to be desired after the wearying events of the bygone day. So it was with little ceremony I struck out, and should perhaps, between sleeping and waking, have done some damage, had not the same hand deftly emptied the gourd of water over my head, while Gaston’s familiar voice cried, with less courtesy than need be, “Fool!”
This brought me briskly to my senses, and I was about to argue the point with him, when a new sound hushed my tongue to silence, and I needed not Lestrade’s command to listen.
A curious sound it was, and awesome, there in the midnight hour,—a sound not all a wail, not all a chant, but holding a note of jubilee so coldly cruel that it pierced with icy fear the very marrow of him who heard it.
Three times this strange song rose and fell distinctly to our waiting ears. Then it grew fainter and fainter, and died away, at length, in the distance.
I thought of my past sins and of my present straits, and I wished, with all earnestness, that I and my good rifle had not been parted.
Then sleep bore heavy upon my eyelids, and I turned over on my sack of leaves, leaving Lestrade still sitting with the white moonlight shining down through the slits in the roof above us upon his face.
Chapter IV
At the Queen’s Mercy
The next day passed without event of any kind, save the welcome advent of three good meals. I can say, for my part, that no sweet adventure could so well have satisfied my palate; and I bore the lack of present peril with all fortitude. But Lestrade was not of my mind, and ate moodily and more sparely than is fitting for the wellbeing of a Christian stomach. He spoke, moreover, ungratefully of “fattening for the sacrifice,” which, I take it, was neither a wise nor a comfortable saying, inasmuch as there appears, to my way of thinking, little profit in vain forebodings of that which is to come, and much mischief in despising present good for fear of future evil.
To be tied like a dog to a ring in the wall vexed him also, and sorely; nor did my pointing out to him the value of a submissive spirit, and its purpose in mastering the carnal pride of the flesh, greatly avail him.
For myself, I believe in patience until the time be ripe for the chastisement of the enemy, to the hurt, indeed, of his mortal body, but to the everlasting benefit of his heathen soul. But Lestrade is of a fiery nature, that cannot brook delay. Still the day wore on, and at nightfall the sound of footsteps and the clang of metal resounded once more through the rock-hewn corridors without.