“Ho!” he again ejaculated, in a tone of increasing triumph. “Another splendid conception! My brain, so damnably dull all through the night, brightens with the coming day. As our French queen is accustomed to exclaim, ‘une pensée magnifique!’ ’Twill be a home thrust for Holtspur. If he love her—and who can doubt it—then shall his heart be wrung, as he has wrung mine. Ha! ha! The right hand glove shall triumph over the left!”
As Scarthe said this, he strode towards the table on which lay his helmet; and, taking from the breast of his doublet the gauntlet of Marion Wade—the one she had really lost—he tied it with a piece of ribbon to the crest;—just under the panache of plumes.
“Something for him to speculate upon, while inside the walls of his prison! Something to kill time, when he is awake, and dream of, when asleep! Ha! ha! A sweet revenge ’twill be—one worthy the craft of an inquisitor!”
A footstep coming along the corridor put a period to his changing soliloquy.
It was the footstep of Stubbs; and in the next instant the flat face of the cornet presented itself in the half-opened door.
“Thirty in armour, captain—ready for the road,” was the announcement of the subaltern.
“And I am ready to head them,” answered his superior officer—setting his helmet firmly upon his head, and striding towards the door, “Thirty will be more than we need. After all, ’tis best to make sure. We don’t want the fox to steal away from his cover; and he might do so, if the earths be not properly stopped. We’re pretty sure to find him in his swaddling clothes at this hour. Ha! ha! ha! What a ludicrous figure our fine cavalier will cut in his nightcap! Won’t he, Stubbs?”
“Ought to, by Ged!”
And, with this gleeful anticipation, Scarthe, followed by his subaltern, stepped lightly along the passage leading towards the courtyard—where thirty troopers, armed cap-à-pied—each standing on the near side of his steed—awaited the order to spring into their saddles.
In two seconds’ time the “Mount and forward!” was given—not by signal-call of the bugle, but by word of command, somewhat quietly pronounced. Then, with captain and cornet at its head, the troop by twos, filed out through the arched entrance—directing their march towards the gateway that opened upon the Oxford Road, treading in the direction of Beaconsfield.