"She tried to escape from here, did she not?" he inquired abruptly.
Fanny replied by relating the circumstances of Lily's two attempts at escape, and how Colville had carried her off the second time from under her father's own roof.
"The villains! the fiends!" muttered Shelton, crushing an oath between his clenched teeth.
"After they brought her back again she was put into the room above me, but only for a night. She came in to see me after midnight, and promised to come again soon. But she never came, and I concluded that she had been removed to another place. I am confident she has not escaped from them, for had she done so she would have sent someone to liberate me at once."
"Colville and Pratt spent an hour here five days ago," said he, "so it seems probable that she was still here up to that date."
"No doubt of it. I suppose old Haidee put her into another room for fear that she might discover me down here, and also because the trap-door in that room is the only entrance which she had to bring my weekly dole of bread and water through," said Fanny.
It was getting on toward sunset, and just then they heard the loud baying of the bloodhound. Shelton started.
"It is the horrible hound that is chained up in a kennel in the garden," exclaimed Fanny. "He has missed his dinner and is hungry, I suppose."
"I will put a bullet in his brain before I go away from here," said Shelton, curtly.
"Now, Mrs. Colville," he continued, "I must leave you a little while. I will go and report these dead bodies to the coroner, and I must secure some easy vehicle to transport your poor aching body away from here to a comfortable place. Do you think you can wait patiently? I shall be absent but a few hours at farthest."