"If I dare to rush across the room and ring a peal to awake the household, I would be shot before my hand left the bell-rope," she told herself.
Why had she lit the tell-tale candle? There it burned, white and faintly tremulous in the current of air caused by the hole in the shutter, slowly wasting away, but distinctly revealing her every movement to the watchful assassin without.
Was there no way by which she could extinguish it and leave herself in the friendly darkness?
If the thought occurred to him of enlarging the aperture and shooting her in her place of refuge, the candle would too surely guide his murderous hand.
Even while thus she reasoned, the pistol was removed, and the grating of a tiny saw against the shutter recommenced.
Horror paralyzed the terrified girl for an instant; the next, with rare presence of mind, she snatched the cloak off her shoulders in which she had been wrapped, and hurled it with all her strength across the room.
Like a huge, ugly bat, it made for the candle, swept it off the table, and she was surrounded in a moment by darkness.
The grating sound came to an abrupt stop, and a smothered oath came through the auger-hole.
"Give up that book, Margaret Walsingham," said the hoarse voice of her foe, "for as sure as you live and breathe your life will go for it if you don't."
Margaret remained still as a statue, not daring to breathe.