“What a time you’ve been,” said Bertrand, pushing in before him. “Now, let’s see—where did Ruby say she’d left her cross? Oh yes, hanging up there; she must have stood on a chair to reach it.” And sure enough, on a nail pretty high up on the wall hung the little ornament.
Winfried drew forward a chair; in another minute he had reached down the cross.
“Here it is,” he said, turning to Bertrand. But—he spoke to the air! Bertrand was gone. Winfried’s face flushed; but he controlled himself. He walked quietly to the door and turned the handle. It did not open. It was locked from the outside. He was a prisoner!
“I knew something of the kind would come,” he said to himself. “What will they do now? Poor little Mavis! I must trust her to the princess.”
But he could not help a feeling of bitter anger. It was no light punishment to the active energetic boy to have to spend all the bright afternoon hours shut up here like an old owl in a church tower. And he knew that till some one came to let him out, a prisoner he verily was. For he might have shouted his voice hoarse, no one down below could have heard him. And the chance of any one in the castle coming up was very small.
“What will gran think?” he said to himself.
“And, if these naughty children try to play him any trick. I know Ruby more than half believes all that nonsense about his being a wizard and about the mermaids, and Bertrand will egg her on.”
He went to the window and stood looking out, trying to keep down the dreadful restless caged feeling which began to come over him.
“How can I bear it?” he said. “If I had tools now, and could pick the lock; but some of these old locks are very strong, and I have nothing. If only I had wings;” and he gazed again out of the window.