"I don't know yet. I haven't quite decided. I shall be back here at four o'clock."
CHAPTER VII
ONE MEANS OF ESCAPE
Outside the night shone clear and brilliant. Sargent stopped when he had passed out into the street, and looked up through the canopy of leaves to where a stretch of heavens glowed with the impenetrable purple of the night. Across the infinitude of space a brilliant star suddenly shot, leaving a trail of white fire in its wake. He stood there a few minutes, his face uplifted to the calm beauty of the sky, his lips moving in prayer.
When he began walking again a strange quiet had settled over all his features and in his eyes burned the light of determination.
He walked rapidly, for though the moon had not yet risen, the night was brilliant with the beautiful, translucent light of the stars. The dwellings were dark, not a light glowed in a window; the town had sunk into deep slumber.
He stopped at the tavern long enough to write a few words to Captain Mentdrop about the duel, and once more hurried out into the night.
He passed the courthouse again. This time he did not quail, or pass it with averted eyes, but looked at it with the expression of one who gives thanks to something which has shown him the right path, be it ever so hard and narrow to traverse.
Walking on, he stood at last before the small jail. It was a one story brick building in which the sunken bars across the windows shone sombrely in the clarity of the night. Beyond its suggestion of imprisonment, there was a deeper and more lasting effect of utter dreariness and despair, for the building stood on a plot of ground in which neither a tree nor a shrub grew.
Without a moment of hesitation Sargent went up the path to the door, and lifted the heavy knocker. Its report rang out on the quiet night like some death signal, reverberating within, seemingly an hundred times. Then came the heavy steps of the keeper, the sound of huge bolts sliding out of fastenings, the clang of a chain, and at last Sargent stood within the dimly lit corridor.