Having at last made himself comfortable, he sat waiting in the darkness, thinking to let some time pass before returning to the closet stairway. An hour or more had gone by, when he heard a door open, which he knew must be at the head of some other stairway to the cellar, and a jocund voice cry: “Damme, we’ll be our own tapsters! Give me the candle, Mr. Williams, and if my nose doesn’t pull me to the barrel in one minute, may it never whiff spirits again!” A moment later, quick footfalls sounded on the stairs, then candle-light disturbed the blackness, and Williams was heard saying, “This way, 176 gentlemen, if you insist. The barrel is on the ground, straight ahead.” Whereupon Peyton saw two merry young Englishmen enter the very passage at whose end he sat, one bearing the candle, both followed by the steward, who carried a spigot and a huge jug.
Harry instantly divined the cause of this intrusion. The servants were busy preparing refreshments for the officers, and, in a spirit of gaiety, these two had volunteered to help Williams fetch the liquor which he, not knowing Harry’s whereabouts, was about to draw from the barrel on which Harry sat.
It was not Elizabeth who could save him from discovery now.
The officers came groping towards him up the narrow passage.
Before the candle-light reached him, he rose and got behind the barrel, there being barely room for his legs between it and the partition. He had, in dressing for the day, put on his scabbard and his broken sword. He now took his stick in his left hand, and drew his sword with his right. He set his teeth hard together, thought of nothing at all, or rather of everything at once, and waited.
“Hear the rats,” said one of the Englishmen. It was Peyton’s stealthy movement he had heard.
“Ay, sir, there’s often a terrible scampering of ’em,” said Williams.
“Maybe I can pink a rat or two,” said the officer without the candle, and drew his sword. Harry braced himself rapidly against the woodwork at his back. The candle-light touched the barrel.
At that instant Harry felt the woodwork give way behind him, and fell on his back on the ground.