But the “visioned scene” fled, like a delusive mirage, and, as it dissipated, it left the dungeon and the chains revealed and felt. The captive had left the oasis for ever, and was now in the midst of the waste, howling desert, horrors behind, and before, and around! Pent up within the four grim walls, only to be led forth to hear his doom, and thence to the place of death—a chained and powerless victim, prostrate beneath the uplifted, menacing hand of Destiny. Plunged in deepest despair, not a ray of hope could penetrate such a dungeon or such a despairing heart. The last sands of a troubled life were running out fast. And this was to be the end of him who was nursed in the lap of luxury, on whose career the crimes of others had cast a baleful influence. This the end of him who had gained fair Eleanor’s heart. Alas for Eleanor!
The mental stupor returned, he lay sluggish on the ground; the little golden reliquary had lost its magic power. Like him who languished in the vaults of Chillon, he could have said—
“I had not strength to stir or strive,
But felt that I was still alive.”
And there was freedom on the green heights of Cheviot, on the wide Border which he rode so long, in the halls of Hunterspath, where he had defied all power and every enemy. But he was a captive, chained to the wall like a dog. The time wore by unheeded; a ray of sunlight trembled into the cell, and vanished, and the wind began to blow—the wind that sounded high on Cheviot. The captive still sat grovelling on the ground.
He had a fancy that the door of the dungeon was hammered open, that a glare of torchlight illuminated the place, that voices arose, that forms passed before him.
“He is in despair,” said one voice; and another answered: “He well may be so, for on the third morning he dies.”
And then something like a laugh echoed through the cell.
“I will leave the food for him,” said a voice again. “He will wake and be glad of it.”
And the other voice said: