"It will serve as well, nay, better," said Captain Royston, still dreamily gazing into the fire. And Mr. Bentinck, expressing himself satisfied that all was well, departed to his chamber in company of M. de Rondiniacque.
Now as these matters had for me little of interest, and as my fatigue was great, I had been growing very weary and full of sleep; so it came that when these gentlemen left us I signified my pleasure thereat with a great yawn of weariness and a long sigh of satisfaction.
"Poor lad!" cried Ned, with such tenderness as he was wont to use to the child that had so loved and hectored him, "poor lad, you are faint for sleep. I will see where we may put you."
"It is not sleep, Captain," I said, stifling a second yawn. "But I take little interest in prisoners, and I am, oh! so thirsty."
"'T is the long ride, and your dinner was naught," he answered. "Keep your eyes open, and watch a while here in my place, and I will bring you food and wine. I pray you, do not close your eyes."
And as he neared the door, I saw him start as hit by a thought forgotten, and—"The chamber on the right," he murmured. "How came I to forget? But he will never find the panel, even though he were a Jesuit." And so, with yet another warning that I should watch well and not sleep, he went out into the gallery. And I sat by the fire, wondering what those strange words should mean. Open indeed I did keep my eyes, but I believe my mind was not very far from dreams at the moment when a thing happened so like to a trick of sleeping fancy that it awoke me quite. I thought that I saw, in that dim light (for one great candlestick was above with His Highness of Orange, the other below in the hand of Captain Royston), a great piece of the stone wall that made the far side of the wide and lofty hearth slowly to draw back and recede from my eyes, as a door that is opened stealthily from behind. I sat erect and rubbed my eyes, and still did it draw away from me, and made a noise of rusted grinding as it went. And a nameless horror crept over my body till it reached and seemed to stiffen the roots of my hair. I would have cried aloud as I sat and expected something to come whence the door of stone had gone; but before I could find voice there came from the gap in the wall the darkly clad figure of a man, who stepped from the hearth, and stood looking down upon me. His face I could not clearly perceive, for the fire was behind him, but the sound of his voice I thought I had once already heard.
CHAPTER XV
"Hush!" he said gently, thinking me, I suppose, as indeed I was, at the point of calling aloud on the guard. "I am unarmed, and would not hurt you if I could. What is your name?" And his voice, for all that it was young and sweet, sounded like my father's, for which there was reason enough, as I was soon to know.
"My name is Drayton," I answered simply.