[CHAPTER XIV]
MAISIE'S NIGHT QUEST
In the street of Zaandpoort, upon a certain evening, it had grown early dark. The sullen, sultry day had broken down at the gloaming into a black and gurly night of rain, which came in fierce dashes, alternating with fickle, veering flaws and yet stranger lulls and stillnesses. Anon, when the rain slackened, the hurl of the storm overhead could be heard, while up aloft every chimney in Amersfort seemed to shriek aloud in a different key. Maisie had gone down an hour ago and barred the outer door with a stout oaken bolt, hasping the crossbar into its place as an additional precaution. She would sit up, she said, till William returned from duty, and then she would be sure to hear him approach. On a still night she could distinguish his footsteps turning out of the wide spaces of the Dam into the echoing narrows of the street of Zaandpoort.
She and Kate sat between the newly lighted lamp and the fire of wood which Maisie had insisted on making in order to keep out the gusty chills of the night. A cosier little upper-room there was not to be found in all Amersfort.
But there had fallen a long silence between the two. Maisie, as usual, was thinking of William. It troubled her that her husband had that day gone abroad without his blue military overcoat, and she declared over and over that he would certainly come home wet from head to foot. Kate's needle paused, lagged, and finally stopped altogether. Her dark eyes gazed long and steadily into the fire. She saw a black and gloomy prison-cell with the wind shrieking into the glassless windows. She heard it come whistling and hooting through the bars as though they were infernal harp-strings. And she thought, at once bitterly and tenderly, of one who might be even then lying upon the floor without either cloak or covering.
A sharp, hard sob broke into Maisie's pleasant revery. She went quickly over to the girl, and sat down beside her.
"Be patient, Kate," she said; "it will all come right if you bide a little. They cannot kill him, for none of the men who were wounded are dead—though for their own purposes his enemies have tried to make the prince believe so."
Kate lifted her head and looked piteously at Maisie.
"But even if he comes from prison, he will never forgive me. It was my fault—my fault," she said, and let her head fall again on Maisie's shoulder.
"Nay," said Maisie; "but I will go to him and own to him that the fault was mine—tell him that he was not gone a moment before I was sorry and ran after him to bring him back. He may be angry with me if he likes; but, at least, he shall understand that you were free from blame."