Lochinvar: A Novel

by S. R. Crockett

And in his cell, listening dully, to the tramp of the sparse passers-by coming up to his window through the tumultuous blowing of all the horns of the tempest, Wat was saying to himself the same thing: "How she must hate me—thus to walk with him and let him point a scornful hand at my prison window."

But in the street of Zaandpoort, the lonely girl's uneasiness was fast deepening into terror.

Suddenly Kate lifted her head. There was surely a slight noise at the outer door. She had a vague feeling that a foot was coming up the stair. She listened intently, but heard nothing save the creaking of doors within and the hurl of the tempest without. A thought came sharply to her, and her heart leaped palpably in her breast. Could it possibly be that Wat, released from prison, had come directly back to her? Her lips parted, and a very lovely light came into her eyes, as of late was used to do when one spoke well of Wat Gordon.

She stood gazing fixedly at the door, but the sound was not repeated. Then she looked at the place where he had stood on the threshold that first night when he came bursting in upon them—the time when he saw her lie with her head low in Maisie's lap.

"Dear Wat!" she said softly, over and over to herself—"dear, dear Wat!"

But alas! Wat Gordon was lying stretched on his pallet in the round tower of the prison of Amersfort; while without another maid called to him in the drenching rain, which love did not permit her to feel. He could neither hear the tender thrill in his true love's voice, nor yet respond to the pleading of her once proud heart, which love had now made gentle. He heard nothing but the roar of the wind which whirled away towards the North Sea, yelling with demon laughter as it shook his window bar, and shouted mocking words over the sill.

But all suddenly, as Kate looked again through the window, she became aware that certain of the lights on the canal edge were being blotted out. Something black seemed to rise up suddenly before the window. The girl started back, and even as she stood motionless, stricken with sudden fear, the window was forcibly opened, and a man in a long cloak, and wearing a black mask, stepped into the room. Kate was too much astonished to cry out. She turned quickly towards the door with intent to flee. But before she could reach it two men entered by it, masked and equipped like the first. None of the three uttered a word of threatening or explanation; they only advanced and seized her arms. In a moment they had wrapped Kate in a great cloak, slipped a soft elastic gag into her mouth, and carried her towards the window. The single wild cry which she had time to utter before her mouth was stopped was whirled away by a gust yet fiercer than any of those which all night had ramped and torn their way to the sea betwixt the irregular gables and twisted chimney-stalks of the ancient street of Zaandpoort.

The man who had entered first through the window now received her in his arms. He clambered down by a ladder which was set on the canal bank, and held in its position by two men. Yet another man stood ready to assist, and so in a few moments Kate found herself upon a horse, while the man who had come first through the window mounted behind her and kept about her waist an arm of iron strength. By this time Kate was half unconscious with the terror of her position. She knew not whither she was being taken, and could make no guess at the identity of her captors.

She could, indeed, hear them talking together, but in a language which she could not understand and which she had never before heard. The gag in her mouth did not greatly hurt her, but her arms were tightly fastened to her sides, and her cramped position on the saddle in front of her captor became, as the miles stretched themselves out behind them, an exquisitely painful one.

With the beating of the horses' hoofs the cloak gradually dropped from her eyes, so that Kate could discern dark hedge-rows and occasional trees drifting like smoke behind them as they rode. The lightning played about in front, dividing land and sky with its vivid pale-blue line. Then the thunder went roaring and galloping athwart the universe, and lo! on the back of that, the black and starless canopy shut down blacker than ever. Once through the folds of the cloak Kate saw a field of flowers, all growing neatly together in squares, lit up by the lightning. Every parallelogram stood clear as on a chess-board. But the color was wholly gone out of them, all being subdued to a ghastly pallor by the fierce brilliance of the zigzag flame.