Burgo's Romance

by T. W. Speight

"I am sadly afraid it is very little, if, indeed, anything that I can do to help you. But before another word is said on that point, I must explain to you the reasons which have influenced me in taking a step so unconventional, and, perhaps, I ought to add, so unladylike, only that the latter word is one which I detest. You must know, then----" She stopped suddenly and held up her hand.

"Hist! hist! Miss Dacia, he's waking up!" came a voice from below. Burgo thought he recognised the thin acrid tones of Mother Sprowle.

"I must go at once, I dare not stay another moment," exclaimed Miss Roylance. "Give me my lamp, please." Then, as Burgo passed it to her through the aperture, she said with a smile and a meaning look: "To-morrow evening about the same time, if the coast is clear. If not, I will send you a message by Mrs. Sprowle. Till then, addio."

She adjusted her crutch under her left arm and turned and went slowly down, her sheaf of red-gold hair falling in a dull shimmer over her shoulders being the last Burgo saw of her.

[CHAPTER XVI.]

DACIA EXPLAINS.

Not much sleep visited the pillow of Burgo Brabazon that night. The mere thought that a possibility of escape seemed to be opening itself out before him would alone have been enough to break his rest. Supposing that when he saw her next Miss Roylance should ask him in what way she could help him best, ought he not to be ready with an answer to her question? And what ought that answer to be? But at this point he was confronted by a puzzle of which no solution was forthcoming. If Miss Roylance was so far mistress of the situation that neither bolts nor bars sufficed to hinder her from penetrating as far as the outside of his prison door, what was there to prevent her from opening the door itself and so setting him at liberty? It was a perplexing question, and as futile as perplexing, which was just the reason why it kept putting itself to him again and again. And yet he had only to wait patiently to have both this and other things made plain to him; but that is what most of us find it so hard to do.

The spell which Dacia Roylance had unwittingly thrown over him was not broken with her own evanishment. It possessed him and would not let him go. Some magnetic chord of his being had been struck which no one had ever sounded before, and of the existence of which he had been wholly ignorant, and its subtle vibrations thrilled him as he had never been thrilled before. It was not love, it had no touch of passion in it, it was an experience altogether fresh and strange. "I am bewitched, and that's the simple fact," he said to himself. "I never believed in 'possession' before; I do now." And yet he seemed in no way put about, but probably in a process of that sort everything depends upon the sorceress. In any case, Burgo found himself longing, as he had rarely longed for anything, for the time when he should see Dacia Roylance again.

From the first day of Burgo's imprisonment till now there had been no break in the weather. The sun had shone in an all but unclouded sky, the nights had been soft and balmy, the winds hushed. Hour after hour had Burgo spent at the window of his prison watching the tide as it seethed creamily up the sands and broke in softest foam or else its slow recession as wave by wave it was drawn backward by a force it was powerless to resist. To-night, however, had brought a change. The sun had set in a gorgeous cloud-pageant, like some conqueror with torn ensigns and blood-stained banners marching through tottering battlements and ruined towers into some great city's flaming heart. Later the wind had begun to rise, and by midnight it was blowing half a gale. At high-water every minute or two some thunderous pulsation of the tide would smite the face of the cliff with such terrific impact as for a time to almost deafen Burgo. More than once the old tower seemed to quiver to its foundations. Even if Burgo had had nothing out of the ordinary to occupy his thoughts, it would have been next to impossible for him to sleep.

Forming, as it were, a separate note of the elemental diapason outside, while yet being in full accord with it, was a sound which Burgo long lay listening to without being able to satisfy himself whence or how it originated. It was something between a rush and roar and a sort of Titanic gurgle, and seemed to reach his ear, not from without, but as if it ascended through the floor of his room. Then all at once he said to himself, "Can it be that the tower is undermined, and that what I hear is the noise of the tide as it is being alternately forced into and sucked out of some natural hollow or opening in the face of the cliff?" The longer he pondered this explanation the more satisfied he became that it was the real one.