"It's no use, captain, I am afraid," replied the constable. "Howsomdever, it shall go--but the boy as takes it must be paid, you know."
"There is half a sovereign to pay him with," replied the prisoner; "keep the rest for your own trouble, and get me another light and some sealing-wax.
"Why, every one is a-bed but me, and I was just a-going," replied the man. "But I will see." So saying, he departed, but returned in a few minutes with another light, and a stick of sealing wax; and finding the prisoner still writing, he left him, telling him that he was just going to bed, but if he would push the letter under the door, it should be sent the first thing next morning.
Captain Delaware gladly saw him depart, and ere he had concluded, and sealed his letter, heard unequivocal signs of one at least of his jailors having fallen into a sound sleep. He listened anxiously, again and again, but all was silent in the house, except the dull, hard breathing of the constables, in the ante-room. It was now half-past eleven, and the hour at which the horse was to be at the back park-gate was so near, that it became necessary to execute his design with promptitude; yet there was something painful in it all together, which made him linger a moment or two in his father's house, calling up its host of memories, and evoking from the dim night of time the sweet and mournful spirit of the past.
He felt, however, that it was all in vain--that such thoughts but served to weaken him; and taking up the light, he approached his bedside, and once more raised the trap-door. The little ladder stood ready just as it used to stand in the days of his childhood, and descending slowly, step by step, holding the light in one hand, and supporting the trap-door in the other, he reached the last step but two or three, and then suffered the door to close over his head, The narrow cavity in which he now was, filled the center of one of those internal buttresses, if I may use the term, into the masonry of which one of the back staircases of the old mansion was joisted. It was about six feet square in the inside, and at the first floor beneath his own, afforded a sort of landing-place, on which the ladder rested. Thence, again, a more solid stair of stone wound down to a sort of vault under the terrace, in which was placed the great draw-well that supplied the house with the water principally used by the family.
When the trap-door was closed, William Delaware, who was descending backward, turned to look how many steps intervened between his feet and the ground, when, to his surprise, he found that the last step but one of the ladder, old and rotted by the damp, was broken through the middle, and offered, in the fresh yellow surface of the fracture, incontestable proofs that the way had been trod very lately by some other foot than his own. Over the floor of the landing-place, too, which that thriftless housewife, Neglect, had left covered with a thick coat of dust, might be traced three distinct steps from the mouth of the staircase; and the young fugitive at once saw that the way which had served to introduce the money into his chamber was now before him. That being the case, he felt that if his suspicions in regard to Mr. Tims were true, the outlet might and would probably be watched; and consequently, he determined to examine the whole ground cautiously before he attempted to go out into the park.
Down the stairs, which were likewise covered with dust, he could trace the same alternate step coming up and going down again, but no other footmarks were to be seen, and it was evident that but one person had passed that way for years. The doors, however, which at different parts of the descent had been placed to guard that means of entrance, were now wide open; and, descending to the vault or cellar in which the well was placed, William Delaware put out the light behind a pile of old bottles, that nearly covered the foot of the stairs, and then cautiously approached the door, underneath which a narrow line of pale moonlight was visible.
The door was sometimes padlocked, and it seemed so closely fastened, that the young sailor's heart began to fail him as he approached; but carelessness or the good old housekeeper had left no obstacles there; and, as he drew it slowly toward him, it yielded to his hand without a sound, exposing to his sight, once more, all the fine wild park scenery at the back of the mansion, lighted up by as glorious a moon as ever looked out through the blue sky upon the fair face of the earth. For full five minutes he paused and turned his eyes in every direction, but nothing was to be seen which could cause him the slightest apprehension; and throwing the door wider open, he considered which would be the nearest and best covered way toward the gate at which the horse was to be stationed. At the western angle of the park, a sweep of old trees came within a hundred yards of the house, and thence a path wandered in among some large hawthorns and two or three splendid larches, leading down toward the glen in which the Prior's Well was situated. The gate which he wished to reach, indeed, lay somewhat to the east; but in order to proceed straight thither, he would have been obliged to cross a wide open piece of grassy ground, on which the moon was shedding a light nearly as clear as that of day, and which was commanded by every window in that side of the building.
Gliding along, then, under the terrace, and bending--so that his head might not appear above it, he reached the opposite angle of the building, one of the old octagon towers of which threw out a long shadow, that fell upon the nearest trees, and mingled with the obscurity beneath them. Following this dark track, William Delaware walked quickly on, gained the shelter of the wood, and then, threading the well-known paths with a light step, reached the dim glen which he had trod so lately with Burrel and his sister, and only paused, with the burning thirst of intense agitation, beside the old fountain, where, in the braggadocio spirit of a heart at ease, he had dared them to drink the icy waters of indifference.
"I may drink now myself, indeed!" he thought, as he filled the iron cup; but still he paused in raising it to his lips--gave his heart one moment to dream--conjured up as idle a hope as ever crossed the mind of man, and then tossed the cup back again into the well. And I should like to know, if all the human race were brought, one by one, to the side of a fountain of such virtues as that--without a mortal eye to look on, and arm their vanity against their affections--if there would be one being found in the world so hapless, so hopeless, so without one sweet drop of feeling or of fancy, so destitute of life's ties and the heart's yearnings, as to raise the chilly waters irrevocably to their lips!