Part 36 (1/2)

He withdrew himself suddenly, and the sunset light darted into the room through the narrow window, dimming the candle's rays. The Colonel heard him laugh as he strode away across the platform, and down the hill. A moment and the sounds ceased. He was gone. The Colonel was alone.

Until this time to-morrow! Twenty-four hours. Yes, he must tighten his belt.

Morty, poking his head this way and that, peering into the chamber as he had peered yesterday, wished he could see Colonel John's face. But Colonel John, bending resolutely over the handful of embers that glowed in an inner angle of the room, showed only his back. Even that Morty could not see plainly; for the last of the candles had burned out, and in the chamber, dark in comparison with the open air, the crouching figure was no more than a shapeless ma.s.s obscuring the glow of the fuel.

Morty shaded his eyes and peered more closely. He was not a sensitive person, and he was obeying orders. But he was not quite comfortable.

”And that's your last word?” he said slowly. ”Come, Colonel dear, ye'll say something more to that.”

”That's my last word to-day,” Colonel John answered as slowly, and without turning his head.

”Honour bright? Won't ye think better of it before I go?”

”I will not.”

Morty paused, to tell the truth, in extreme exasperation. He had no great liking for the part he was playing; but why couldn't the man be reasonable? ”You're sure of it, Colonel,” he said.

Colonel John did not answer.

”And I'm to tell her so?” Morty concluded.

Colonel John rose sharply, as if at last the other tried him too far.

”Yes,” he said, ”tell her that! Or,” lowering his voice and his hand, ”do not tell her, as you please. That is my last word, sir! Let me be.”

But it was not his last word. For as Morty turned to go, and suffered the light to fall again through the aperture, the Colonel heard him speak--in a lower and a different tone. At the same moment, or his eyes deceived him, a shadow that was not Morty O'Beirne's fell for one second on the splayed wall inside the window. It was gone as soon as seen; but Colonel John had seen it, and he sprang to the window.

”Flavia!” he cried. ”Flavia!”

He paused to listen, his hand on the wall on either side of the opening. His face, which had been pinched and haggard a moment before, was now flushed by the sunset. Then ”Flavia!” he repeated, keen appeal in his voice. ”Flavia!”

She did not answer. She was gone. And perhaps it was as well. He listened for a long time, but in vain; and he told himself again that it was as well. Why, after all, appeal to her? How, could it avail him?

What good could it do? Slowly he went back to his chair and sat down in the old att.i.tude over the embers. But his lip quivered.

CHAPTER XX

AN UNWELCOME VISITOR

A little before sunset on that same day--almost precisely indeed at the moment at which Flavia's shadow darkened the splayed flank of the window in the Tower--two men stood beside the entrance at Morristown, whence the one's whip had just chased the beggars. They were staring at a third, who, seated nonchalantly upon the horse-block, slapped his boot with his riding switch, and made as poor a show of hiding his amus.e.m.e.nt as they of masking their disgust. The man who slapped his leg and shaped his lips to a silent whistle, was Major Payton of the --th.

The men who looked at him, and cursed the unlucky star which had brought him thither, were Luke Asgill and The McMurrough.

”Faith, and I should have thought,” Asgill said, with a clouded face, ”that my presence here, Major, and I, a Justice----”

”True for you!” Payton said, with a grin.

”Should have been enough by itself, and the least taste more than enough, to prove the absurdity of the Castle's story.”

”True for you again,” Payton replied. ”And ain't I saying that but for your presence here, and a friend at court that I'll not name, it's not your humble servant this gentleman would be entertaining”--he turned to The McMurrough--”but half a company and a sergeant's guard!”