Part 6 (1/2)

'Master Martin,' she said, advancing timidly, 'are you yourself again?'

'I don't know,' I muttered. In very fact I was so much puzzled that this was nearly the truth. 'If you will tell me where I am, I may be able to say,' I added, turning my head with an effort.

'You are in the kitchen behind the locksmith's forge,' she answered plainly. 'He is a good man, and you are in no danger. The window is shuttered to keep the light from your eyes.'

'And the noise I hear is the bellows at work?'

'Yes,' she answered, coming near. 'It is almost noon. If you will drink this broth you will get your strength again.'

I seized the bowl and drank greedily. When I set it down, my eyes seemed clearer and my mind stronger.

'You escaped?' I said. The more I grew able to think, the more remarkable it seemed to me that the girl should be here--here in the same house in which I lay.

'Through the window,' she answered, in a faint voice.

As she spoke she turned from me, and I knew that she was thinking of her father and would fain hide her face.

'But the bars?' I said.

'I am very small,' she answered in the same low tone.

I do not know why, but perhaps because of the weakness and softness I have mentioned, I found something very pitiful in the answer. It stirred a sudden rush of anger in my heart. I pictured this, helpless girl chased through the streets by the howling pack of cravens we had encountered, and for a few seconds, bruised and battered as I was, I felt the fighting spirit again. I half rose, then turned giddy, and sank back again. It was a minute or more before I could ask another question. At last I murmured--

'You have not told me how you came here?'

'I was coming up the alley,' she answered, shuddering, 'when at the corner by this house I met men coming to meet me. I fled into the pa.s.sage to escape them, and finding no outlet, and seeing a light here, I knocked. I thought that some woman might pity me and take me in.'

'And Peter did?'

'Yes,' she answered simply. 'May Our Lady reward him.'

'We were the men you met,' I said drowsily. 'I remember now. You were carrying your brother.'

'My brother?'

'Yes, the child.'

'Oh, yes,' she answered, in rather a strange fas.h.i.+on; but I was too dull to do more than notice it. 'The child of course.'

I could ask no more, for my head was already splitting with pain. I lay back, and I suppose went off into a swoon again, sleeping all that day and until the morning of the next was far advanced.

Then I awoke to find the place in which I lay changed from a cave of mystery to a low-roofed dingy room; the shutter of the window standing half-open, admitted a ray of suns.h.i.+ne and a breath of pure air. A small fire burned on the hearth, a black pot bubbled beside it.

For the room itself, a litter of old iron stood in every corner; bunches of keys and rows of rusty locks--padlocks, fetter-locks, and door-locks--hung on all the walls. One or two chests, worm-eaten and rickety, but prized by their present possessor for the antiquity of their fastenings, stood here and there; with a great open press full of gun-locks, matchlocks, wheel-locks, spring-locks and the like. Half a dozen arquebuses and pistols decorated the mantel-piece, giving the room something of the air of an armoury.

In the midst of all this litter sat old Peter himself, working away, with a pair of horn gla.s.ses on his forehead, at a small lock; which seemed to be giving him a vast amount of trouble. A dozen times at least I watched him fit a number of tiny parts together, only to scatter them again in his leather ap.r.o.n, and begin to pare one or other of them with a little file. At length he laid the work down, as if he were tired, and looking up found my eyes fixed upon him.

He nodded cheerfully. 'Good,' he said. 'Now you look yourself, Martin.

No more need of febrifuges. Another night's sleep, and you may go abroad.'

'What day is it?' I said, striving to collect my thoughts.