directing me with a gesture to rise and follow, martin opened the door into the hall. the woman, taking the lantern, lit it from the fire with a twig. a moment i hesitated, preferring to remain with big roger galt, who was inclined to make my cause his own, to following the sinister martin and old mother mag, but roger had lurched to a chair, and sat there glowering and muttering to himself without further regard for me. moreover, martin, observing my hesitation, plucked a pistol from his pocket, and cocking it, swore with a bitter oath to blow out my brains unless i followed him. roger still paying no heed, i slouched out into the hall.
the woman crept before me; martin followed with the pistol pointing at my head; the lantern showed me presently a dark wooden stairway. it was rotten and riddled with decay; it creaked dismally beneath us; the balusters were broken; as i set my hand against the wall to steady me, going up after the slowly climbing p. 76light, i touched grime and cobwebs; the startled rats came squeaking and tumbling down the stair. presently we reached the head of the stair—i have said that the house was two stories only in height; mother mag unlocked a door before me, and the cold air blowing in from the glassless window of the room struck on my face. the crone, standing aside for me to enter the room, leered and mumbled at me as i passed in, urged forward by the prodding of martin’s pistol. i heard the rats scurrying over the floor before me. the wind blowing out the sacking before the window, the moonlight illumined the room,—it was big and bare as the room below it, but the rafters were high above me. a narrow wooden bedstead, with a pile of rags upon it, was propped against the wall; there was no other furniture save a three-legged stool. an open hearth with a rusted iron brazier stuck in it was at the farther end of the room. martin, stepping in, demanded of the woman, “you’re sure the fellow will be safe here?”
“you should know, my dear,” the woman tittered, holding to the doorway.
he strode to the window, plucked aside the sacking and tried the iron bars; satisfied then stepped over to the hearth, asking, “what of the chimney? could he climb it?”
p. 77“if he should try,” mag answered, laughing shrilly, “he’d only stick there and choke for soot. more, it’s near blocked with the bricks fallen in it. i heard ’em tumble in a gale two year back, and thought the stone house was all comin’ down about my ears. ay, but you knows the stone house well as i do, martin, and for why are you askin’?”
“for why, mother mag,” he snarled. “you should know for why. not the devil, your master, could save you from—you know from whom—if he comes, and finds the young dog missing. ay, and he knows enough to stretch that scraggy neck of yours, well as big roger galt’s below. look to it, mother mag,—d’ye look to it!”
she cowered and mumbled to herself; he, poking his head forward to look up the chimney, brought down a shower of soot upon him, and, cursing foully, he drew back, and made for the door.
“you’ll lie here for the night,” he said to me. “you’ll be safe and snug here for the night. don’t be trying to break out and get away, for i’ll be within hearing of you the night through. out of this, mother mag.”
“what’s your purpose with me?” i asked, dully. “why was i brought here?”
p. 78“you’ll know,” he answered, laughing his hateful laugh. “you’ll know. but i’m paid only to catch and cage you, not to answer questions.”
“if it’s only pay,” said i, “a word from me to mr. bradbury—”
“bah, i’d not trust bradbury living, and bradbury lying in the road when we left him looked more like a corpse than mother mag there. lie down and sleep, you’ll get nothing from me,” and pulling the door to with a crash, he left me.
i ran instantly to the window, and dragged back the sacking; the bars of iron, set there, i took it, for defence in the old days, were bedded firmly in the stone; there was no hope for me to crawl between them. the recurrent light of the cloud-harried moon showed me the nature of my prison; the dust lay thick upon the rotting floor; the oaken panels were riddled by the rats, and dropping in decay from the stone walls; the black, cobwebbed rafters, were high above me. i believed that a trap-door in the ceiling opened beneath the roof; i could hear the rats scurrying over my head. i turned back to the window; and the moon showed me the cobbled courtyard, the high stone wall, the rim of the bowl, in which the house lay, rising blue-black beyond; boughs p. 79tossing in the wind upon the rim; through the wild crying of the gale overhead, its battering on the house, i thought i heard the distant drumming of the sea. again i tried to wrench the bars apart; their red rust had run into the stone and mortar and set them there only the more firmly; though i tested each bar with the full strength of my arms, none shifted. could i but force them sufficiently apart for me to wriggle through, the drop to the ground would be dangerous but not impossible for me. staring upwards then i could see nothing of the roof owing to the thickness of the wall and the depth of the window. no, i was held securely; when i tried to peer up the chimney, i found it blocked as mother mag had said; the door of thick oak, though mouldering, was clamped with iron. i took it that the house had been built years since, maybe in the troublous times of charles the martyr—built stoutly for protection against marauders in that lonely hollow of the moorlands. on the thick high wall about the courtyard i believed that i could discern rusting iron spikes. and knowing myself held fast in a prison chosen for me by my uncle charles—surely by him—and guarded by his rogues, i must have despaired but for my hope that mr. bradbury might have survived the attack upon the coach, and would p. 80not rest till he found and rescued me. i recalled his apprehension when we were overtaken by the darkness, and his play with the pistols before our disaster. i remembered seeing him flung out from the door of the coach, and the red discharge of his pistols, as they struck the road. how had the astute mr. bradbury come thus to underestimate his man, charles craike, with consequences disastrous to himself and likely to prove disastrous to me?
i was in no mood for lying down on the wretched pallet. i tore off my cravat and bound it about my broken head. i was sick and weary, but i feared to sleep, lest they come upon me silently in the dark, and make an end of me. and i knew that he, whose name they would not utter before me, but who was surely charles craike, was expected at the house that night; i determined to overcome my heavy weariness, and stay awake awaiting his coming. i heard their voices, as i stood by the bed. roger growling yet, and martin laughing his mocking laugh, while they sat waiting in the room below, whence came that thin smoke rising through the rotting floor. i knelt down then, and with my hands i widened the breach in the rotting wood, hoping to hear what passed between these rogues, and what they plotted against me. the light p. 81shone soon more clearly; a chink in the ceiling below was visible; surely i had only to lie down and press my ear against the breach to hear their very words.
i was deterred from my purpose by a sudden cry from the gate, and the loud baying of a hound at the rear of the house. starting up, i stole to the window, and drawing back the sacking, set me to watch who came. i heard the doors below me open and clash; presently i saw the lantern shine through the dark, for the clouds held the moon, though it seemed rapidly to approach to a break between cloud and cloud. overhead the wind went wailing; it beat against the house, as though to tumble it to ruins; i stood shivering, for the bitter cold of the night and for my terrors; the strip of sacking bellied out like a sail as i clung to it. and to the crying of the wind he came.
the moon broke through the clouds; the wet cobbles of the court below me gleamed like a pool of silver water. he came riding swiftly to the house, leaving mother mag to secure the gate; i saw him sitting stiffly upon a great black horse, a black cloak flapping all about him. a gust swept his hat from his head, but his hand caught it; his silver-white hair was blown out in disorder. he looked up, as he drew in before the p. 82door; momentarily i saw a proud and baleful face; cut like a piece of fine white ivory. i saw the very shining of his eyes, as moonlight and the lamplight from the house played fully on him; and on the instant, indeed, i understood from that cruel face—like, yet so much unlike, my father’s—none whom this man hated or feared might hope for mercy from him.
and thus for the first time i looked upon my uncle charles craike of rogues’ haven.
