The Pit of Oppression

All along the corridor, utter night lay reclined like the body of a great, black cat, asleep with its head on its heavy paws. He went softly--to his dizzy mind it seemed as if at any moment his feet might sink into dark, sleek fur and a bristling, gigantic back hump up uneasily beneath them. The corridor seemed much longer than it did in daylight--why had he blown out the candle in his room? He had come some distance and still he could see no door with a white flower before it--he must have passed it, somehow, in this place where darkness was a mask of black satin across the eyes.

He turned about, as he thought, and started to grope his way back, with his hands out before him. They touched against a wall. He grew confused and stopped, trying to fix the points of the compass in his head. He turned again, walked forward and came up against another wall--the corridor was gone--he was trapped in a narrowing box of velvet and ebony whose sides shut in around him like a closing fist. The ludicrous aspect of the situation did not strike him--he had passed beyond humor--his mind was a sharpened point that had given itself entirely to the pull of a dark lodestone and now wished with all its strength to touch that lodestone and cease. He stood perfectly still for a long moment before the unreasonable wall that had so suddenly risen up in front of him, angry, ridiculous, impotent, and more than a little afraid.

Ah, he had it at last. He turned to the left and moved forward--right--the wall was gone. Sparta's chamber must be farther along, on the other; side of the cross-corridor--he would find it now. A sound would have helped him greatly--but there was no sound at all in the buried world through which he moved but thunder rattling the iron roof of heaven and the creeping noise of his own shoes. No, wait a moment. There was another sound.

There was another sound, faint and distant, as if it came through mufflings of black wool, but distinct enough when he listened for it, a sound made by some creature in pain. He paused and listened intently. At first he could not fix its direction. It seemed to come at once from everywhere and from nowhere, as if the encompassing and shadowy air of night itself were whispering to itself in quietness a single, monotonous word of obscure anguish. Then at last, after much time, he traced it down. The sound came from above, it was the voice of the Minorcan girl, and she was calling "Water, water, water," very slowly and weakly, as if her throat were small with pain.

He stood irresolute for a few seconds, the blood thudding in his head. Something hot and stinging began to die from his veins. "Water, water, water," said the thread of breath from above, in desolate supplication. He remembered a mole he had seen once, after dogs had worried it--it lay on its side, half-dead, and made much the same feeble, pitiful outcry, thin and incessant as the creak of a locust. He had been ready for desire and hate--for Death playing knucklebones with his joints in a corner--but for this he had not been ready. He could not go to Sparta with that haunted outcry in his ears.

He turned again, and bruised his shin against the bottom step of a stair. He knew where he was, then--he had strayed into the cross-corridor by mistake--the servants' quarters were above. "Water," said the voice, and choked. He started to climb the stair.

The thread of voice led him to a closed door. He tried it--it was locked but the key was on the outside. Then, just at the point of unlocking it, he paused. What was he doing here--he was looking for another door, a door with a flower before it. He had not come all this way with a black hand muffling his face to comfort a serving-wench in the throes of a bad dream. He started to turn back, but as he did so, "Water," said the crucified voice again, and the accents were not those of an imaginary anguish. He cursed himself for a fool, and turned the key.

At first he could see little in the room but the pale square of the window. Then, outside, a jagged thornbush of lightning flowered for an instant and vanished, and in its abrupt glare, brief as the flashing of powder, he saw the Minorcan girl standing upright against the foot of her bed. But now she seemed much taller than he had thought her. She was standing on tiptoe--why was she standing on tiptoe, and why were her arms stretched up stiffly over her head? Then she gave an inarticulate groan and he realized, with a shock, that she was bound, and suspended from the ceiling by a cord tied round her wrists so that the tips of her toes just brushed the floor.

He ran over to her and tried to lift her up in his arms. She gave a moan of relief or pain and her head drooped suddenly on his shoulder. Then he was trying to raise her with one arm and pick at the knots in the cord with his other hand. "Knife," he kept whispering to himself, inanely, "Knife. Knife. Knife. Where's knife?" It seemed hours before the knife was out of his pocket and the cord frayed apart.

He caught her in his arms. Her body was loose and heavy as the body of a rebellious child--she had fainted with exhaustion and pain. Staggeringly, he lifted her on the bed and laid her down as comfortably as he could. She stirred a little and sighed. "Agua" she said, in a whisper. He found some water in a ewer, splashed it clumsily on her face, wet her lips with it. Outside the thunder grew fainter and rain began to fall in a black, streaming torrent. He did not notice it. He knew only that, he would never breathe easily again, if he did not bring back to life, if but for an instant, this slight, defiant flesh, austere now, coldly wrapped in the husk of a darker flower than Sleep's.

She came back to consciousness, grudgingly, like a child learning to walk, like a visitor long-detained by a gift of pomegranates at a stony threshold and still half-unwilling to return. At last she was strong enough to sit up and make the woman's automatic gesture at arranging her hair.

"Thank Christ," said Andrew, shakily, hardly knowing what he said, "I thought you were dead."

"I was dead," said the Minorcan girl, and smiled a little, "How did you know?"

"I heard you--in the corridor--you were crying--"

She bit her lips. "They hurt my hands," she said, looking at them. "They hurt my hands."

"Who did it?" said Andrew, voice and body cold.

"She said I was her husband's strumpet," said the Minorcan girl, her eyes very black in the darkness. "She said she'd teach me. Then she got Mr. Cave."

"I think I shall kill Mr. Cave," said Andrew. "But your--the other servants--they must have heard--Good God--the key was in the door--"

"They are Greeks," said the Minorcan girl. "Touch a Greek and you touch a rat. Besides--they are hers and Mr. Cave's."

"They are devils," said Andrew, sobbingly. "This is a house of devils--oh, a house of devils--"

"Listen," said the Minorcan girl, with that smile that set her apart from him, in a circle of antique and savage stones. "Even yet, you do not know." And, sitting on the bed, while the rain slashed at the window, and Andrew dabbed at her bloody wrists with a torn handkerchief, she began, quite quietly, her recital of five years' wrong. There was no passion in the sentences--if there had been Andrew felt he could have borne their impact more easily. There was only the calm, insistent pulse of her even voice, throbbing slowly in the darkness like the beating of the wings of a tired bird.

"So they hanged the priest in his robes, on a wooden post, and stuck a piece of bread in his mouth to mock him," her voice tolled gravely. It was the unforgiveable sin. "After that--"

"Oh, for God's sake, Caterina--for God's sake--" stammered Andrew, excruciated beyond his strength, "Can't we get away from this house--tonight--in the rain--they can't hear us in the rain--there are horses in the stable--we'll ride to St. Augustine--tell the governor--he'll help us--my father's rich--we'll take Sebastian, too--Oh, come, Caterina, come--" He was pulling at her hands. She clenched her teeth, and he realized that he had hurt her.

"How can I ride, with my hands?" she said, helplessly.

"I'll tie you to the saddle--you can ride pillion behind Sebastian or me--you must, Caterina--you must--we can't stay here any more--" He was pleading with her now, as if for some salvation of spirit that lay hidden between her hands like a coral amulet. Her face was serene as she listened. She made a little gesture.

"Wait," she said, and rose from the bed. When she was on her feet she swayed for an instant. "Ah, Dios," she said, under her breath. Andrew offered her his shoulder, but she put him aside and walked slowly over to the other end of the room. There was a little shrine there--a cheap, plaster image of the Virgin. Her robes had been gaudily colored in staring blues and reds but they were mildewed now and the colors were faint and gentle. A tiny wick burned in a small cup of rancid oil at her feet. Caterina sank to her knees.

"_Madre de Dios_--Mary Virgin--Tower of Ivory--House of Gold--" she began, in Mahonese, in a soft, lulling voice. Andrew watched her perplexedly from the bed. The scene touched him with pity and grief, but it was something he could not understand. He would have been glad enough to kneel beside Caterina himself and pray, if he had thought it would bring her any comfort, but there was something in the absorption of her eyes, as she gazed at the tawdry little doll with a tarnished crown, that made her incomprehensible. It belonged, with the flower of the Spanish bayonet, to an earth that was not his--an earth in which he would always be a stranger. And yet, as the mutter of the prayer went on, he knew that he did not wish to be a stranger to that alien, enchanted ground.

When Caterina had finished, and crossed herself, with head bowed, she came back to him.

"Yes. I will come," she said. Their eyes met--for an instant he seemed to see behind hers, into her heart. There was a message there, clear and pure as if air had written it on a tablet of mountain-snow, but a message he could not read, for it was written in her language, and to him the characters of that language were mysterious as marks carved upon a druid stone. He stared for an instant, vainly--hoping for a Pentecost that did not descend. Then the veil fell between them again.

They crept down the stairs together, hand in hand, like children afraid of the dark. When they got to the long corridor, she turned to go down it but he held her back. "No. Not that way," he said. He felt suddenly as if he could not bear to stumble past the door with the white flower, even to get his other pistol and his father's letters. He was in a torment of impatience to leave the coquina house behind him forever. There must be arms in Dr. Gentian's study--besides, there was less chance of arousing the house if they went through there.

He smiled. The high chamber with the gold stars in its ceiling which had seen his imaginary Eden crumble to ash should be the instrument of their deliverance from this house of pain. He led the way slowly to the hidden stair.

When they had reached the panel behind the moon, an instinct of precaution made him slide it back and look. So, for the second time that day, an odd vision was vouchsafed him.

Dr. Gentian stood in front of the fireplace, warming his hands. He must have been but newly come from the road, for his muddy boots were set in a corner to dry and his riding-coat, stretched out on a chair before the fire, was streaked and spattered. He himself, however, was as neat and trim as ever. He had changed his muddied coat for a loose dressing-gown and his boots for soft Moorish slippers, worked with gold thread and turned up in stiff petals at the toes. On his head was a turban of yellow silk, such as many gentlemen who had served in the Indies affected, and he rubbed his hands over and over each other like a fly cleaning its wings, as he talked to himself in a low, quick voice and smiled at the fire.

Andrew could feel the Minorcan girl's whole body shudder against his for an instant and then grow still. "The gold cap!" she whispered in the voice of a beaten ghost, "He has on the gold cap. We shall never get free of him now."

"Nonsense," said Andrew, though he too was oddly affected by the sight of that spruce, quaint figure crowned with an inverted tulip-flower, smiling dimly and talking under its breath to a burning log. "We'll take the other stairs." He shut the panel and started to go back. But a few steps away from the upper door, he stopped and listened. There were footsteps in the corridor, a light step and a heavy one, going to and fro like the pace of sentries on guard.

"They are looking for me already," said the Minorcan girl, slowly, with a calm despair.

Andrew hesitated, feeling the lips of a velvet trap close slowly upon them both in the narrow darkness. Then he made up his mind. Better face Cæsar in his study than chance what might be in the upper corridor. His mind stuck on the thought that the house had orders not to disturb the Doctor when he wished quiet and that there was deadening in the walls of the high-ceiled chamber. His hand slid to the butt of his pistol--he had never killed a man--what was it like when you killed a man? He saw Cæsar sprawled in front of the fire with blood on his neck--a little flame stole out shyly from a log and licked at the yellow turban. He shivered. Fool, he was wasting time. "We'll risk it," he said hoarsely, and went sneaking down the stairs again.

At their foot, he paused. The Minorcan girl was on the step behind him--he could hear the flutter of her breath. Beyond, in the study, was another sound--Dr. Gentian's voice, plainer now.

At first Andrew thought some one else must have come into the room--the Doctor's tones were the tones of a man talking intimately to a familiar friend. He put his eye to a crack in the door. He could see little, but no other form than the Doctor's crossed the range of his vision. Then he realized that though the Doctor's voice questioned and affirmed and at times even pleaded, as if the friend he addressed were a superior in rank, there was never any reply.

The voice went on and on. "I saw Baron Funck in London," it said. "He took me into a room full of silver candlesticks and swore he would show me a secret, but the only secret he showed me was a juggler's trick. Then there was Hauptzehn in Dresden--he had Lully's book but he did not have the key. The Rose-Cross is nothing--they pretend to make diamonds but they do not know the writing on the wall of the tabernacle or the tears of the Golden King. In India I have seen the man climb the rope and the flower rise from the dust and go back again--I have seen the basket thrust through with swords--but I wish more than that. Am I not an Initiate? Have I not heard the goat cry in the dark and scattered the herb in the fire? I cannot seek elsewhere again--I have grown too old." The voice had a note of chant, now. "There is something buried at the roots of the mountains--why can I not put my hand on it? Bacon had the knowledge they say--am I so much less wise? I will not fool myself with crystals and black wafers--these things are folly, but there is something left--something beyond the speculum--behind the glass. I will give my soul for it, I tell you--I will give my soul for it." Now the tones were those of a merchant driving a canny bargain. "I can give you a thousand souls. You are foolish not to bargain with me. Come out of the fire, Baphomet--Baphomet--Baphomet--" the voice reached a shriek of supplication, "Come out of the fire, Baphomet, and buy my souls!"

Through his crack, Andrew saw the yellow turban waver and droop in fatigue like a crocus beaten by the wind. Now. He flung open the door and stepped into the room with his pistol clutched tight in sweating fingers.

The shock of his abrupt appearance, to a gentleman who so obviously expected other visitors, must have been painful in the extreme, but Dr. Gentian bore it with admirable equanimity. He put his hand to his mouth once, slowly, while his face altered. Then he came forward to Andrew, smiling, with hand outstretched, as if the pistol presented at his heart had no more importance than a sprig of rosemary.

"Ah, Andrew," he said cheerfully, "I had hardly hoped to see you before the morning. Come over by the fire, lad, and warm yourself--the house is chilly with the rain."

"Keep your distance," said Andrew hoarsely, "Keep your distance, you miracle of hell, or I'll shoot your heart out."

Dr. Gentian's hand dropped to his side. He looked puzzled and distressed.

"Why lad," he said gently, "Are you still so fevered?" He smiled sympathetically, "Or did my playacting just now fright--how much did you hear of it?" he said in a swift breath.

"Enough," said Andrew wretchedly. "Keep your distance, Dr. Gentian--I have no wish to murder you, but I leave your house tonight."

"I forbid it," said Dr. Gentian, promptly, "As your physician, if not as Sparta's father." He came a little nearer. "Let me look at your eyes, lad--yes, they're bright." He shook his head. "Far too bright--and your pulse is beating like a hammer I'll warrant, and your skin--oh, I know the signs! It would be madness for you to ride in this rain--" with each phrase he approached a trifle, delicately, on slippered feet.

"Let me feel your pulse a moment, lad," he said now, stretching out his hand again. Andrew beat it down with a gesture.

"Stop," he said, "I know you. The lot of you. You've plucked me like a pigeon between you--you and your whory daughter and your wife that hangs up servant girls by the thumbs. You torturers. Come out, Caterina," he said, without turning his head.

The door in the wall opened, the Minorcan girl stepped into the room. Dr. Gentian gazed at her for a moment. A tiny drop of blood gathered on one of her wrists and fell. Andrew, looking at the Doctor, thought he seemed more like a Cæsar than ever, with the color out of his cheeks, but this time he knew the face. It was no Julian or Augustan coin--it came of a later mintage--the silver was debased--the lids of the eyes grown heavy. Caligula at the Games staring down at a bloody sand, where something moved and cried--Tiberius killing flies like so many black slaves at the window of his villa above the cold, star-amethyst of the sea...

The Minorcan girl shut the door slowly behind her. She held out her bloody wrists. She did not speak.

"So," said Dr. Gentian, sucking his breath in. Then, without warning, he sprang for the side of the fireplace and pulled at the bell-cord furiously. The hammer of Andrew's pistol fell. The fire sparked in the flint but that was all. He remembered looking at the pistol, years ago, and thinking it should be reprimed.

"Oh, Christ," said Andrew, with a sob, and leaped forward, throwing the pistol aside. He heard the Minorcan girl cry out. Then a flare like the sudden flare and extinction of a puff of red fire lit the base of his brain for a moment and was succeeded by sparkling darkness.

When he roused, his head felt huge, and as if it would split apart like a cut orange at the slightest movement. He was propped in a corner with his hands bound behind his back and Mr. Cave was standing over him with a gorged, pleased look on his face.

"He has a skull," said Mr. Cave, turning away from him to the Doctor, who seemed engaged in washing his hands in a little basin, "I couldn't use my right hand, but even so--by God, all the time you were bandaging him, I thought you were wasting lint." Andrew noticed now that Mr. Cave carried his right arm in a sling. Dully, he wondered why.

"You were admirably prompt, Mr. Cave," said the Doctor, aloofly, drying his hands, "I must thank you. I confess, I have seldom known you so prompt before."

Mr. Cave's face grew sullen. "We were looking for the Minorcan piece," he said, "I thought she might have come down your stair. I heard you pull at the bell as I got to the door."

"A fortunate coincidence," said Dr. Gentian reflectively. "And yet--in future, Mr. Cave--unless by my invitation--"

"I wouldn't have used your damn staircase to-night," said Mr. Cave, flushing, "But I thought--as long as she'd broken away--"

"Quite right," purred the merry Doctor. "You are always right, Mr. Cave."

"What have you done with her?" said Andrew, thickly. His senses were returning, he felt on the point of vomiting from the warm, luke, jellyish taste of blood in his mouth.

The Doctor eyed him with his head cocked on one side, like a bird.

"Do not vex your mind unduly, Andrew," he said, "Your trollop has gone back to her room. She will doubtless undergo a little discipline in the morning, but that is all. I shall not even put her back in the fields."

"May God damn your soul in hell," said Andrew, retching, "If I could only get loose--"

"You would merely do yourself an injury," said Dr. Gentian briskly. He turned. "You sent for the soldiers, Mr. Cave?'

"Yes, sir," Mr. Cave grinned. "They'll have work to do for once."

"Ah, yes," said the Doctor, "By the way--" He picked up an object from the table, daintily and came over to Andrew, holding it at fingers' length. "Do you recognize this, my boy?"

Andrew stared at the object. It was the knife he had given Sebastian, but now there were rusty stains along the blade.

"Yes. It's my knife," he said. He was about to add that it had not been his for three months, but did not because each word he uttered was a stab in his head.

"Thank you," said the Doctor, "That is very satisfactory. You see, Andrew, your Minorcan friend, Zafortezas, happened to stab poor Mr. Cave in the arm with that knife a few hours ago. A flesh-wound only, fortunately. Your knife. Curious. And the same evening, you, for some inexplicable reason, attempt to murder me with a pistol. It begins to look like a plot, Andrew--it begins to look like a plot"--and he shook his head sorrowfully, while his eyes danced with little points of light.

"You--" said Andrew, raging impotently.

"Yes, Andrew. A plot to take my plantation from me. Ah, Andrew, Andrew, I wouldn't have believed it of you," he said.

Andrew was silent, feeling unmanly tears of weak fury prick at his eyes. Then he thought of something.

"I appeal to the governor," he said.

"Inadvisable," said Dr. Gentian. "The governor may not be my friend--but I doubt if he would give much weight to any appeal from a Northern rebel."

"Rebel?" said Andrew, dizzily.

"Rebel. Oh, I forgot--you have not had your mail. Well, you may take it to jail with you, and read it there. Yes, Andrew--the Northern Colonies are in revolt. There's been blood spilt--" He tossed a packet of letters into Andrew's lap. "Most interesting--especially the one from your brother. He seems to be deeply involved in the rebellion. Your father is greatly concerned."

Andrew was struck dumb. So it had come at last. He saw his brother Lucius firing at a man in a red coat--his father sitting at his desk in the home on Wall Street with a newspaper crumpled before him and his eyes looking into a darkness--and felt, for a bitter moment, that he himself was the most futile person alive.

"When did it happen?' he said.

"In April," Dr. Gentian smiled, "At a place called Lexington--and Concord--near Boston, aren't they? They say the colonials ran like hares."

"You lie," said Andrew, with an intensity that surprised him, "They wouldn't run before a parcel of lobsterbacks."

"No?" said Dr. Gentian. He smiled again. "You will note, Mr. Cave, that our friend has just insulted the entire British army _in toto_."

"I'll note it," said Mr. Cave, greedily, "I'll remember it."

A knock came at the door.

"There, sir," said Mr. Cave, "There are our lobsterbacks now."

He opened the door. Three soldiers headed by a corporal marched into the room and grounded arms. Andrew thought tiredly that they looked like disgruntled footmen in their draggled uniforms. The corporal's face was still puffy with sleep. By some trick of mind he remembered his first tour of inspection when they had passed the tiny guardhouse near the wharves and Dr. Gentian had jested about his military forces. There were only eight men at the post--where were the other five? It seemed inappropriate that they should not join in this nightmare joke of arresting him as a murderer and a rebel.

The corporal was a decent fellow--he had often given him tobacco. But tonight his face was as stiff and wooden as a face carved on the bowl of a pipe. It betrayed not the slightest sign that he had ever seen Andrew before. All soldiers were like that--they came out of a giant toy-box and turned into flat pieces of painted wood whenever someone spoke to them with a frog in his throat. He looked at the corporal's feet accusingly--they should be glued into a little green stand. Also, it was thoughtless of Dr. Gentian to leave his soldiers out in the rain. They would have to be repainted, tomorrow, clumsily, with sticky stuff that came off on your tongue when you licked the brush. Presently he would get up and push the corporal in the chest--then the corporal would totter on his stand and fall in one piece against the nearest private, and all three of them would clatter to the floor with a woodeny sound, because they were only toys, and this was a dream. Dr. Gentian was saying something.

"Put him in the cell with the Minorcan," he was saying. "They are both concerned in the attempt to assassinate Mr. Cave and myself and capture the colony. In addition, this young man is strongly suspected of being in league with the rebellion in the Northern Colonies. Seditious newspapers have been found in his room and his brother is a prime-mover in the revolt. He will be transferred to St. Augustine later, for trial. The charge is treason and attempted murder. Very well, corporal. Take charge of the prisoner."

"Get him up on his feet," said the corporal in a voice of board, "Can he walk? All right--bring him along between you."

They passed by the great main staircase on their way to the door, and Andrew, turning his head caught a glimpse of Sparta Gentian. She was standing half up the stairway, leaning on the rail, the shawl with the vivid flowers on it wrapped around her. Their eyes met for an instant. As she looked at him a slow smile widened on her mouth and her eyes began to burn. Then she leaned forward deliberately and spat at him from the stair.

"Damn the woman--she's spit on my coat," grumbled the private on Andrew's right as they went out of the door.

"Less talk there, you," said the corporal ahead. "Shut your mouth and pretend you're a duck--it's raining like bloody hell."

2.

There was darkness and the smell of damp stone and rotten mold--things ran about in the darkness on light, innumerable feet. The air was the air of a cellar that has been built underneath a well. For a moment Andrew was oddly reminded of the dairy-house on the country place that bordered the Boston road--cool even in lion-colored August with the coolness of slabs of stone buried deep in the ground. He was a tanned little boy in knee-breeches with flushed cheeks and damp hair, standing before a gleaming pan on a table and stretching out a stealthy finger through the pleasant gloom to dabble its tip in the risen cream, thick and yellow as daffodil-petals clotted together. Through the deep, barred window Summer came and the smell of it, the smell of heat and harvest and grain bursting out of the ear. Then he remembered. The little boy and the cool dairy belonged to another life which some stranger had lived in a void. This was the pit of oppression and he would lie in it like a truss of discarded hay till they took him out to hang him to an orange-tree in the bright morning, while Spanish ladies looked out from behind black fans from the jutting balconies of old houses in St. Augustine, and a curly-haired drummer-boy rattled out a dead march and then, for an instant, silenced his drum.

He moved forward unsteadily, in the darkness. "Sebastian?" he called querulously, "Sebastian?"

There was a stir in a corner.

"I am here, my friend," said a disembodied voice.

"Have they hurt you much, Sebastian?"

"The knife slipped," said the voice in answer. "He was too quick. The knife slipped in my hand." Then it was silent and the running things resumed their activities.

Andrew felt his way over to the corner. His outstretched hand touched a shoulder that winced beneath the touch.

"Have they hurt you much?" he said again.

"No," said Sebastian very bitterly. Andrew's eyes were growing accustomed to the blackness--now he saw the blur of a face. "I am well enough. But the knife was dedicated--it should not have slipped when I struck."

"I fired at him point-blank," said Andrew sitting down in a puddle. "But the priming was wet. Then they hit me over the head."

"You should have had a silver bullet," said Sebastian. "People like that are not killed with steel or lead."

"I will have a silver bullet next time," said Andrew, and fell silent. The two friends sat together in the dark for some time without saying anything more. Both were gazing into the shadow that encompassed them and Andrew's hand lay lightly on Sebastian's shoulder. There seemed little need of speech between them at the moment--each knew well enough what the other felt and thought. When Andrew had first entered this mildewed night, he had been curious to hear Sebastian's story and eager to tell his own. Now he felt as if both had been told and judged and found unimportant. There were only three things left of any importance, an ache in the skull, a darkness before the eyes, and the quick sound of scuttling feet in the other corners of the room.

After a while, however, Andrew spoke.

"Do you think there'll be a next time, Sebastian?" he said, heavily.

"Who knows?" said Sebastian, "We are always between God's fingers--now no less than ever."

At any other time the words would have struck Andrew as insufferably bigoted and submissive. Now they seemed to him what they were, a calm statement of fact. To Sebastian God was a visible and tangible presence--therefore He was here, in this pit, no more so and no less than He was everywhere. He was with the soldiers in the guardroom, also, as they drank out of empty cups and cut at toy food that stuck to its plate. He was with Dr. Gentian in his study when devils hatched in the fire. No sin could avert that scrutiny, no blasphemy or righteousness deter its penetration by the width of a hair. When the time came for judgment, they should all be judged--meanwhile it behooved them to act according to their lights, for, within their limits of flesh, they were free to do good or evil. God had bound them all with a light, indivisible cord--when He wished, He could gather them up and count them like the buttons on Peggy's button string. In the meantime, He might never lift a finger to avert a present anguish--for so are martyrs left without justification.

Andrew wished that he could think of God like that, but he could not. To him God was something vague to pray to, for happiness or against the approach of pain--something which might be there, God was a cushioned pew and a prayer-book and a clergyman in robes as opposed to a hard pew and a long hymn and a preacher in a black Geneva gown. He had never thought much about God except as a superior kind of Archbishop of Canterbury who sat on a cloud and looked at Papists sternly. But Sebastian was a Papist--and Sebastian had taken God in his mouth--and God was with him now. It was very strange and just a little unfair.

"They say I'm a traitor," he said idly, "They say the Northern colonies have revolted and there was a fight between our men and the soldiers--and my brother was in it, so I must be a traitor, too."

"When the ass is spurred too hard it tries to kick off its rider," said Sebastian, who had proverbs in his blood, "Are you for the rider or the ass?"

"I don't know," said Andrew, puzzled, "My house is divided. I should have thought more about it before. I know my father must be for the King."

"Then you must be for the King," said Sebastian, with Latin respect for paternal authority, "It is ugly when a cause divides son and father--even a good cause.

"I don't know," said Andrew again, "It doesn't seem real yet." Again he saw the dim picture of his brother aiming a musket at a toy-soldier corporal--the picture was fantastic--it could not have occurred. "I can't believe they're really fighting," he added, "I can't. The ministry has passed some bad laws, of course--but Hancock and Adams--who'd ever fight for them?"

"Once men have started to fight, they forget what set them on," Sebastian said, "It is like a game of ball--the ball is nothing--the thing is to throw the ball so it counts for your side. Those who watch the game see better than the players. Only, in war, you cannot stand off and watch the game."

"I don't want to fight the King's soldiers, though," said Andrew, "Why should I? And I certainly can't imagine fighting Lucius."

"You will have to do one or the other," said Sebastian, placidly, "But the winning side is always hard to tell."

"Not this time," said Andrew, feeling his tongue grow curiously bitter, "If there really is a revolt, they'll put it down as they put down the Pretender at Culloden. Butcher Cumberland. They have a trained army. We have nothing. I mean the Colonials have nothing," he added hastily.

"God sometimes gets tired of the man on the ass," said Sebastian, "If I didn't think that, I would strangle myself here with my own hands."

"Perhaps," said Andrew, considering, "But if I were betting, I should bet on the man."

"You have already bet on the ass, my friend," said Sebastian, with a chuckle, "If you had not, you would not be here."

His shoulder was withdrawn from beneath Andrew's hand. He turned over on his side. "I have some letters from home," muttered Andrew, "I can tell better when I read them--is there ever any light in this place, Sebastian?"

"A little, in the morning. I remember when we first made this cellar, I wondered why it was dug so deep." He was silent. Andrew heard him begin to breathe deeply and quietly.

"What's the matter, Sebastian--are you going to sleep?"

"Why not?" said a drowsy voice, "I may dream my knife did not slip after all."

"I wonder if my head will come off, if I try to sleep," said Andrew to himself. "I suppose it won't, though it feels like it." He stretched himself out on the straw and shut his eyes. "But listen, Sebastian," he said, after a long pause, "Do you really believe God is here in prison with us, in this room?" He waited, but there was no answer. Then he sighed and arranged himself a little more comfortably, hoping the things that ran would not scamper over him much, once he was quiet. In the morning, they could plan, perhaps--not now--the thick stupor of fatigue rocked him in a cradle of lead. It seemed odd that the dawn which would wash the tiny window above him with pale waters of light tomorrow was the very same colored dawn that should have found him dozing in Sparta Gentian's bed, with her hair spread over their pillow like a scarf of drawn gold.

3.

As Sebastian had said, light came to their habitation in the morning--a slanting, shallow column, but enough to enable Andrew to read his letters. Also they had been given fresh water and a dish of boiled rice. The corporal had brought them these, but had refused to answer any questions. Andrew had asked for a razor, which was, of course, denied.

"I never saw them hang a fellow with a beard," the corporal remarked judicially after the request, "But then I haven't seen much hanging." His mouth was sad. "When they hung the great pirates at Execution Dock I was as near to it as could be, but somebody had to stay with Gramfer. Crippled all up he was, and twice he'd fallen in the fire with nobody by. Well, I was the youngest and the least account, so I didn't see it. They say Kidd made a fine show. My father saw him," he added, with some pride. "Twirled he did and kicked for a while. Well, 'tis all in the drop, they say--a proper drop and 'tis over as soon as bite your nails," he concluded cheerfully and disappeared.

Andrew could not hate the man for his graveyard remarks--his face was as honest and foolish as the face of a giant pumpkin. But he felt his neck tenderly for a moment after the fellow had gone.

Now Sebastian was finishing the boiled rice, and he was reading the last of his letters. From them he got anxiety and excitement but little solace. Lexington--Concord--he tried to remember Lexington--he had passed through it once on a memorable trip to Boston with his father and Lucius. He remembered the leathery smell of the coach and how his father had gone to sleep with a red silk handkerchief over his face distinctly enough, but Lexington itself eluded him. A blur of trees--a village green where a goose waddled and stretched out its neck to hiss at a pinafored little girl--a white church with a steeple--the open door of a blacksmith shop where a man in a leather apron spat upon a fiery horseshoe--these scraps were all he could dredge up from the ragbag of memory. He stitched them into a town, in no way different from a dozen other little Massachusetts towns through which their coach had rolled, and yet now, somehow, very different. A month ago, when morning was only half-awake and the shadows lay the wrong way, men had died on that dim grass, awkwardly, unexpectedly--the brimstone smell of burnt powder had drifted in through the windows of the white church and the open door of the smithy--where the goose had waddled the green, bullets had journeyed as casually, with much the same hissing sound. He saw a plump woman with a queer white face stand at the foot of a stairway, listening, and his brother, the macaroni with two watches, dandy no longer but dirty and smooched, with a cut on his cheek, hiding behind a wall to fire at broken red dots running over a bridge. And still he could not comprehend.

"Disperse ye Rebels says He but we were Not for Dispersing ... So, as I say, We Chast them till they met with their Other Force ... Lord Percy's, it is Said ... I have a Fine Blister on Both my Feet because of it and a better prospect of Hanging than Ever I had but oh Andrew you should have Seen the Sweet Way they Ran..."

That was Lucius' letter. So no more at Present from Yr. Bro. It was odd to think of Lucius, the correct, the mannered, helping Massachusetts bumpkins to hunt a lord like a fox.

One thing, however, stood out plainly. His father was a broken man. Suspected by both sides, the invisible swordsman had forced him to the wall at last. The handwriting in his last epistle was shaky and old--the ends of the letters trailed off feebly as if it had been too great a care to finish them aright. "I have had a Stroke, my dear Sonn, and though they say 'Twas not the True Apoplexy, yr. Mother is greatly Concerned." Andrew felt pain tear at his heart, ragged and sharp. Pain and satire, for the words were followed by a formal blessing "Upon your Projected Marriage." For an instant Andrew wished, humanly enough, that he had never found Sparta out. His father seemed to set such store by the fact that his younger son, at least, was safe from the worries that beset himself. The mood was succeeded by one quite as youthful though more practical. He started up. He must get back to New York at once--see his father--find out the truth of the quarrel between colonies and King. His head was better now and his fever, queerly enough, quite gone. He was almost at the door before he remembered. Then he put his head in his hands and groaned aloud.

He felt Sebastian touch him on the arm. "Come my friend," said a voice, "Sorrow eases the heart, but we have no time for it now. There must be a way out of this hole--the rats come in and go out, and between us we have at least as much sagacity as a rat."

It was later. The slanting column of light through the window had almost disappeared. They had searched the boundaries of their prison, floor and walls, as far as their hands could reach, like misers looking for a penny, and still they had found nothing to aid their escape. Two crannies through which rats could pass, a litter of soiled straw tossed over and over--that was all. Andrew thought of the tools hanging from the bench of the carpenter's shop by the wharf with a hopeless longing. He would have given any dubious immortality for the little file down by the end.

"We must think of some way to get the soldier in here and knock him on the head," said Sebastian, rising from his knees after a last picking over of the straw. "We cannot take the wall apart with our fingernails."

"Even if we did, though..." said Andrew.

"Yes," said Sebastian, "There's only one way out and that's through the guardroom. But it is our only chance."

"Wait a minute," said Andrew. He took up the dish and the pitcher that had held their breakfast and stared at them with greedy searching eyes.

"I thought of that," said Sebastian. He tapped the dish, "Wood," the pitcher, "Clay." "Even if we broke the pitcher, the pieces would crumble on the stone."

"There must be something, somewhere," said Andrew, against reason. Again his eyes slowly traversed the familiar walls of the room from ceiling to floor. Then he stiffened all over like a dog coming to point. High up in the wall and hardly visible in the gloom, beyond the reach of their hands, was a large, projecting nail.

"Get up on my shoulders, Sebastian--there is our tool," he said, his voice shaken as if he had just risen from deep water with a sea-pearl in his hand.

It took an hour or so to work the nail loose from the wall. When they had it down at last, it proved bent and rusty but they gloated over it with a solemn joy.

"Now," said Sebastian, practically, "Where?" and he looked around him.

"We could never tunnel through from below in time," said Andrew. "That stone beneath the window--can you reach it, if you stand on my shoulders again?"

"I can just reach up to the middle of the bar," said Sebastian, after he had tried.

"Sentry outside?"

Sebastian peered cautiously, "I don't see one. But there may be one. There's a ditch, and a little rise beyond it."

"Thank God the light's gone away. He'd hardly see us, anyhow, in the darkness--and we'll just have to chance being heard. Is the window too small?"

"Yes. Even if we could cut the bar."

"Well then," said Andrew, gritting his teeth and wishing Sebastian weighed less. "We'll have to take out the stone."

They spelled each other, all afternoon, at short intervals, the one who was below listening for the footsteps of the guard. The nail grew dull--then sharp again as it filed itself against the stone--then dull once more. Once it almost broke in two and once they were nearly caught by the unexpected return of the corporal soon after he had brought them a scant and nasty dinner. It was hard, exhausting work--the mortar at which they picked was only a little less indurate than the stones it cemented and the man who worked had to support himself with one hand against the wall while his human stepladder suffered rigid agonies in back and loins. When they were too beaten with fatigue to work any more it seemed to them as if they had accomplished as little as a pair of caterpillars gnawing blindly at the sides of an iron box, but at least a beginning had been made. They disguised their work with a paste of mud and spittle and rested achingly.

The next day was the same, and the next--a fever of labor in the dark to the accompaniment of the slight rasp of the worn nail against the stone--a driving of cramped, rebellious muscles to the same monotonous, tiny task. Pick, pick, pick, went the sound of the nail--pick, pick, pick. The sound wore a shallow groove in Andrew's mind. He could hear it continue interminably through the uneasy veil of sleep and his fingers twitched mechanically as if they still held the nail.

Pride and hope alike were gone, the body was gone, of the body only the hands remained, picking, picking unendingly like clumsy thieves at the lock of a closed door. He had long ago ceased to be Andrew Beard. He was a smoke, a shadow, that crawled up upon another shadow's shoulders in obliterated gloom, to pick, pick, pick with a shadowy fang at a deepening crack between two blocks of darkness. Sometimes it was the black, dully-gleaming heart of Night itself at which he dug, and he half-expected his nail at any moment to slip through some crack in heaven and shatter itself to bits against the points of a star.

Why he did what he was doing, he no longer remembered. The thought of any actual escape was buried deep under tiny crumbs of mortar and flakes of iron-rust. He felt at times that if some one had opened the door and told him he was free, he would merely have stared and grunted and returned to the corner beneath the window to bend his back again like a burdened ass while Sebastian stood upon it and nibbled at a coffin of coquina somewhere above him, for ages, with that slight, rasping sound till his fingers refused their office and it was time for Andrew to crawl up and nibble in his turn.

Toward mid-evening of the third day, the stone could be loosened a little. If both had been able to get any purchase on it, at the same time, they might have been able to wrench it away from the bar which was cemented into it from above. As it was the stone would only give one useless and exasperating fraction of an inch, and the problem of the bar remained. The bar, too, was harder to get at, and they could hardly file it with what was left of the nail.

"Is it deep sunk, do you think, Sebastian?" said Andrew, lying dead on the floor after a straining and unsuccessful attempt to tear the stone out of the wall by main force.

"I think so," said Sebastian wearily. "We shall have to pick the mortar out of its socket and bend it up somehow. Then, perhaps, the stone will loosen."

"I wish I had your patience," said Andrew, "Myself, I think we shall die before we pick out that mortar."

He rose. "Make me a back, Sebastian. I'll see if I can reach it."

He clung with one hand to the sill and reached the other up awkwardly to pick at the mortar that held the bar. His hand was unsteady with fatigue and the stroke went wild. The nail slipped, his knuckles rapped on the stone. His fingers jerked apart mechanically at the pain, the nail flew out, hopped between the bars and dropped over the outer edge of the window sill. He heard it clink on a stone and felt sick and old. He tried to reach over through the bars, but the window opening was deep and narrow--from his cramped position he could just put his hand out over the outer edge. There was a ditch beyond, a couple of feet in depth, where the nail had fallen. Try as he might he could not reach to the bottom of that ditch.

His muscles gave way. He slid down.

"Kill me, Sebastian," he gasped, "I have lost the nail," and fell in a heap on the floor.

"We must find another nail," said Sebastian, after a long silence, but even as he spoke both knew that there was no other nail.

"Perhaps, if we rest for a while, we will be able to move the stone without it," said Andrew, but his voice was entirely without hope. The stone had come to have a personality to them both in the hours they had labored upon it. At times they cursed it in hushed voices as one curses an ungrateful woman--at other times they pled with it for a sulky god. Now it had turned into a god forever, a dumb god with a broad, flat, roughened, eyeless face, that sat across the door of life like a plummet of lead, and blocked it, and would not move away.

"We will have to kill the guard after all," said Sebastian, tonelessly. "Kill him somehow and chance to rest." His voice showed the utter desperation of the expedient.

"Stone walls do no-ot a pri-son make. Nor i-ron BARS a c-a-a-g-e--" giggled Andrew suddenly. "That's funny, isn't it, Sebastian? I remember my mother used to sing that--she had a good voice. But the man who wrote the song was a liar all the same. Oh, wasn't he a liar, Sebastian--" he continued, half-hysterically.

"Put me on your shoulders, Andrew," said the other, quietly. "My arm is a little longer than yours--perhaps I can reach it."

Andrew gulped, recovered his wits, and started to obey. But just as he bent his back, something rattled on the floor.

They looked at each other incredulously, holding their breath--two hunched images of shadow staring at each other intently like apes in a cage. There was another tiny rattle on the floor. Then Andrew felt a pebble strike on his cheek.

"Window, Sebastian," he said fiercely, while hope grew up in his mind like a winter-rose.

It seemed to him that he stood for hours with Sebastian's feet digging into his shoulders while Sebastian whispered hurriedly in Mahonese to another whisper, swift and gentle as the rustle of a green leaf on a budded tree. Then at last Sebastian was down and talking in fierce, little, jerky phrases.

"Caterina," he said, "She managed to get away. There's a sentry but he's a fool. Sleeps. Oh, you English--you think you can watch a rathole with a lazy cat. Boat, by the old wharf. Tomorrow night. They'll think we've gone by land. She'll be at the boat. Your boy helped. Carlos. He says you gave him a dollar. He's very grateful."

"What about the nail?" said Andrew, still tormented by its loss.

"We have better than nails now," said Sebastian, luxuriously. He opened his hand and showed Andrew a thin glass bottle full of yellow liquid. He shook it lovingly. It rattled. "Files," he said huskily. "Two files. And oil to quiet them."

Andrew began to laugh soundlessly--a painful laughter that racked the pit of his stomach. Then he thought of something else, and his laughter stopped.

"What did they do to her?" he said, trembling.

"Caterina? They whipped her, that next morning. That's why she couldn't come before. Even now--" He stretched out his arms. The slow roll of his voice filled the chamber like the beating of an iron heart. "Oh, Christ on the Cross--" he prayed, "Oh, Christ on the Cross--You have given us a way to the air--Give us vengeance too--if only a little--a little--" He broke off. "We must rest for a while," he said more naturally. "Even with the bar cut through we will need all our strength for the stone."

4.

The bar was all but cut through--the cut plastered over and concealed. Then they had to wait. They had rested longer than they had intended before starting the work, sinking down into a black, murmuring bog of sleep as soon as their heads touched the floor, and when the task was nearly done, the air beyond the window had changed, and, behind dark gauzes, yellow dawn began to stir faintly, like a bird still hidden in the egg. After that, they could sleep again for a while, but not as they had slept before. They were too tense, the bog refused to receive them, they napped in uneasy snatches like dogs before a hunt. Andrew, waking a dozen times, each time glowered up at the window and was angry to see how slowly the first pale stiletto of light broadened into a yellow sword.

When the corporal brought their breakfast they were both broad awake and very restless. They tried to hold him in talk to make the minutes pass but he was surly and would only mutter in general terms against sergeants who cheated honest men out of their pay with dice that had a spell on them.

"By God," he growled, "if both of you weren't such traitors, I'd change you a bottle of Augustine rum for the promise of a couple of knucklebones after you were hanged. They say a hanged man's knucklebones make wizardy dice, if he's strung up in the natural course of crime--but being traitors, yours wouldn't serve most likely--'tis just my luck--I never played jailer before except on a black fellow that stole the Governor's wig for a heathen idol in Jamaica and he was a poor pagan that didn't leave me as much as a copper ear-ring. I was born with a caul, too, but I've never had any luck from it. When I was christened parson opened the book at the wrong place and started blazing away at the Burial Service most savagely before a' could be halted and it's shadowed me ever since. I can feel the Resurrection and the Life stuck in my throat at night like a slice of apple--You're lucky to be decently hanged, you are, there's some more grievous and judgmatical death in store for me, and it rises my dinner in me to have to think of it--" So he mourned himself away, leaving them alone with a vast desert of time.

The light grew, the hours dragged, they could not keep their eyes from the bar and the stone. They would talk to each other feverishly for a while and then, without intention, fall suddenly into a staring silence. Andrew found at last that he was talking to himself under breath. "Night," he was murmuring. "Night. Oh _lente, lente, currite, noctes equi_--" no, that was the wrong quotation, that asked night's coursers to slacken their pace.

"What time do you suppose it is, Sebastian?" he said for the twentieth time.

"We must have hours yet," said Sebastian. Andrew had expected the answer, but he sighed all the same. He looked at the bar again. To the eyes of both the crack in it had grown, all through the morning. Now it yawned--a blunt, metal mouth, insecurely stuffed with mud and straw. It seemed impossible that the stupidest of jailers should not detect it at a glance.

"Sebastian, do you think if--" began Andrew, and stopped himself. He must keep his eyes from the bar--if he did not something would make him leap up and swing from it chattering like a monkey. For a moment he half-wished the corporal had seen the crack and suspected. Anything was better than this waiting. Then he made a sort of formless prayer to anything which might be listening not to pay the slightest attention to his wish.

There were footsteps in the corridor--coming nearer. Andrew felt his body grow taut--glancing over at Sebastian he saw that he too was rigid. His wish had been granted. They were found out. They were coming to take them to some other cell, deep down, where even a file would be of no use. They were coming to hang them, now, while the light still held and the air was sweet.

The door opened. The corporal was there with two other men.

"You're wanted," he said, jerking his thumb at Andrew. "No--not you--him," as Sebastian started to rise.

Andrew got up slowly, feeling sweat on his palms. Sebastian and he were to be separated--ironed perhaps. Either step would be fatal to both, now. Why hadn't they chanced it last night?

"Who wants me?" he said, licking his mouth.

"You're wanted," said the corporal, grinning. "Come on now--shake a leg."

"_Adios, amigo_," murmured Andrew stiffly as he passed Sebastian. They touched hands.

"Come on now," said the corporal impatiently, "Last Wills and Testaments not executed at this shop without longer notice."

5.

"Well, Andrew," said Dr. Gentian, pleasantly, "I am sorry to see you so unkempt. I wish I could lend you a razor. When I was in prison at Poona," he continued reflectively, rubbing his chin, "I managed to shave with a broken cowrie-shell. But it was a painful expedient, at best. I should not advise its imitation, though it passes the time as well as trying to tame a rat. I wonder at the patience of those men who find prison-rats so easy to tame. Mine were savage little beasts--Orpheus himself could not have made them affable." He broke off, tracing a little pattern with his right thumb in the silver scrollwork on the butt of Andrew's pistol.

The two were alone--the soldiers had retired outside the door. Andrew, through lowered lids calculated the distance between them and the possibility of springing across the table and getting that firm throat between his hands before the balanced forefinger could pull the trigger.

"I wouldn't," said the doctor, smiling. "This priming happens to be dry and--let me compliment you on your taste in small-arms, Andrew. You may not have observed it, but this particular pistol is a weapon of delightful precision. I experimented with it this morning upon a humming-bird--the poor thing was blown into feathers at twenty paces."

"What do you want with me?" said Andrew, heavily. His eyes were still blinking with the unaccustomed plenty of daylight in this windowed room. He had almost forgotten there were such rooms, he realized, now--and realized too, distastefully, the scarecrow figure he must cut before the Immaculate Doctor. His clothes were ragged and foul--dirty stubble covered his face--he had not been clean for days. His eyes were furtive--his body had a prison smell to it--when he walked, he walked like a prisoner, with a heavy, shuffling step. In a tale, such tiny things would not matter to the heroic captive--it was monstrously unfair that they should matter now.

"I wanted to see you, Andrew," said the Doctor, softly, "and now that I have, I confess myself satisfied."

Andrew hardly heard him--his mind was busy with a different problem. "For God's sake tell them to give me a clean shirt, you devil!" he burst out suddenly, and instantly felt ashamed.

The Doctor laughed. "Your request is quaintly put," he said, with enjoyment, "but I'll grant it. You shall have a clean shirt--yes, Andrew--and soap and a razor--and go wherever you wish. For a price, of course," he added, tracing his pattern.

Andrew had straightened up at the first of his words. Now his shoulders sagged again.

"There would be," he said, flatly, "No."

"You haven't heard my terms yet," said the Doctor. "I ask very little. Only a lapse of memory." He looked at Andrew but Andrew did not reply.

"I do not even ask you to go on with your projected marriage." He continued, "A son-in-law," his thumb crept along a tiny silver scroll, "whose brother is--disaffected--whose father--will be bankrupt--would hardly fit with my plans. All I ask is--seven days forgotten. Completely. Your word on it. Then you're free."

"Why?" said Andrew, bluntly. "Why not hang me out of hand at once?"

"Oh--call it a whim--a vagary," said the Doctor with masked eyes, "I've always rather loved fools--after my own fashion. And then--I'll be frank enough--trying you in Augustine would be such a tedious business--I could carry it through--don't mistake me--but there might be embarrassing questions. I'd rather have your word."

"Suppose I broke my word?"

"To be frank," said the Doctor, "I do not care very greatly what you do--out of the Floridas. Till then--you would sign a--confession--I have drawn up. You could have it back--in time."

"Confession of what?" said Andrew.

"Oh--not too much," said the Doctor, pursing his lips. "Disloyalty, chiefly--an attempt on my daughter's honor, perhaps--just enough to discredit you. I assure you I should use it with the greatest reluctance," and, strangely enough, Andrew thought that he spoke the truth.

"Sebastian and Caterina?" he said.

The Doctor pondered. "You can have the girl," he said finally. "I should regret it, but after all--Mrs. Gentian deserves consideration. The man, no. I must keep discipline. But I might merely send him to St. Augustine prison, then."

"What happens to him otherwise?" said Andrew, breathing.

"The currycomb," said the Doctor in a wisp of voice. "A distressing end."

Andrew looked at him.

"I should really advise against it," said the Doctor very softly, with his forefinger alert. "You could not possibly reach me in time. Besides, there are always the soldiers."

Andrew drew a long breath.

"And--I--?" he said.

"Oh, you would merely hang," said the Doctor, recovering his cheerfulness. "Merely hang. You're young to hang, Andrew."

Andrew passed his hand over his eyes, trying to think. He could save Sebastian's life, Caterina's, his own. Sebastian was patient and clever--even in the dungeons of St. Augustine he might find some way of escape. Then they would all be saved. The other way was death. He could refuse for himself, and die, but he would not have to die in torment as Sebastian must.

For an instant he saw himself free, at the rail of a ship, with Caterina at his side. Her hand was lightly on his, she was telling him he had done well, her eyes were gentle. Cool as the fronds of lilies floating on a hushed and evening pool, her fingers touched his, and met, and somewhere, Sebastian was smiling at them both from his dungeon...

His mind revolted from the mirage, smarting with shame and self-disgust. Dr. Gentian was very adroit. He had put this thing so subtly that he, Andrew, could not only save himself but Caterina for himself and fool his mind into thinking he had acted nobly. No one could accuse him if he did this--Sebastian would not--his own spirit might for a while but it would grow sleepy--a year from now, this present would be forgotten, buried under a drifting red-and-yellow heap of leaf-brittle days like the skeleton of a rat, to crumble into earth and water and sun. And Sebastian would be still in his dungeon--but perhaps Caterina and he could buy him out somehow if he had not died ...

The stone. The bar. The escape.

But it seemed impossible that they should really escape. Dr. Gentian was too strong. He had been in prison himself--he would not have left them there, together, unchained, without providing against any escape. All the time that they had been gnawing in the dark he had been outside the window, listening, smiling, till he could no longer contain the mirth in his belly and went slowly back to laugh at them aloud with the devils that lived in the chimney of his study. Yes, he must have been doing that.

There was no use trying to bargain with him over Mr. Cave's projected plan of revolt. He knew of that, too, undoubtedly--and if, by some miracle, he did not, it offered the one slim chance that, in the confusion of such an event, they might escape indeed.

Was he overrating Dr. Gentian's powers? Perhaps. But as he stared at him now, with heavy eyes, he saw him as a man no longer, not even a Cæsar, but something inhuman, with the transient powers of the inhuman over human stuff. An undying figure that walked from the East, with a cloud of flies above it, and a gilt pomander in its hand.

"Aren't you ever afraid of hell?" he found himself saying, queerly, with a catch in his voice. "I should think you'd be afraid of hell."

The smile on Dr. Gentian's face became a rictus cut in ivory, the muscles of the jaw stood out.

"Why this is hell, nor am I out of it," he quoted in a slow, dry voice., "'Think'st thou that I'--did you ever read Marlowe, Andrew? The style is very impure--bombastic, even--he cannot compare with Pope--but there are things in his Faustus which--"

He stopped. His mouth relaxed. But while he spoke, there had been something in his face that Andrew had never expected to see there--a turn of the mouth--a shape behind the eyes--something ruined and very lonely--a statue defaced--a barren bough in the gale.

It passed. "Well?" said the easy voice.

Andrew looked at the floor. He was twenty-two. When you were twenty-two, Death was something far-off that happened to other people. It needn't happen to him for a long time.

What if the Minorcans were oppressed? They weren't actually slaves. They got along. Some people, maybe, had to be oppressed. It wasn't his quarrel.

Then he saw them, young and old, women and children, the dead on the voyage, the dead in the first months of fever, the priest swinging in his robes, the sallow boy, screaming, under the currycomb. But it wasn't his quarrel.

There were two doors open. One meant life, and a clean shirt, and Caterina's hand on his hand, by the rail of a ship, at night, while the moon climbed up in heaven like a silver woman. The other was death for all of them. He shut his eyes and chose death.

"No, I won't," he said, in a voice he was surprised to find so even.

Dr. Gentian sighed. "I'm sorry," he said. "Dying is so wasteful. You can have twenty-four hours to think it over, Andrew. I will see you again tomorrow, when they are up. Think it over. Sergeant," he called and struck on a bell. "I hate to hang you, Andrew--it will be a great nuisance. I had a parrot once that amused me. I had to wring its neck. It is much the same. You may take the prisoner back now, Sergeant, if you will."

6.

"He gave me twenty-four hours," Andrew ended. He looked at his friend.

"It is more than enough," said Sebastian. "We shall escape in twelve."

Before the certitude of his tone the image of Dr. Gentian that towered in Andrew's mind like a genie rising from a bottle in a blue, magic fume, diminished gradually. He became what he was, a man of great parts, whose knowledge of his own abilities had swollen with power till it festered, and so spoiled a tyrant instead of making a king. Seen so, he was no longer terrific or even hateful, only beggared, as all men are beggared in one way or another who seek from life a passion more intense than the body can bear. He was a king in check--a torch inverted--a fire that wasted itself against a column of salt--and as Andrew began to perceive this, slowly and delicately as the slow lifting of a slab of bronze from his breast, the fear of death passed from him and left him composed. It would return, undoubtedly, but for this moment, brief as the flight of a bird between tree and tree, it had gone. He could smell the mignonette in his mother's garden. Dr. Gentian could kill them both, but that was all he could do.

"What are you going to do, Sebastian, when we are free?" he said casually, out of a strange peace.

"Tell the governor to free my people," said Sebastian. The cool stone of peace had touched at his lips as well, he spoke with the simplicity of a ghost. "When they are free--" he shrugged. "Who knows? Life is long--there are many things to do before the priest comes with his oil. If I had money I should like to buy a fishing-boat--my father was a fisherman. I should like to marry, too, and have a son. It is good to have a son to help you draw in the nets. And you, my friend?"

"I shall go North," said Andrew. "Perhaps to help the ass you spoke of kick off his rider--yes." It was the first time he had definitely put the thought at the back of his mind into words. He was astonished to find how rational it sounded. "After all--as long as they've called me a traitor--" he said, musingly. He wondered if that were really what he would do. It was difficult to see himself with a ragamuffin musket, presenting it at Lion and Unicorn.

Sebastian nodded. "I thought so," he said. "There are three things one cannot run away from--war, love and death." His voice held that indolent fatalism that has so often deceived the North by its languid pride. "Sometime I should like to go back to Minorca," he confessed. His eyes glittered. "This is a good country, here, but it is not Fererias."

"Tell me about your island," said Andrew, childishly. He settled himself in a corner to listen.

"You'd laugh at it, if you went there," said Sebastian. "It is small and harsh and poor. But the people are friendly there. My uncle lives in Mahon, if he has not died--he is a very friendly and hospitable person. My aunt has copper pans in her kitchen," he continued, with some pride. "They tease her about being rich--she is not--they came from her father who was a copper-smith--but few of us have copper vessels, even in the town--" His voice droned on, lulling Andrew into the content of a sleepy child. It was now almost entirely dark in their cell, though outside the sun had not yet set. There would be hours still before they would be safe in cutting through the rest of the bar, but now Andrew did not care how many there were. The fear of death no longer ran about with the rats in the darkness and he was quite happy listening to the slow story of certain doings in the family of a foreign copper-smith which could not possibly interest any person of gentility.

7.

Dr. Gentian laid his book down with a sigh, and glanced at his watch. He rose, and stood for a moment, observing how surely and skilfully the petal of a flower grew in rose-colored silk upon gauze, under the deft, shining strokes of his wife's embroidery needle.

"That must tire your eyes, my dear--especially at night," he said, with solicitude.

"I am never tired." She did not turn her head to answer. "Are you going now?"

"Yes, my dear. I am going now. You need not wait up for me. I shall not be back till late."

She made a knot in the silk. "You never believe me," she said. "Even if I told you, you were walking into a pitfall--you wouldn't believe me."

He smiled, "I should merely think your natural concern for my safety had overbalanced your excellent reason," he said.

"No doubt," she said wearily, her face still averted. "Well--you can go, then. I shan't wait up."

"It matters to you still," he said, consideringly. "That seems strange."

"Strange enough." Her eyes were fixed on her work. "You'd be a clever man, Hilary, if you left well enough alone."

"A clever man never leaves well enough alone," he said and smiled.

The silk thread broke in her fingers. "You're blind," she said. "Blind and deaf. There's a shadow on your back tonight. But you're deaf and blind. You only think of playing cat and mouse with that boy."

"One must have games." The Doctor's tone was amused. "And cat and mouse is an excellent game, for the cat."

"You'd better watch your daughter." She turned her face now and looked at him.

"My dear!"

"I've told you. She and her lackey. They've been too quiet these last days. Oh, well--go your road. But my Greeks talk to me. There's a rat in the wall of this house, Hilary--a rat in the wall--"

Her voice ceased. Her fingers busied themselves re-threading the needle.

"I think you have the gift, tonight," he said quietly, regarding her. "See for me, my dear."

His hand fell on her shoulder, light as a butterfly. She put it off. "No," she said in a dry, thin voice. "You're wrong. I haven't had the sight for years. If I had it tonight, would I use it? No."

"Not for me?" His mouth had honey in it.

"No." Her fingers were moving again, she seemed to have no mind for anything but her silk. "Not for you."

He sighed. "Be consoled," he said. "I shan't live for ever. Indeed, sometimes I wonder that I have been able to live this long."

"It would be like you to die first," she agreed, remorselessly. A flash passed over her face. "I'd save you from that," she said, with a prick of her needle.

He chuckled a little. "I believe you. I believe you, indeed. But if something should--cripple me, for instance--just enough--eh?"

She drew in a deep breath. "Some time," she said, huskily. "Soon or late. The candle's not burnt to the wick yet. I can wait for it."

"Really, sometimes, one would think you believed in the fates, my dear. If one didn't know you."

"I believe in waiting," she said, nodding her head. "Yes, I believe in waiting."

His fingers twitched, momentarily. "I wish you'd see for me," he said.

She made no reply. He hesitated for a moment, oddly indecisive. Then he looked at his watch again and turned toward the door.

"Good night, my dear."

The second petal of the flower was half-completed, the needle stitched on, the face was averted anew. "Good night," said the dry, colorless voice. Dr. Gentian passed out of the room. With his hand on the latch of the front door he hesitated for a second time and threw a glance back up the stairs. Then he shook his head impatiently, opened the door and went out.

As soon as his footsteps had died away, Mrs. Gentian rose. Very softly indeed, she climbed the stairs to the upper corridor and paused, listening, outside the door of her daughter's room. She scratched on the panel twice, gently--no sound replied. "Sparta," she called in a low, sharp voice, waited, repeated the call. The name fell into darkness and was absorbed, no echo mocked it even. Mrs. Gentian laughed under her breath and opened the door of the room. The light of her candle showed it empty, the bed undisturbed. She nodded, as if in assent to an unspoken query and stood in the doorway for a moment, erect as an effigy, not seeming to notice that when her candle guttered it shook flecks of hot wax on her dress. Then she shut the door and went softly down the stairs again, returning to her chair and her needlework. Her face seemed at once resolved and satisfied, and, for a time, the pattern of her embroidery had never grown more swiftly. Then, after a while, the pace of her fingers slackened and stopped. The embroidery still lay in her lap, but she worked at it no longer, though she remained sitting in the chair, with folded hands and that curious expression on her face, her head bent a little forward, as if she were listening for the wind to bring her a piece of long-expected news.

Meanwhile, Dr. Gentian was walking briskly down the road to the guardhouse. He carried a light cane in one hand and was humming to himself and now and then cutting little flourishes in the air with his cane. The moon was up enough for him to pick his way along the well known path without hesitation, while his mind turned over one thing and another in its usual active fashion. His wife's words had stirred him more than he cared to admit and, not for the first time, he felt, with some annoyance, that there was some quality in her which even he could only master by snatches, unless she willed to have it so.

She was the only person he had ever met who did not sooner or later betray himself or herself by talking too much. He had taught her that trick of reticence, likely enough--but now it seemed to him, uneasily, that the pupil was beginning to outstrip her master. It must not be so--yet what could he do to change it? He could not deal with her as he dealt with others--from their first meeting he had thought of her as the living symbol of his luck and the broadening of that vein of superstition which was his weakness, during these later years, had only increased the feeling. The fierce passion that had first united them was long extinguished, but her words still carried a certain weight of omen for him, and at times he came closer being afraid of her than he ever had been of any merely human being.

He smiled a little, recalling certain events. What a sharp, wild, dazzling creature she had been in her first youth--not fair in Sparta's fashion, not fair at all in the way he consciously admired, but with a fire in her like the fire at the heart of his emerald. Wooing her had been like wooing a tiger-cub--his mind still bore the scars of it, for all its balance, as his body bore the thin, seamed scar of the knife she had struck him with, long ago, when she thought he looked too often at that dark little Cypriote. For an instant his body felt young, and he saw, from a tossing boat, a torch flaring at the mouth of a cave and a girl's intense and eager face in the red gush of light.

She would not strike him with a knife again. That had been in the days of their passion, and they and his youth were over. Her love had taken a deal of killing, certainly. He felt that to be unfortunate, honestly enough, for unnecessary ugliness always offended him. But it would have been the same with any other man--she was not the sort that lived easily. In any event, she hated him now, but it did not matter, for, in spite of her hate, he had a unique sort of confidence in her. The struggle between them would only end with life, but in the pauses of it they understood each other.

He smiled--it would seem a queer way of living to that boy in the guardhouse. One had to give up youth to taste the full flavor of hazard--youth lacked the steadiness of hand. For himself, the constant experiment of sharing meat and drink, year-in, year-out, with a creature whose heart still held the savage so barely kept in check by mere adroitness of eye and hand, was life and a good one. Some day, no doubt, the eye would fail or the hand lose cunning, and he would be torn. Well, let it be so, he had had his game.

Meanwhile, there were other diversions, such as that he purposed for this evening. He would think of that now, and taste it in expectation. But when he tried to do so, his wife's words beat in his ears, and he came to a halt for a moment, leaning a little on his cane. After all, it was possible to alter his plans. He had given too much time to young Beard these last months--too little to the plantation. Cave, too, he had been careless recently with Cave--he suspected Cave and the lesser animals in general of getting a little out of hand. Perhaps it might be well to--then he shook his head. His project for to-night was too well matured--tomorrow would be time enough for Cave and the others. He cut a weed down with his cane and went on, but, though a stranger would have thought his bearing composed enough, he was not entirely at ease.

Now it seemed to him that he could hear movement far off in the woods at his left. He stopped again and listened. Something was abroad in the woods, undoubtedly, but the sound was too indistinct for him to make it out clearly. A shadow darted between two trees near the road--a man with a bag on his back--he opened his mouth to call at it--no, it was only a trick of the eye. As for the distant sound, now quieted, it might be a couple of strayed deer or a band of half-tame Indians on a rice-stealing expedition--the latter most probably. The Indians had been growing bold, lately--he must see to that, too. Again, he was almost on the point of turning back to the coquina-house. Then he looked at his watch once more--it was later than he had supposed--the tiny fact decided him. He marched on, swinging his cane--the moon had a bright face to-night--the features of the man in it were distinct. He thought of the old story and smiled. The moon, as a post of observation, would have its advantages.

He turned a corner--there were guardhouse and storehouses below him, their roofs wintry with moonlight. The quiet familiarity of the scene blew the last of his uneasiness away--he had never felt more sure of himself or his luck. A few paces away from the guardhouse door he was challenged in a low voice by a sentry, held a conversation in whispers for a minute, and then went in.

The minutes passed, the still, glittering face rose higher in the sky till the night was perfect. It cast a long straggling shadow over the barred window of Andrew's cell and a bright pool on the floor of Sparta Gentian's empty chamber. In the deep woods that gave upon the St. Augustine road it barely pierced enough to touch with occasional silver the faces and bodies of men and women who came slipping silently between the trees, one by one, like deer trooping together, till the road was full of them. They came from the direction of the colony, burdened with packs or children--there seemed no end to their number--they greeted each other in hushed voices--soon the first of them were filtering away down the road.

In the colony itself the silver dagger fell upon a different sort of surreptitious stir, and a clotting together of shadowy shapes on the skirts of the Italian quarter. Dr. Gentian had wished better than he knew when he had wished for a post of observation upon the cold peaks of the moon, and it was unfortunate for him that his wish could not have been granted. As it was he sat in the guardhouse, tapping his snuffbox and recapitulating the heads of a certain discourse he intended to deliver shortly, ignorant that events already in train were to render that discourse quite unnecessary.

Mrs. Gentian, however, was soon to be better informed. Her rigid attitude of the listener had not altered for the last half hour, she sat in her chair like a sculpture, her hands were marble. Only her eyes discovered life in them, deep in the pupils, contained, patient and somehow dreadful in its certitude, like the life in the eyes of a spirit caught in a cleft stone. She was waiting for a sound, and already the last moments of her vigil were upon her. A mile away, even as one shape among the clotted shapes at the edge of the Italian huts began to issue orders to the others, a Greek boy watched from a shadow and then crawled off, to break into a run for the coquina-house as soon as he was well away from the huts.