He examined his room.  It was not very high, just high enough to take the bed which stood under an enormous baldaquin-like canopy from which fell heavy curtains at foot and head; a bed certainly worthy of an archbishop.  There was a heavy table carved all round the edges, some arm-chairs of enormous weight like the spoils of a grandee’s palace; a tall shallow wardrobe placed against the wall and with double doors.  He tried them.  Locked.  A suspicion came into his mind, and he snatched the lamp to make a closer examination.  No, it was not a disguised entrance.  That heavy, tall piece of furniture stood clear of the wall by quite an inch.  He glanced at the bolts of his room door.  No!  No one could get at him treacherously while he slept.  But would he be able to sleep? he asked himself anxiously.  If only he had Tom there—­the trusty seaman who had fought at his right hand in a cutting out affair or two, and had always preached to him the necessity to take care of himself.  “For it’s no great trick,” he used to say, “to get yourself killed in a hot fight.  Any fool can do that.  The proper pastime is to fight the Frenchies and then live to fight another day.”

Byrne found it a hard matter not to fall into listening to the silence.  Somehow he had the conviction that nothing would break it unless he heard again the haunting sound of Tom’s voice.  He had heard it twice before.  Odd!  And yet no wonder, he argued with himself reasonably, since he had been thinking of the man for over thirty hours continuously and, what’s more, inconclusively.  For his anxiety for Tom had never taken a definite shape.  “Disappear,” was the only word connected with the idea of Tom’s danger.  It was very vague and awful.  “Disappear!” What did that mean?

Byrne shuddered, and then said to himself that he must be a little feverish.  But Tom had not disappeared.  Byrne had just heard of him.  And again the young man felt the blood beating in his ears.  He sat still expecting every moment to hear through the pulsating strokes the sound of Tom’s voice.  He waited straining his ears, but nothing came.  Suddenly the thought occurred to him:  “He has not disappeared, but he cannot make himself heard.”

He jumped up from the arm-chair.  How absurd!  Laying his pistol and his hanger on the table he took off his boots and, feeling suddenly too tired to stand, flung himself on the bed which he found soft and comfortable beyond his hopes.

He had felt very wakeful, but he must have dozed off after all, because the next thing he knew he was sitting up in bed and trying to recollect what it was that Tom’s voice had said.  Oh!  He remembered it now.  It had said:  “Mr. Byrne!  Look out, sir!” A warning this.  But against what?