There was no time to ask or even to wonder at the meaning of this mysterious attack.  All he could do was to strive to shield his head from the blows that rained upon him, and breathe a prayer for succour in the midst of his urgent need.

And then he heard a voice speaking in accents of authority:  where had he heard that voice before?

“Hold, men! have I not warned you to do him no hurt?  Kill him not, but take him alive.”

That was the last thing Raymond remembered.  His next sensation was of falling and strangulation.  Then a blackness swam before his eyes, and sense and memory alike fled.

CHAPTER XXIII.  IN THE HANDS OF HIS FOE.

How long that blackness and darkness lasted Raymond never really knew.  It seemed to him that he awoke from it at occasional long intervals, always to find himself dreaming of rapid motion, as though he were being transported through the air with considerable speed.  But there was no means of telling in what direction he moved, nor in what company.  His senses were clouded and dull.  He did not know what was real and what part of a dream.  He had no recollection of any of the events immediately preceding this sudden and extraordinary journey, and after a brief period of bewilderment would sink back into the black abyss of unconsciousness from which he had been roused for a few moments.

At last, after what seemed to him an enormous interval —­ for he knew not whether hours, days, or even years had gone by whilst he had remained in this state of unconscious apathy, he slowly opened his eyes, to find that the black darkness had given place to a faint murky light, and that he was no longer being carried rapidly onwards, but was lying still upon a heap of straw in some dim place, the outlines of which only became gradually visible to him.

Raymond was very weak, and weakness exercises a calming and numbing effect upon the senses.  He felt no alarm at finding himself in this strange place, but after gazing about him without either recollection or comprehension, he turned round upon his bed of straw, which was by no means the worst resting place he had known in his wanderings, and quickly fell into a sound sleep.

When he awoke some hours later, the place was lighter than it had been, for a ray of sunlight had penetrated through the loophole high above his head, and illuminated with tolerable brightness the whole of the dim retreat in which he found himself.  Raymond raised himself upon his elbow and looked wonderingly around him.

“What in the name of all the Holy Saints has befallen me?” he questioned, speaking half aloud in the deep stillness, glad to break the oppressive silence, if it were only by the sound of his own voice.  “I feel as though a leaden weight were pressing down my limbs, and my head is throbbing as though a hammer were beating inside it.  I can scarce frame my thoughts as I will.  What was I doing last, before this strange thing befell me?”