He put his long, keen knife between his teeth, and caught at the upper window-ledge.  Exerting all his strength, he raised himself up so high that he could fling one elbow over.  For a moment he hung thus, and waited to take breath and listen.

There was a rush below.  Half a dozen shadowy forms surrounded him.  He had been seen.  He had been trapped.

He dropped down and, seizing his knife, struck right and left.

In vain.  He was hurled to the ground and bound tight.

CHAPTER XXVII.

FACE TO FACE.

Hawbury, on his capture, had been at once taken into the woods, and led and pushed on by no gentle hands.  He had thus gone on until he had found himself by that same lake which others of the party had come upon in the various ways which have been described.  Toward this lake he was taken, until finally his party reached the old house, which they entered.  It has already been said that it was a two-story house.  It was also of stone, and strongly built.  The door was in the middle of it, and rooms were on each side of the hall.  The interior plan of the house was peculiar, for the hall did not run through, but consisted of a square room, and the stone steps wound spirally from the lower hall to the upper one.  There were three rooms up stairs, one taking up one end of the house, which was occupied by Mrs. Willoughby and Minnie; another in the rear of the house, into which a door opened from the upper hall, close by the head of the stairs; and a third, which was opposite the room first mentioned.

Hawbury was taken to this house, and led up stairs into this room in the rear of the house.  At the end farthest from the door he saw a heap of straw with a few dirty rugs upon it.  In the wall a beam was set, to which an iron ring was fastened.  He was taken toward this bed, and here his legs were bound together, and the rope that secured them was run around the iron ring so as to allow of no more motion than a few feet.  Having thus secured the prisoner, the men left him to his own meditations.

The room was perfectly bare of furniture, nothing being in it but the straw and the dirty rugs.  Hawbury could not approach to the windows, for he was bound in a way which prevented that.  In fact, he could not move in any direction, for his arms and legs were fastened in such a way that he could scarcely raise himself from where he was sitting.  He therefore was compelled to remain in one position, and threw himself down upon the straw on his side, with his face to the wall, for he found that position easier than any other.  In this way he lay for some time, until at length he was roused by the sound of footsteps ascending the stairs.  Several people were passing his room.  He heard the voice of Girasole.  He listened with deep attention.  For some time there was no reply.  At length there was the sound of a woman’s voice—­clear, plain,