“Good Lord!” says Richard, clapping his hands to his eyes; “where did that come from?”

I was wholly at a loss for a moment.  Then I remembered that there was, or had been in my boyhood days, a narrow, iron-barred window in the farther end of the wine cellar, opening beneath that other window of the great south room where I had climbed to spy upon the conspirators on the night of Captain John Stuart’s visit to Appleby.  So it chanced that when another flash came I was looking straight over Dick’s head at the place in the farther arching of the vault where the little window should be.

The momentary glare showed me the low square of the window opening, and framed for a flitting instant therein a face of most devilish malignity peering in upon me with foxy-fierce eyes; the face, to wit, of Gilbert Stair’s lawyer-factor.

In a twinkling the vision was gone, and in the space between the flash and the crash there was a sound as of a wooden shutter slamming in place.  Dick heard the noise without knowing the cause of it, being so far beneath the window as to see nothing but the lighting of the glare.

“What was that?” he demanded, when the thunder gave him leave.

“’Twas our trapper clapping the shutter on the window over your head,” said I.  “He was looking in to see if we were ripe for hanging.”

“’Tis no time for riddles; what mean you?”

“I mean that we shall have a file of redcoats down upon us as soon as ever Mr. Owen Pengarvin can give the alarm.”

“Oho!” said Dick; and then he pulled his sword from its scabbard, and I could see the battle-veins swelling in his forehead.  “They can hang me when I am too dead to cut and thrust more—­not sooner.”

I got me up and went to find the sword which I had laid aside in the horse-baiting.  ’Twas a poor blade—­one of our captures at the Cowpens; and when I tried its temper it snapped in my hand.

“Never mind,” said I; “give me the broadsword scabbard and I will play it as a cudgel, ’tis long enough and full heavy enough.”

He laughed and clapped me on the shoulder, swearing out his love for me as if I had said something moving.  “You are every inch a soldier, Jack; you would put heart into a worse craven than I am ever like to be.”  And he loosed the iron scabbard and gave it me.

Now ensued a most painful time of waiting and listening for the tramp of our takers.  We posted us near the door, a little to the side, so that its inswing might not catch us; and so, bracing for the onset, we waited till the strain of suspense grew so great that we both started like frighted children, when finally the key was thrust into the lock and the bolt shot back.

But when the heavy door gave inward, as at the pushing of a weak or timid hand, we saw our dear lady standing in the half gloom of the ante-dungeon, breathless and trembling with excitement.

“Come!” she panted; “come quickly—­there is not an instant to spare.  The factor has betrayed you; he will be here directly with the dragoons!”