He was muttering to himself as he passed our hiding place.

“By all the devils, he must be here, some gait.  The little jade would have warned him if she had known; but it is known only to the doddering old miser and me, and the girl is safe in her bed-room.  Happen this devil of an Austrian captain has drunken himself sodden; ah, that would be a rare jest—­to wake with the rope around his neck!  If those cursed, slow-footed dragoons would but come!  Damme!  I’ll have that bull-necked lieutenant cashiered if his high and mighty loitering balks me in this.”

He stopped before the wine cask whereon the flickering candle stood and craned his neck to look beyond it.  The candle was guttering smokily, and he reached a shaking thumb and finger to pluck the “dead man” from the wick.  At that we heard him muttering again.

“’Twas a play to make the very devil envious; and to have it marred by that pig of a lieutenant!  No one knew me in it save the legion colonel, and could we have sprung the trap fair and softly, not even Mistress Margery herself could have laid this swashbuckler’s death at my door.  But now he’s gone—­vanished like a straw bailee, and all because that damned understrapper of Colonel Tarleton’s must needs turn up his nose at a bit of sheriff’s work.  Curse him!”

The candle was burning brightly now, and he crept catlike around the cask to peer into the bin beyond it.  Just then the shutter to the little window of espial fell open with a shrill creaking of its rusty hinges, and a blue glare of lightning came to prick out every nook and corner of the cellar.  Being almost within a blade’s length of the factor, I saw him plainly; saw him start back and put his hands to his face and drop down all of a tremble on the bin’s edge, where I had been sitting when he discovered me.

To second the flash a prolonged drum-roll of thunder dinned upon the still air of the vault, and mingled with the thunder came other flashes, searing the eye and making the candle flame appear as a sickly orange halo in the blue-white glare.  What with the play of the storm artillery we could neither see nor hear for the moment; but when the candle-light came to its own again the scene had changed as if by magic.  Under cover of the thunder din a squad of dragoons had come to ring the factor in where he sat upon the edge of the wine bin.

“So-ho!” said my good friend Tybee, with a little strident laugh, “’tis you I am to take out and hang, is it, Master Lawyer?  I thought mayhap you’d double on your track once too often, and so it seems you have.  Up with you and come along.”

All in a flash Pengarvin was up and bursting out in a trembling frenzy-fit of protestation.

“Oh, ’tis all a mistake, my good sir—­a devil’s own trap!  I—­I am not the man; I pledge you my sacred word!  I—­hands off, you cursed villains, or I’ll have the law on you!” this last when one of the men cast the noose of a rope over his head whilst a second drew his arms to his sides in the looping of another cord.  “By God! you shall all smart for this; all, I say!  Take me to Colonel Tarleton.  The king has no stancher friend in all the province than I. Why, damme,’twas I who—­”