I wish you might conceive the helpless horror grappling with me there behind that fastened door; but this, indeed, you may not, having felt it not.  For one dazed moment I was sick as death with fear and frenzy and I know not what besides, and all the blackness of the night swam sudden red before my eyes.  Then, in the twinkling of an eye, the madness left me cool and sane, as if the fit had been the travail-pain of some new birth of soul.  And after that, as I remember, I knew not rage nor haste nor weakness—­knew no other thing save this; that I had set myself a task to do and I would do it.

My window was in shape like half a cell of honeycomb, and close beside it on the outer wall there grew an ancient ivy-vine which more than once had held my weight when I was younger and would evade my father’s vigilance.

I swung the casement noiselessly and clambered out, with hand and foot in proper hold as if those youthful flittings of my boyhood days had been but yesternight.  A breathless minute later I was down and afoot on solid ground; and then a thing chanced which I would had not.  The man whom I had called a servant turned and saw me.

“Halt!  Who goes there?” he cried.

“A friend,” said I, between my wishings for a weapon.  For this servant of my prefigurings proved to be a trooper, booted, spurred and armed.

“By God, I think you lie,” he said; and after that he said no more, for he was down among the horses’ hoofs and I upon him, kneeling hard to scant his breath for shoutings.

It grieves me now through all these years to think that I did kneel too hard upon this man.  He was no enemy of mine, and did but do—­or seek to do—­his duty.  But he would fight or die, and I must fight or die; and so it ended as such strivings will, with some grim crackling of ribs—­and when I rose he rose not with me.

With all the fierce excitement of the struggle yet upon me, I stayed to knot the bridle reins upon his arm to make it plain that he had fallen at his post.  That done, I took his sword as surer for my purpose than a pistol; and hugging the deepest shadow of the wall, approached the nearer window.  It was open wide, for the night was sultry warm, and from within there came the clink of glass and now a toast and now a trooper’s oath.

I drew myself by inches to the casement, which was high, finding some foothold in the wall; and when I looked within I saw no wedding guests, no priest, no altar; only this:  a table in the midst with bottles on it, and round it five men lounging at their ease and drinking to the king.  Of these five two, the baronet and the lawyer, were known to me, and I have made them known to you.  A third I guessed for Gilbert Stair.  The other two were strangers.

VII

IN WHICH MY LADY HATH NO PART

Seeing that I had taken a man’s life for this, the chance of looking in upon a drinking bout, you will not wonder that I went aghast and would have fled for very shame had not a sudden weakness seized me.  But in the midst I heard a mention of my name and so had leave, I thought, to stay and listen.