Transient as the glance was, it shook him greatly.  He heated a bar of iron white hot at one end, and sallied out into the night.  But there was not a creature to be seen.

Then he called aloud, “Who’s there?” No reply.  “Jael, was it you?” Dead silence.

He returned to his work, and set the appearance down to an ocular illusion.  But his dreams had been so vivid, that this really seemed only one step more into the realm of hallucination.

This was an unfortunate view of the matter.

On old Christmas Eve he lighted the fires in his mausoleum first, and at last succeeded in writing a letter to Grace Carden.  He got out of the difficulty in the best way, by making it very short.  He put it in an envelope, and addressed it, intending to give it to Jael Dence, from whom he was always expecting a second visit.

He then lighted his forge, and soon the old walls were ringing again with the blows of his hammer.

It was ten o’clock at night; a clear frosty night; but he was heated and perspiring with his ardent work, when, all of a sudden, a cold air seemed to come in upon him from a new quarter—­the door.  He left his forge, and took a few steps to where he could see the door.  Instead of the door, he saw the blue sky.

He uttered an exclamation, and rubbed his eyes.

It was no hallucination.  The door lay flat on the ground, and the stars glittered in the horizon.

Young Little ran toward the door; but, when he got near it, he paused, and a dire misgiving quelled him.  A workman soon recognizes a workman’s hand; and he saw Hillsborough cunning and skill in this feat, and Hillsborough cunning and cruelty lurking in ambush at the door.

He went back to his forge, and, the truth must be told, his knees felt weak under him with fears of what was to come.

He searched about for weapons, and could find nothing to protect him against numbers.  Pistols he had:  but, from a wretched over-security, he had never brought them to Cairnhope Church.

Oh, it was an era of agony that minute, in which, after avoiding the ambuscade that he felt sure awaited him at the door, he had nothing on earth he could do but wait and see what was to come next.

He knew that however small his chance of escape by fighting, it was his only one; and he resolved to receive the attack where he was.  He blew his bellows and, cold at heart, affected to forge.

Dusky forms stole into the old church.

CHAPTER XV.

Little blew his coals to a white heat:  then took his hammer into his left hand, and his little iron shovel, a weapon about two feet long, into his right.

Three assailants crept toward him, and his position was such that two at least could assail him front and rear.  He counted on that, and measured their approach with pale cheek but glittering eye, and thrust his shovel deep into the white coals.