it was my summons. But the
mulatto brought me nothing worse than a cold fowl and a loaf, with a
candle-end to see to eat them by, and a dish of hot tea to wash them
down.

I knew well enough whom I had to thank for this, and was set wondering
that my lady's charity was broad enough to mantle even by this little my
latest sins against the king's cause. None the less, I ate and drank
gratefully, draining the tea-dish to the dregs--which, by the by, were
strangely bitter.

I had scarce finished picking the bones of the capon before sleep came
again to drag at my eyelids, a drowsiness so masterful that I could make
no head against it. And so, with the bitter taste of the tea still on my
tongue, I fell away a second time into the pit of forgetfulness.

When I awakened from what seemed in the memory of it the most unresting
sleep I ever had, it was no longer night, and I was stretched upon the
oaken settle in that same lumber garret where I had been bedded through
that other night of hiding. So much I saw at the waking glance; and then
I realized, vaguely at first, but presently with startling emphasis,
that it was the westering sun which was shining in at the high roof
windows, that the shackles were still on, and that my temples were
throbbing with a most skull-splitting headache.

Being fair agasp with astoundment at this new spinning of fate's wheel,
I sprang up quickly--and was as quickly glad to fall back upon the
pallet. For with the upstart a heaving nausea came to supplement the
headache, and for a long time I lay bat-blind and sick as any landsman
in his first gale at sea.

The sunlight was fading from the high windows, and I was deep sunk in a
sick man's megrims, before aught came to disturb the silence of the
cobwebbed garret. From nausea and racking pains I had come to the stage
of querulous self-pity. 'Twas monstrous, this burying a man alive, ill,
fettered, uncared-for, to live or die in utter solitude as might happen.
I could not remotely guess to whom I owed this dismal fate, and was too
petulant to speculate upon it. But the meddler, friend or foe, who had
bereft me of my chance to die whilst I was fit and ready, came in for a
Turkish cursing--the curse that calls down in all the Osmanli variants
the same pangs in duplicate upon the banned one.

It was in the midst of one of these impotent fits of malediction that
the wainscot door was opened and closed softly, and light footsteps
tiptoed to my bedsi