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