nd nodding with
perfect good faith--he couldn't point; he was so tightly bound--in
exactly the opposite direction to the right one.

'You lie!' said the man angrily, and with a threatening gesture. 'I came
that way. You would betray me.'

It was so evident that John's imperturbability was not assumed, but was
the result of the late proceedings under his roof, that the man stayed
his hand in the very act of striking him, and turned away.

John looked after him without so much as a twitch in a single nerve
of his face. He seized a glass, and holding it under one of the little
casks until a few drops were collected, drank them greedily off; then
throwing it down upon the floor impatiently, he took the vessel in his
hands and drained it into his throat. Some scraps of bread and meat were
scattered about, and on these he fell next; eating them with voracity,
and pausing every now and then to listen for some fancied noise outside.
When he had refreshed himself in this manner with violent haste, and
raised another barrel to his lips, he pulled his hat upon his brow as
though he were about to leave the house, and turned to John.

'Where are your servants?'

Mr Willet indistinctly remembered to have heard the rioters calling to
them to throw the key of the room in which they were, out of window, for
their keeping. He therefore replied, 'Locked up.'

'Well for them if they remain quiet, and well for you if you do the
like,' said the man. 'Now show me the way the party went.'

This time Mr Willet indicated it correctly. The man was hurrying to the
door, when suddenly there came towards them on the wind, the loud
and rapid tolling of an alarm-bell, and then a bright and vivid glare
streamed up, which illumined, not only the whole chamber, but all the
country.

It was not the sudden change from darkness to this dreadful light, it
was not the sound of distant shrieks and shouts of triumph, it was not
this dread invasion of the serenity and peace of night, that drove the
man back as though a thunderbolt had struck him. It was the Bell. If the
ghastliest shape the human mind has ever pictured in its wildest dreams
had risen up before him, he could not have staggered backward from its
touch, as he did from the first sound of that loud iron voice. With eyes
that started from his head, his limbs convulsed, his face most horrible
to see, he raised one arm high up into the air, and holding something
visionary back and down, with hi