gone, and the door was left unlocked. I could walk out of that
gaol as I could have walked out of my house at Weyanoke. I was free, but
should I take my freedom? Going back to the light of the fire I unfolded
the paper and stared at it, turning its contents this way and that in
my mind. The hand--but once had I seen her writing, and then it had been
wrought with a shell upon firm sand. I could not judge if this were the
same. Had the paper indeed come from her? Had it not? If in truth it
was a message from my wife, what had befallen in a few hours since our
parting? If it was a forger's lie, what trap was set, what toils were
laid? I walked up and down, and tried to think it out. The strangeness
of it all, the choice of a lonely and distant hut for trysting place,
that pass coming from a sworn officer of the Company, certain things I
had heard that day... A trap... and to walk into it with my eyes
open.... An you hold me dear. As you are my knight, keep this tryst. In
distress and peril.... Come what might, there was a risk I could not run.

I had no weapons to assume, no preparations to make. Gathering up the
gaoler's gold I started toward the door, opened it, and going out would
have closed it softly behind me but that a booted leg thrust across
the jamb prevented me. "I am going with you," said Diccon in a guarded
voice. "If you try to prevent me, I will rouse the house." His head was
thrown back in the old way; the old daredevil look was upon his face.
"I don't know why you are going," he declared, "but there'll be danger,
anyhow."

"To the best of my belief I am walking into a trap," I said.

"Then it will shut on two instead of one," he answered doggedly.

By this he was through the door, and there was no shadow of turning on
his dark, determined face. I knew my man, and wasted no more words.
Long ago it had grown to seem the thing most in nature that the hour of
danger should find us side by side.

When the door of the firelit room was shut, the gaol was in darkness
that might be felt. It was very still: the few other inmates were fast
asleep; the gaoler was somewhere out of sight, dreaming with open
eyes. We groped our way through the passage to the stairs, noiselessly
descended them, and found the outer door unchained, unbarred, and
slightly ajar.

When I had laid the gold beneath the pillory, we struck swiftly across
the square, being in fear lest the watch should come upon us, and took
the first lane t