Taking the tray from him, with a gracious "Thank you! This is just
as it should be," Mabel negatived his offer to carry it to her room,
and started up-stairs.
Mrs. Sutton followed with a lighted candle.
"Winston or no Winston, you shall not face that desperado alone,"
she said, obstinately. "There is no telling what he may do--murder
you, perhaps, or at least knock you down in order to escape. Winston
talks as if he were the captain of the forty thieves."' "He is pretty well hors de combat now, at any rate," smiled Mabel,
but allowing her aunt to precede her with the light to the upper
floor. "And should he offer violence--scalding coffee may defend me
as effectually as Morgiana's boiling oil routed the gang. MY captain
had to be carried up-stairs by four servants, who left him upon a
pile of old mattresses in one corner of the room. Here we are!"
They were in a wide hall at the top of the house, the unceiled
rafters above their heads, carpetless boards beneath their feet.
Mabel set her waiter upon a worm-eaten, iron-bound chest, and went
further down the passage to get the key of the north room. Her light
footstep stirred dismal echoes in the dark corners; the wind
screamed through every crack and keyhole, like a legion of piping
devils; rumbled lugubriously over the steep roof. The one candle
flickering in the draught showed Mabel's white bust and arms, like
those of a phantom, beaming through a cloud of blackness, when she
stooped to try the key in the lock of the prison-chamber.
After fitting it, she knocked before she turned it in the rusty
wards--again, and more loudly--then spoke, putting her lips close to
the key-hole: "We are friends, and have brought you supper. Can we come in?"
There was no answer, and with a beating heart she unlocked the door,
pushed it ajar, and motioned to Aunt Rachel to hold her candle up,
that she might gain a view of the interior.
The wan, uncertain rays revealed the heap of mattresses, and upon
them what looked like a mass of rough, wet clothing, without sound
or motion.
"He is pretending to be asleep! Take care!" whispered Mrs. Sutton,
trying to restrain Mabel as she pressed by her into the room.
"He is dead, I fear!" was the low answer.
Forgetful of her nephew's prohibition and her recent fears, the good
widow entered, and leaned anxiously over the stranger's form. A
tall, gaunt man, clad in threadbare garments, which hung loosely
upon the shrunken breast and arms, black hair and beard, mottled
with white, ragged, and unshorn, and dank from exposure to the snow
and sleet; a chalky-white face, with closed and sunken eyes,
sharpened nose, and prominent cheek-bones--this was what they beheld
as the candle flamed up steadily in the comparatively still air of
the ceiled apartment. The miserable coat was buttoned up to his
chin, and the shreds of a coarse woollen comforter, torn from his
throat at his capture, still hung about his shoulders. His clothes
were sodden with wet, as Harrison had said, and the solitary
pretence at rendering him comfortable for the night, had been the
act of a negro, who contemptuously flung an old blanket across his
nether limbs before leaving him to his lethargic slumbers. He had
not moved since they tossed him, like a worthless sack, upon this
sorry resting-place, but lay an unsightly huddle of arms, legs, and
head, such as was never achieved, much less continued, by any one
save a drunken man or a corpse. Mabel ended the awed silence.