even then. Yet I cowered among his clothes until his own hand fell upon my collar, and forth I was dragged to the plain amazement of all three.
Santos was the first to find his voice.
“Another time you will perhaps think twice before you spik, friend squire.”
Rattray simply asked me what I had been doing in there, in a white flame of passion, and with such an oath that I embellished the truth for him in my turn.
“Trying to give you blackguards the slip,” said I.
“Then it was you who let down the sheet?”
I stood upright in the darkness. I saw her light!
It was ascending the tower at the building’s end; now in this window it glimmered, now in the one above. At last it was steady, high up near the stars, and I stole below.
“Eva! Eva!”
There was no answer. Low as it was, my voice was alarming; it cooled