Chapter 13

CHAPTER V - HOW DICK CHANGED SIDES

Dick, blowing out his lamp lest it should attract attention, led
the way up-stairs and along the corridor. In the brown chamber the
rope had been made fast to the frame of an exceeding heavy and
ancient bed. It had not been detached, and Dick, taking the coil
to the window, began to lower it slowly and cautiously into the
darkness of the night. Joan stood by; but as the rope lengthened,
and still Dick continued to pay it out, extreme fear began to
conquer her resolution.

"Dick," she said, "is it so deep? I may not essay it. I should
infallibly fall, good Dick."

It was just at the delicate moment of the operations that she
spoke. Dick started; the remainder of the coil slipped from his
grasp, and the end fell with a splash into the moat. Instantly,
from the battlement above, the voice of a sentinel cried, "Who
goes?"

"A murrain!" cried Dick. "We are paid now! Down with you - take
the rope."

"I cannot," she cried, recoiling.

"An ye cannot, no more can I," said Shelton. "How can I swim the
moat without you? Do you desert me, then?"

"Dick," she gasped, "I cannot. The strength is gone from me."

"By the mass, then, we are all shent!" he shouted, stamping with
his foot; and then, hearing steps, he ran to the room door and
sought to close it.

Before he could shoot the bolt, strong arms were thrusting it back
upon him from the other side. He struggled for a second; then,
feeling himself overpowered, ran back to the window. The girl had
fallen against the wall in the embrasure of the window; she was
more than half insensible; and when he tried to raise her in his
arms, her body was limp and unresponsive.

At the same moment the men who had forced the door against him laid
hold upon him. The first he poinarded at a blow, and the others
falling back for a second in some disorder, he profited by the
chance, bestrode the window-sill, seized the cord in both hands,
and let his body slip.

The cord was knotted, which made it the easier to descend; but so
furious was Dick's hurry, and so small his experience of such
gymnastics, that he span round and round in mid-air like a criminal
upon a gibbet, and now beat his head, and now bruised his hands,
against the rugged stonework of the wall. The air roared in his
ears; he saw the stars overhead, and the reflected stars below him
in the moat, whirling like dead leaves before the tempest. And
then he lost hold, and fell, and soused head over ears into the icy
water.

When he came to the surface his hand encountered the rope, which,
newly lightened of his weight, was swinging wildly to and fro.
There was a red glow overhead, and looking up, he saw, by