In Direst Peril. David Christie Murray

that he had spent a portion of it for his own benefit, rather than that of the prisoners, in whom he professed to take so great an interest; but at the third or fourth lurch he gave it dawned upon me that with his left hand he was groping for my right. Brunow was just a step in front of us, and I held my hand out openly. The man slipped into it a twisted scrap of paper, which I transferred carefully to my waistcoat pocket.

      “Here's the bridge, gentlemen,” said Hinge, “and that's the inn right before you, where the lights are.”

      “All right,” I answered. “We can find the way now quite easily. Good-night!”

      “Good-night, gentlemen,” he answered, and so turned away, while Brunow and I footed it home in silence.

      We occupied the same room, and I did not care to read whatever message I might have received in his presence. He had proved so lukewarm in the enterprise on which we had both embarked, and had now so apparently forgotten all about it in dancing attendance on the Baroness Bonnar, that I should have made no scruple of leaving him out of my councils altogether. When he had half undressed I made some pretence of wanting something from below, and read my missive in the kitchen. It was late, and the room was empty.

      I was not surprised to find I knew the handwriting, and that it was the same that Brunow had shown me in his rooms on the night on which I had first seen Miss Rossano.

      This is what I read:

      “The wretched prisoner, the Conte di Rossano, who has languished for years in this fortress, asks, for the love of Heaven, that the Englishman for whose hands this is meant will send a line to the Contessa di Rossano, daughter of General Sir Arthur Rollinson, to assure her that her husband still lives. If she should still live, and have remarried, for pity find some means to let the writer know it.”

      I went to bed saying nothing of this, but held sleepless by it all the night. With the idea which had come to me that afternoon of the possibility of Hinge being set upon me to act as a spy and to discover my intent so strong upon me that I could not shake it off, I tossed and tumbled in a very sea of doubt and trouble. I was more than half persuaded all along that this fancy was a mere chimera, and yet it took such force in my mind. It was past two o'clock when the moon rose. I got up noiselessly, filled and lit my pipe, and sat staring at the great solemn bulk of the fortress, as it stood for the time being almost white in the moonlight against the monstrous shadow of the bills. My mind was in a miserable whirl, and I knew not what to make of anything. This wretched state lasted until broad dawn, and I was still troubled by it when I walked into the keen morning air, towel in hand, for my customary swim. I undressed slowly by the river-side and stood thinking, until I was so nipped by the keen breath of the wind which blew clear down from the mountain-tops that I plunged into the stream for refuge from it. I remember as distinctly as if it had happened a minute ago, that at the very second when I dived an impulse came into my mind. I thought as I struck the water, “I'll trust that fellow!” I dived far, and swam under water until I was forced to rise for air. “I'll trust that fellow!” I thought again; and as I passed my hand across my forehead to squeeze the water from my hair, I saw “that fellow” on the very top of a little rise of land which lay between me and the fortress, and hid it entirely from my sight.

      I swam back to the place from which I had originally dived, towelled myself hastily, dressed, and set out at a round pace towards the bridge. I reached it when he was within a hundred yards, and with a signal to him to follow, sauntered on towards the pine wood.

      A backward glance assured me that he had seen my signal and was coming.