know what deeds of darkness are even now committed in lands that
own their sway! Would that I had that wicked wretch here in my power at
this moment! Well does he deserve to be torn in pieces by his own
hideous engines. And in this very place does he design to do to death my
brother! May God pardon me if I sin in the thought, but death by the
sword is too good for such a miscreant!"

Words very similar to these were being bandied about in fierce
undertones by the men who had accompanied Gaston, and who had never seen
such a chamber as this before. Great would have been their satisfaction
to let its owner taste something of the agony he had too often inflicted
upon helpless victims thrown into his power. But this being out of the
question, the next matter was the rescue of the captive they had come to
save; and they looked eagerly at their young leader to know what was the
next step to be taken.

Gaston was searching for the wheel by which the mechanism could be set
in motion which would enable him to reach his brother's prison house. It
was easily found from the description given him by Constanza. He set his
men to work to turn the wheel, and at once became aware of the groaning
and grating sound that attends the motion of clumsy machinery. Gazing
eagerly up into the dun roof above him, he saw slowly descending a
portion of the stonework of which it was formed. It was a clever enough
contrivance for those unskilled days, and showed a considerable
ingenuity on the part of some owner of the Castle of Saut.

When the great slab had descended to the floor below, Gaston stepped
upon it, Roger placing himself at his side, and with a brief word to his
men to reverse the action of the wheel, and to lower the slab again a
few minutes later, he prepared for his strange passage upwards to his
brother's lonely cell.

Roger held a lantern in his hand, and the faces of the pair were full of
anxious expectation. Suppose Raymond had been removed from that upper
prison? Suppose he had succumbed either to the cruelty of his foes or to
the fever resulting from his injuries received on the day of the battle?

A hundred fears possessed Gaston's soul as the strange transit through
the air was being accomplished -- a transit so strange that he felt as
though he must surely be dreaming. But there was only one thing to be
done -- to persevere in the quest, and trust to the Holy Saints and the
loving mercy of Blessed Mary's Son to grant him