like night, and slammed the door behind him.

Nick heard the bolts shoot heavily, and Master Carew call through the
heavy panels: "Now, Jackanapes, sit down and chew the cud of solitude
awhile. It may cool thy silly pate for thee, since nothing else will
serve. When thou hast found thy common sense, perchance thou'lt find thy
freedom, not before." Then his step went down the corridor, down the
stair, through the long hall--a door banged with a hollow sound that
echoed through the house, and all was still.

At first, in the utter darkness, Nick could not see at all, and did not
move for fear of falling down some awful hole; but as his eyes grew
used to the gloom he saw that he was in a little room. The only window
was boarded up, but a dim light crept in through narrow cracks and made
faint bars across the air. Little motes floated up and down these thin
blue bars, wavering in the uncertain light and then lost in the
darkness. Upon the floor was a pallet of straw, covered with a coarse
sheet, and having a rough coverlet of sheepskin. A round log was the
only pillow.

Something moved. Nick, startled, peered into the shadows: it was a strip
of ragged tapestry which fluttered on the wall. As he watched it
flapping fitfully there came a hollow rattle in the wainscot, and an
uncanny sound like the moaning of wind in the chimney.

"Let me out!" he cried, beating upon the door. "Let me out, I say!" A
stealthy footstep seemed to go away outside. "Mother, mother!" he cried
shrilly, now quite unstrung by fright, and beat frantically upon the
door until his hands ached; but no one answered. The window was beyond
his reach. Throwing himself upon the hard pallet, he hid his eyes in the
coverlet, and cried as if his heart would break.

CHAPTER XVI

MA'M'SELLE CICELY CAREW

How long he lay there in a stupor of despair Nick Attwood never knew. It
might have been days or weeks, for all that he took heed; for he was
thinking of his mother, and there was no room for more.

The night passed by. Then the day came, by the lines of light that crept
across the floor. The door was opened at his back, and a trencher of
bread and meat thrust in. He did not touch it, and the rats came out of
the wall and pulled the meat about, and gnawed holes in the bread, and
squeaked, and ran along the wainscot; but he did not care.

The afternoon dragged slowly by, and the creeping light went up the wall
until the roofs across the street shut