e!" and she showed the key of
my gyves.

"Let be!" I cried, "I seek no freedom at your hands--let be, I say!"

"As you will!" says she, gently. "So endeth my hope of righting a
great wrong. I have humbled myself to you to-night, Martin Conisby. I
have begged and prayed you to forego your vengeance, to forgive the
evil done, not so much for my father's sake as for your own, and this
because of the boy I dreamed a man ennobled by his sufferings and one
great enough to forgive past wrongs, since by forgiveness cometh
regeneration. Here ends my dream--alas, you are but rogue and
galley-slave after all. So shall I ever pity you greatly and greatly
despise you!"

Then she turned slowly away and went from me, closing and locking the
door, and left me once more in the black dark, but now full of yet
blacker thoughts.

To be scorned by her! And she--a Brandon!

And now I (miserable wretch that I was) giving no thought to the
possibility of my so speedy dissolution, raged in my bonds, wasting
myself in futile imprecations against this woman who (as it seemed to
me in my blind and brutish anger) had but come to triumph over me in my
abasement. Thus of my wounded self-love did I make me a whip of
scorpions whereby I knew an agony beyond expression.

CHAPTER XX

HOW I CAME OUT OF MY BONDS AND OF THE TERRORS OF A FIRE AT SEA

The Devil, ever zealous for the undoing of poor Humanity, surely
findeth no readier ally than the blind and merciless Spirit of
Mortified Pride. Thus I, minding the Lady Joan's scornful look and the
sting of her soft-spoke words, fell to black and raging fury, and vowed
that since rogue and galley-slave she had named me, rogue she should
find me in very truth henceforward if I might but escape my perilous
situation.

And now it was that Chance or Fate or the Devil sent me a means whereby
I might put this desperate and most unworthy resolution into practice;
for scarce had I uttered this vow when a key turned softly in the lock,
the door opened and closed stealthily, and though I could not see (it
being pitch-dark) I knew that someone stood within a yard of me, and
all with scarce a sound and never a word. And when this silence had
endured a while, I spoke sudden and harsh:

"What now? Is it the noose so soon, or a knife sooner?"

I heard a quick-drawn breath, a soft footfall, and a small hand,
groping in the dark, touched my cheek and crept thence to my helpless,
manacled fist. "Who