Instead there encompassed him a damp dungeon-like chill.
Everywhere there was blackness--everywhere except in one spot, where a
little yellow eye of fire watched him and blinked at him. At first he
thought that the eye must be miles and miles away. But it came quickly
nearer--and still nearer--until at last he knew that it was a candle
burning with the silence of a death taper a yard or two beyond his feet.

CHAPTER XVI

JEAN'S STORY

It was the candle-light that dragged Howland quickly back into
consciousness and pain. He knew that he was no longer in the snow. His
fingers dug into damp earth as he made an effort to raise himself, and
with that effort it seemed as though a red-hot knife had cleft him from
the top of his skull to his chest. The agony of that instant's pain drew
a sharp cry from him and he clutched both hands to his head, waiting and
fearing. It did not come again and he sat up. A hundred candles danced
and blinked before him like so many taunting eyes and turned him dizzy
with a sickening nausea. One by one the lights faded away after that
until there was left only the steady glow of the real candle.

The fingers of Howland's right hand were sticky when he drew them away
from his head, and he shivered. The tongue of flame leaping out of the
night, the thunderous report, the deluge of fire that had filled his
brain, all bore their meaning for him now. It had been a close call, so
close that shivering chills ran up and down his spine as he struggled
little by little to lift himself to his knees. His enemy's shot had
grazed his head. A quarter of an inch more, an eighth of an inch even,
and there would have been no awakening. He closed his eyes for a few
moments, and when he opened them his vision had gained distance. About
him he made out indistinctly the black encompassing walls of his prison.

It seemed an interminable time before he could rise and stand on his
feet and reach the candle. Slowly he felt his way along the wall until
he came to a low, heavy door, barred from the outside, and just beyond
this door he found a narrow aperture cut through the decaying logs. It
was a yard in length and barely wide enough for him to thrust through an
arm. Three more of these narrow slits in his prison walls he found
before he came back again to the door. They reminded him of the hole
through which he had looked out on the plague-stricken cabin at the
_Maison de Mort Rouge_, and he guessed that throu