p? I may not essay it. I should
infallibly fall, good Dick."

It was just at the delicate moment of the operations that she spoke.
Dick started: the remainder of the coil slipped from his grasp, and the
end fell with a splash into the moat. Instantly, from the battlement
above, the voice of a sentinel cried, "Who goes?"

"A murrain!" cried Dick. "We are paid now! Down with you--take the
rope."

"I cannot," she cried, recoiling.

"An ye cannot, no more can I," said Shelton. "How can I swim the moat
without you? Do ye desert me, then?"

"Dick," she gasped, "I cannot. The strength is gone from me."

"By the mass, then, we are all shent!" he shouted, stamping with his
foot; and then, hearing steps, he ran to the room door and sought to
close it.

Before he could shoot the bolt, strong arms were thrusting it back upon
him from the other side. He struggled for a second; then, feeling
himself overpowered, ran back to the window. The girl had fallen against
the wall in the embrasure of the window; she was more than half
insensible; and when he tried to raise her in his arms, her body was
limp and unresponsive.

At the same moment the men who had forced the door against him laid hold
upon him. The first he poniarded at a blow, and the others falling back
for a second in some disorder, he profited by the chance, bestrode the
window-sill, seized the cord in both hands, and let his body slip.

The cord was knotted, which made it the easier to descend; but so
furious was Dick's hurry, and so small his experience of such
gymnastics, that he span round and round in mid-air like a criminal upon
a gibbet, and now beat his head, and now bruised his hands, against the
rugged stonework of the wall. The air roared in his ears; he saw the
stars overhead, and the reflected stars below him in the moat, whirling
like dead leaves before the tempest. And then he lost hold and fell, and
soused head over ears into the icy water.

When he came to the surface his hand encountered the rope, which, newly
lightened of his weight, was swinging wildly to and fro. There was a red
glow overhead, and looking up, he saw, by the light of several torches
and a cresset full of burning coals, the battlements lined with faces.
He saw the men's eyes turning hither and thither in quest of him; but he
was too far below, the light reached him not, and they looked in vain.

And now he perceived that the rope was considerably too long, and he
began to stru