“Is it in the pavilion?” I asked.

“It is; and I wish it were in the bottom of the sea instead,” said Northmour; and then suddenly—­“What are you making faces at me for?” he cried to Mr. Huddlestone, on whom I had unconsciously turned my back.  “Do you think Cassilis would sell you?”

Mr. Huddlestone protested that nothing had been further from his mind.

“It is a good thing,” retorted Northmour in his ugliest manner.  “You might end by wearying us.  What were you going to say?” he added, turning to me.

“I was going to propose an occupation for the afternoon,” said I.  “Let us carry that money out, piece by piece, and lay it down before the pavilion door.  If the carbonari come, why, it’s theirs at any rate.”

“No, no,” cried Mr. Huddlestone; “it does not, it cannot, belong to them!  It should be distributed pro rata among all my creditors.”

“Come now, Huddlestone,” said Northmour, “none of that.”

“Well, but my daughter,” moaned the wretched man.

“Your daughter will do well enough.  Here are two suitors, Cassilis and I, neither of us beggars, between whom she has to choose.  And as for yourself, to make an end of arguments, you have no right to a farthing, and, unless I’m much mistaken, you are going to die.”

It was certainly very cruelly said; but Mr. Huddlestone was a man who attracted little sympathy; and, although I saw him wince and shudder, I mentally indorsed the rebuke; nay, I added a contribution of my own.

“Northmour and I,” I said, “are willing enough to help you to save your life, but not to escape with stolen property.”

He struggled for awhile with himself, as though he were on the point of giving way to anger, but prudence had the best of the controversy.

“My dear boys,” he said, “do with me or my money what you will.  I leave all in your hands.  Let me compose myself.”

And so we left him, gladly enough I am sure.

The last that I saw, he had once more taken up his great Bible, and with tremulous hands was adjusting his spectacles to read.

VII

The recollection of that afternoon will always be graven on my mind.  Northmour and I were persuaded that an attack was imminent; and if it had been in our power to alter in any way the order of events, that power would have been used to precipitate rather than delay the critical moment.  The worst was to be anticipated; yet we could conceive no extremity so miserable as the suspense we were now suffering.  I have never been an eager, though always a great, reader; but I never knew books so insipid as those which I took up and cast aside that afternoon in the pavilion.  Even talk became impossible, as the hours went on.  One or other was always listening for some sound, or peering from an upstairs window over the links.  And yet not a sign indicated the presence of our foes.