Dick was again silent.
“Down with it,” said Sir Daniel.
And immediately his followers fell savagely upon
the door with foot and fist. Solid as it was,
and strongly bolted, it would soon have given way;
but once more fortune interfered. Over the thunderstorm
of blows the cry of a sentinel was heard; it was followed
by another; shouts ran along the battlements, shouts
answered out of the wood. In the first moment
of alarm it sounded as if the foresters were carrying
the Moat House by assault. And Sir Daniel and
his men, desisting instantly from their attack upon
Dick’s chamber, hurried to defend the walls.
“Now,” cried Dick, “we are saved.”
He seized the great old bedstead with both hands,
and bent himself in vain to move it.
“Help me, Jack. For your life’s
sake, help me stoutly!” he cried.
Between them, with a huge effort, they dragged the
big frame of oak across the room, and thrust it endwise
to the chamber door.
“Ye do but make things worse,” said Joanna,
sadly. “He will then enter by the trap.”
“Not so,” replied Dick. “He
durst not tell his secret to so many. It is by
the trap that we shall flee. Hark! The
attack is over. Nay, it was none!”
It had, indeed, been no attack; it was the arrival
of another party of stragglers from the defeat of
Risingham that had disturbed Sir Daniel. They
had run the gauntlet under cover of the darkness;
they had been admitted by the great gate; and now,
with a great stamping of hoofs and jingle of accoutrements
and arms, they were dismounting in the court.
“He will return anon,” said Dick.
“To the trap!”
He lighted a lamp, and they went together into the
corner of the room. The open chink through which
some light still glittered was easily discovered,
and, taking a stout sword from his small armoury,
Dick thrust it deep into the seam, and weighed strenuously
on the hilt. The trap moved, gaped a little,
and at length came widely open. Seizing it with
their hands, the two young folk threw it back.
It disclosed a few steps descending, and at the foot
of them, where the would-be murderer had left it,
a burning lamp.
“Now,” said Dick, “go first and
take the lamp. I will follow to close the trap.”
So they descended one after the other, and as Dick
lowered the trap, the blows began once again to thunder
on the panels of the door.
The passage in which Dick and Joanna now found themselves
was narrow, dirty, and short. At the other end
of it, a door stood partly open; the same door, without
doubt, that they had heard the man unlocking.
Heavy cobwebs hung from the roof; and the paved flooring
echoed hollow under the lightest tread.
