CHAPTER XVIII.

THE SLEEPERS

An hour later and Andrew Vause was slowly making his way through a deep wood of chestnuts that fringed the property of De Bois-Vallée, and which lay between the open _place_ in front of the mansion and the side road along which he had come from the southern entrance to Remiremont.

From the beginning, from the moment he knew he was outside Bois-le-Vaux, he had been forced to recognize that no chances were omitted for rendering the property what it was, and what it had in all probability been since first constructed in the time of Duke Thierry, namely, a strongly guarded and protected place. Inside the road, between the chestnut wood and the road itself, ran a high stone wall--the mountains above providing the stones for that as well as for the house itself--which was two feet above Andrew's tall head, and which at first presented the appearance of being insurmountable. Yet this was not the case, as very shortly the adventurous soldier proved.

Having tied his horse to a tree, he, from its back, soon clambered on to the summit of the wall, and then (since, inside, the copse of chestnuts grew close up to it) lowered himself by a branch to the ground. He stood, therefore, within the place which held his enemy and the woman whom that enemy kept prisoner, as he believed.

But, because he was a wary adventurer who knew that now his life hung by the veriest thread if discovered, he lost no opportunity of making himself safe, and no sooner was he within the place than he took steps to provide for his exit.

"It may come to a rush for escape," he thought, "to the necessity for reaching the horse's back the moment I am on the wall--let's see for a mark to guide me," whereon he paused and looked around for something that should give him a clue to the exact spot where he had left the steed. He was not long in finding one.

Through the copse, or fringe of chestnuts that ran parallel with the wall, he saw that there were one or two small paths which crossed each other at intervals, some following the line of the wall itself, and some running directly forward from it. Paths used doubtless by the woodmen and trappers of small game, such as hares and rabbits; and, walking carefully along one of those that ran from the wall, he finding it close to his feet, he emerged soon into an open grassy space. And here he discovered the mark that should direct him back safely to the spot outside of which the horse was tethered; namely, three small trees scarce better than saplings, yet standing out clear and distinct in the full flood of the moon's light, and casting a long shadow beneath them on to the grass.

"It will do very well," he thought. "I cannot miss these trees once I regain this glade," after which he drew his sword, carrying it henceforth naked in his hand, clasped half-way down, and, thus prepared, skirted the chestnut copse as he made his way towards where he knew the house stood.

As he progressed he noticed how intense the silence was on this still October night; so intense, indeed, that his own footsteps on the now fast falling leaves, which each breath of air brought down about him, seemed loud to his ears. Also the creeping of anything in the copse, such as a mouse, or the rustling of a disturbed bird in the branches above, could be distinctly heard. But beyond these sounds nothing else; no barking of dog nor neigh of horse. Nothing. All as still as death!

"But that I keep ever before my eyes the memory of Philip's broken life, the knowledge, which I now believe myself to possess, that this woman whom I go to rescue has been as treacherously betrayed as he, I would be on no such secret quest as this," he thought. "This midnight skulking is not to my taste. Were it not for her safety, I should be hammering at his door, calling to him to come forth and try conclusions man to man with me, smiting him before all his following. Yet, to save her, I must do it thus." And, again, stealthily and cautiously he pursued his way beneath the shadow of the trees.

And still all was as silent as before, except that now the wind rose a little more and rustled the leaves, and brought them down in bigger handfuls. A wind that blew towards the house to which he was slowly making his way.

He was near it soon, however, after having progressed for something like a quarter of an hour; already above him he could see its wooden upper portion rising higher than the trees, with, above that, the topmost slopes of the mountains. He was very near now! Then, suddenly, the woods finished, he was on the eastern side of the great open _place_--paved, he plainly observed, with great cobble stones that were worn very smooth by time, and also, doubtless, with the passage of many feet, both of horse and man, during the centuries. For that the great _place_ had been the rendezvous of all the followers of the De Bois-Vallées, of those who had gone forth with them to countless wars, and those who had assembled there for merriment and rejoicing, was certain.

Now, it was empty, deserted; across its surface nothing passed but the shadow of some cloud that occasionally scurried beneath the moon; it seemed almost as if the house was deserted also.

Yet Andrew, keeping himself well within the darkness of the wood which ran close up to where the cobble-stoning of the place began, or ended, saw at once that such was not the case. In the topmost floor of wood--there being two--a light glimmered--and threw a dull glare out; a light shielded by some curtain, or hanging, which obscured the rays. "It may be hers," he thought, "nay, must. It is the position Jean spoke of. On the top, to the front. Yet the room from which it comes is unattainable from the outside at least." And again he said to himself as he had said before, "It will be from the back, from across the chasm I must reach that room--as I shall reach it. It is the only way."

For that he would reach it somehow he was resolved--that he should fail to do so he never considered. Not unless he was killed that night would he fail.

In truth, none could have attained the room in which the light burned, from the front. There was no foothold by which a cat could have climbed to it from the outside; naught but a bird could have gone straight to that small window. The lower part of the house stared out blank and unrelieved by any ornament or window-sill, or other projection by which one might mount; the huge arch, which formed the frame of the one great door, was unadorned by any moulding or decoration that would assist either foot or hand. All was bare wall, except for slits of windows no bigger, than eyelets, with sloping sills, and the door. Above, on the wooden floors, there were outstanding beams and stanchions by which an agile man might perhaps have raised himself, but those wooden floors were thirty feet from the ground and unreachable.

From the great door there came also two strips of light, one from beneath it, the other a bright ray that seemed to the man regarding it from afar as though proceeding from some huge keyhole.

"If," he thought, as still he watched and saw this flow of the light, "it can stream out thus, an eye placed to the orifice can see in. Mine shall be that eye. I will not return until I have observed what hall it is from which that ray proceeds," and, as he spoke, he drew from his belt a pistol, saw to its priming, and carefully shook fresh powder into the pan, then returned it to its place and made ready for his task. Yet he did not hesitate to acknowledge to himself that, if his footfall outside was heard by any who might be within--if that door should open while he was outside it--his life would possibly cease on the instant. The hall might be half full of armed men, and of them he could possibly kill two; the rest would undoubtedly kill him--bury a dozen swords or daggers in his breast.

But, even as he so reflected, he was on his way to see what was beyond that ray of light; was, under the shadow of the half-leafless trees, creeping up the copse until he stood level with the face of the house, and with its left angle to his side. Then, on tiptoe and keeping close to that bare face, he passed along it until he reached the huge door and stood on the half-moon of flagged stones before it, so that the light from underneath played on his feet, and the light from the great keyhole made a luminous star upon his breast.

He prayed his knees would not crack as he bent down to put his eye to the hole--even such a slight noise as that might suffice to betray his presence; he did not venture even to put his fingers to the door to aid his stooping position--without their support he brought his body down so that his eye was close to, and level with, the hole, and, thus, looked in.

At first his sight was blurred by gazing into the light, then, gradually, he became able to see and to distinguish clearly what was within.

In a well in the middle of a great hall, so vast that fifty men at least might have sat at table there, and fifty more have found room to walk about and wait on them, there burnt a log fire, the embers low and charred now, and lurid, as though they had not been put together for some time. Around this fire five men sat in deep wooden chairs, all of them asleep, or seeming so. One, he who had the largest and most comfortable seat, appeared by his dress to be superior to the rest, he having on a dark blue coat, passemented with galloon, a satin waistcoat, and knee breeches of the same. Also, there was a wig upon his head--thrust somewhat awry by the movement of his shoulders as he slumbered--a wig that had not been powdered nor combed for many a day, and was thus of a dirty brown and touzled. An elderly man this, with a red, blotched face, coarse thick lips, and--as he slept--of a frowning aspect; a man big and brawny, too, as Andrew could well see; one who, although no longer young, might be a difficult antagonist in an encounter.

"Doubtless the steward, Beaujos," Andrew thought; then scanned the others.

These were fellows clad half as serving and half as fighting men, it seemed, wearing leathern jerkins of a period somewhere earlier than the present; coarse, baggy breeches and rough hose, and with their own hair, matted and thick, hanging about their heads. They carried in their belts knives in wooden sheaths in contradistinction to the other, whose sword lay on the table by his hand. On that table, too, Andrew could see, was a great flagon, doubtless drained of its contents ere they slept, and some cups; also a lamp from which the light came that streamed forth into the night. And still there were two other sleepers in that great hall--though sleepers less sound than these five. They, instead of being round the fire in the well, by the side of which, indeed, no room had been left for them by the men, lay at the foot of the huge broad staircase that led up from the left of the hall, yet were still in Andrew's range of vision. And he, looking at them, knew that here was a greater danger to him than might come from the others.

They were two enormous hounds--half boarhounds, as it appeared to him gazing in through the keyhole, of the sort much used in Alsace and Lorraine, and all the region; yet, it seemed also, as though with something of the bloodhound, too, since their great heads rose conical, and their huge ears swept the ground.

"I must away," said Andrew to himself, "there is danger here. By heavens! my presence is known to them already." Yet, with that danger which now threatened him--as it had not threatened from the other sleepers--impending near, he felt himself fascinated by the monstrous creatures.

Impending very near, since he had divined the truth when he said to himself that they knew of his presence already. He saw one--the female, he thought, since she was longer and leaner than the other--slowly lift her head as a snake lifts its head ere it strikes--the snout raised sniffing towards the roof of the hall, the ears drooping to the paved floor. And the bloodshot eyes cast backwards, the shift of those eyes around the hall, proclaimed what would happen next. A roar of alarm, a warning to those who slumbered still.

"Away," Andrew muttered, "away!" and, as he spoke to himself, he slid swiftly along the wall and regained the copse.

Not a moment too soon! There came a deep, sharp yap from the dog; an instant after another from her mate, and then the roar from each throat. Almost it seemed to Andrew as he withdrew that he heard the patter of the great paws upon the flagged floor as the dogs rushed to the door; almost it seemed as though their great forms were hurled against it, they striving for egress.

And he heard other sounds ere he was gone from outside that door--those from the human throats within!

First the voice of the man he supposed to be Beaujos, shouting:

"Awake, you vagabonds, awake! Hark to the dogs! Unbar the door. Heaven and earth, there are some without! 'Tis sure! Unbar, I say."

Also, he heard cries from the men themselves, the clatter of their wooden-shod feet upon the flags--of this there was no doubt--a grating noise in the great lock, and a thumping sound as though some ponderous transverse wooden bar had been thrown back to admit of the door being opened.

And, from where he was, he could perceive now a vast body of light streaming out into, and mixing with, that of the moon, could hear the deep-mouthed bay of the hounds broken by short angry barks.

From where he was by this time, namely, passing swiftly down to the open spot where the three saplings grew, pushing branches large and small aside, trampling down the wet leaves and sodden grass, he prayed fervently that he might reach the spot outside where his horse stood ere they found him. For, brave man as he was, and ready to face a dozen, or a score, of human foes, his blood curdled in him at the thought of those ferocious fangs tearing him to pieces; the thought of the hot breath of the brutes in his face as they sprang at his throat and dragged him to the earth.

"Any number of men," he said, "and armed to the teeth I can face and laugh at, but five men and two hounds such as those---nay, I am no coward to avoid them."

Yet, even as those thoughts coursed through his brain, he shuddered and his flesh crept. The deep bays had ceased; so, too, the equally deep barks; but now he heard another and a more fearsome sound in their place. A sound of snorting, of heavy soughing, low down on the earth, mingled with the crushing and snapping of brush and underwood.

He knew what those sounds meant.

The hounds had found his trail, were on the scent.

There was no doubt of it, there could be no chance of doubt--a glance back over his shoulder showed him it was so. Close to the ground, not fifty paces off, were sparkling two pairs of beautifully green circles. Those circles were the eyes of the dogs that were tracking him, as they glistened in the darkness of the wood.