Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/363

352 coming years; the balance of chance swung, holding their destiny, and they could not tell to which side the scale was swaying; the measure of blood would be the purchase-coin of their ransom, or the price of their bondage, and they could not know whether foe or friend now claimed it. They stood, locked in, in solitude, with but a hand's-breadth of the morning sky through the grating above their heads the only thing visible of all the living world without, and heard the tumult striving far beneath upon whose issue all their future hung.

The time was very brief; a little bird upon an ivy-coil outside the window-bars, had lifted its voice in daylight-song as the fírst shots were fired, and still was singing softly and joyously, untired; but to them the moments seemed as years. Then, loud and rejoicing on the summer air, wild vivas broke the bitter noise of conflict, and crossed the moans of fallen men; the dropping shots grew fewer and fewer. Upon the stone stairway the rapid upward rush of feet carne near; the bolts were drawn back, the door was flung aside, with his flanks white with foam, and his mighty jaws crimson with gore, the great dog sprang on her with a single bound; behind him, upon the threshold, stood Conrad Phaulcon.