Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/132

 CHAPTER VIII.

IN WHICH THE HERO IS FOUND TO BE A PERSON OF NO DESCENT WHATEVER.

At ten o'clock the soldiers came and reported themselves to their commander. One of them, presumably the officer in charge, was closeted with the Captain in the library for no less a time than an hour and a quarter. The others meantime put their jaded horses up, procured some food, and retired to rest themselves. At a few minutes to twelve o'clock, as the Mountain could not go to Mahomet, owing to some question of his knee, Mahomet went to the Mountain. At that hour a spy posted on the stairs informed me that my papa, the Earl, hopped—gout and all—to the Captain in the library. Meantime Emblem and myself were discussing the situation, behind locked doors, exhaustively, but with a deal of trepidation. She, it seemed, had just come into the possession of a piece of news of a very alarming kind. It was to the effect that the Captain, not wishing to disturb his knee, had passed the night in his chair in front of the library fire. And that apartment opened in the entrance hall, and was near the very flight of stairs up which the prisoner had passed. It was thus all too prob