Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/247

 stairs, and dark as it was, my excited eyes were keen enough to identify its faint outlines and its singular condition. 'Twas a man's shape shuffling heavily along; one portion precariously supported by a stick, the other by a hand pressed against the wall. As soon as I discerned the details appertaining to him, I had read the riddle of his apparition. It was none other than my good friend Captain Grantley!

I slipped back into bed with all the sleep banished from my eyes. A remarkable trembling held me now in every joint. 'Twas a spasm of downright, arrant fear. Yea, my good friend, Captain Grantley, was verily the devil! Every day served to reveal in new and unexpected ways the depth and audacity of his wit. This further manifestation of it almost paralysed me. 'Twas no common cunning that had taught him to conceal for what must have been several days the right condition of his knee.

As I lay awake striving to find a means to check this latest move of my subtle enemy's, several bitter facts were writ upon my mind. First, that I was not his match in craft, no matter how considerable my own; farther, that if by any chance he had found his way this night to the room of Prue, our game was lost. There was only one ray of comfort that his nocturnal expedition brought. It was that whatever might be his suspicions in regard to the prisoner's presence in the house, he held no evidence wherewith to confirm them, else he had