Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/45

 hath reason on her. But this I'm sure of: had my Lady Barbarity only known the strange form the business of that night was to take for herself and others, she had certainly said her prayers before she embarked upon it.

Two clocks were telling the hour together in the hall when I rode down the broad backs of the bannisters and attained the mat below without a sound, this seeming the quietest and most expeditious way of overcoming the obstinacy of stairs, who creak at no time no louder than at one o'clock at night—that is, unless it is at two. I glided across the tiles and entered the servants' part without so much as waking up a beetle, such is the virtue that resides in dainty slippers, wedded to dainty toes. Emblem had left one of the scullery doors unbarred, and through this I stole forth to the stable. The air was still as any spectre, and I observed its sacred calm so implicitly that a fox actually stalked across the yard, not twenty paces off, with his nose upon the ground, inquiring for poultry.

I was much too wise to take the stable from the front, but by dodging round divers of the kitchen offices, I was able to outflank it, and could peep upon the sentry by the door under cover of a friendly wall. Every beam of moonlight seemed gathered on that bayonet. When that naked steel looked at me thus, and seemed to say "Come on if you dare!" the spirit of my mischief was pretty badly dashed, and began to seek a pretext to retire. There was Emblem, though, and who shall endure the secret