Page:The Yellow Book - 13.djvu/77

Rh his fortunes, and stored up in that little chest shut in by its triple locks of iron which bore the gilt escutcheon of his family, jewels, bonds, censos of great value, which might save him even now. As his footsteps resounded through the empty streets, and his sword, clinking against the pavement, roused hollow echoes, he had made plans for the future. He would amend his ways. He would marry. He would eschew gambling, drink, and women. He would have the masses said for his father's soul in the Monastery of Sto Tomé, even as the old man had charged him to have done in his will. He would dower a poor maiden in the Convent of the Clarisas. Let him have one more chance!

He knew that in that small chest lay the sentence of his Life or Death. Yet he opened it boldly, nor did his fingers tremble as they struggled with the intricacies of the triple lock, nor yet did any added pallor blanch his face when he threw back the lid and saw a rope, a new rope coiled neatly within the small compass of the box and tied into a noose, adjusted to the exact size of a man's neck!

The moonbeams trembled in at the narrow window. The lamp burnt red in the shadow of the vast space of the empty chamber. He wondered vaguely why the moon should be as bright and the lamp as red as yesterday. The old housekeeper was startled by his peals of laughter. He called for wine and she brought it. He held it up to the light, watched the moonbeams die in the bubbles and he thought it glistened like blood. He wondered if she saw the resemblance, and holding up the cup high above his head, he waved it in the air:

"To the memory of my father and of his most excellent jest," and then forced her to drink the toast. That was only a few hours ago.

Now he was hurrying headlong through the beating of the Rh