In my chamber with its four whitewashed walls and few sticks of furniture there was only one place where a man could stand and be unseen; and that was behind the curtain. There, I thought, the most heedless messenger must search; and as I listened to the steps ascending the last flight I was in an agony. I foresaw the moment when the constable would carelessly and perfunctorily draw the curtain--and then the flash, the report, the cry, the mad struggle up and down the room, which would follow.
So strong was this impression, that though I had been waiting minutes when the summons came and a hand struck my door, I could not at once find voice to speak. The latch was up, and the door half open when I cried "Enter!" and rose.
In the doorway appeared three or four faces, a couple of lanthorns, held high, and a gleam of pike-heads. "Richard Price, servant to Mr. Brome, the newswriter," cried one of the visitors, reading in a sonorous voice from a paper.
"Well affected," answered a second--evidently the person in command. "Brome is a good man. I know him. No one hidden here?"
"No," I said, with a loudness and boldness that surprised me.
"Right!" he answered. "Good-night, and God save King William!"
"Amen!" quoth I; and then, and not before, my knees began to shake.
However, it no longer mattered, for before I could believe that the danger was over they were gone and had closed the door; and I caught a sniggering laugh behind the curtain. Still they had gone no farther than the stairs; I heard them knock on the opposite door and troop in there, and I caught the tones of a woman's voice, young and fresh, answering them. But in a minute they came out again, apparently satisfied, and crowded down stairs; whereon the man behind the curtain laughed again, and swaggering out, Bobadil-like, shook his fist with furious gestures after them.
"Damn your King William, and you too!" he cried in ferocious triumph. "One of these days God will squeeze him like the rotten orange he is; and if God will not, I will! I, Robert Ferguson! Trot, for the set of pudding-headed blind-eyed moles that you are! Call yourselves constables! Bah! But as for you, my friend," he continued, turning to me and throwing his pistol with a crash on the table, "you have more spunk than I thought you had, and spoke up like a gentleman of mettle. There is my hand on it!"