enemy was no fool. He had been shrewd enough to lock me in against the
chance of interruption.

I wish you might conceive the helpless horror grappling with me there
behind that fastened door; but this, indeed, you may not, having felt it
not. For one dazed moment I was sick as death with fear and frenzy and I
know not what besides, and all the blackness of the night swam sudden
red before my eyes. Then, in the twinkling of an eye, the madness left
me cool and sane, as if the fit had been the travail-pain of some new
birth of soul. And after that, as I remember, I knew not rage nor haste
nor weakness--knew no other thing save this; that I had set myself a
task to do and I would do it.

My window was in shape like half a cell of honeycomb, and close beside
it on the outer wall there grew an ancient ivy-vine which more than once
had held my weight when I was younger and would evade my father's
vigilance.

I swung the casement noiselessly and clambered out, with hand and foot
in proper hold as if those youthful flittings of my boyhood days had
been but yesternight. A breathless minute later I was down and afoot on
solid ground; and then a thing chanced which I would had not. The man
whom I had called a servant turned and saw me.

"Halt! Who goes there?" he cried.

"A friend," said I, between my wishings for a weapon. For this servant
of my prefigurings proved to be a trooper, booted, spurred and armed.

"By God, I think you lie," he said; and after that he said no more, for