Abduction -- Fiction; Americans -- Europe -- Fiction; Love stories
With Dickey and Lady Jane, Dorothy passed into the courtyard and
into the open air for the first time in nearly a week. She felt like
a bird with clipped wings. The most casual inspection convinced her
that there was no possible chance of escape from the walled
quadrangle, in the center of which loomed the immense,
weather-painted castle. The wall was high and its strength was as
unbroken as in its earliest days. Lord Saxondale joined them and
explained to her all the points of interest about the castle as
viewed from the outside, but Quentin quietly abandoned his walk and
disappeared.
“It is as difficult to get out of Castle Craney-crow as it is to get
in, I dare say,” observed Dorothy, looking with awe upon the grim
old pile of rocks, they called a castle. Far above their heads stood
the tower, from which she had seen earth and sky as if in a
panorama, three days before.
“One might be able to get out if he could fly. It seems the only
way, provided, of course, there were opposition to his departure,”
said Lord Bob, smiling.
“Alas, I cannot fly,” she said, directly.
At the rear of the castle, where the stonework had been battered
down by time, man and the elements, she saw several servants at
work. “You have trustworthy servants, Lord Saxondale. I have tried
to bribe one of them.”
“You see, Miss Garrison, they love Lady Frances. That is the secret
of their loyalty. The chances are they'd sell me out to-morrow, but
they'd die before they'd cut loose from my wife. By Jove, I don't
understand how it is that everybody is won over by you American
women.”
During the trip through the cellars, Dorothy had learned that the
secret passages to the outside world began in the big chamber under
the tower. Lady Saxondale had unwittingly confessed, while they were
in the room, that two of the big rocks in the wall were false and
that they were in reality doors which opened into the passages. One
of the passages was over a mile long, and there were hundreds of
steps to descend before one reached a level where walking was not
laborious. The point of egress was through a hidden cave up the
valley, near the ruins of an old church. Where the other passage had
once led to she did not know, for it had been closed by the caving
in of a great pile of rocks.
With a determined spirit and a quaking courage, Dorothy vowed that
she would sooner or later find this passage-way and make a bold dash
for liberty. Her nerves were tingling with excitement, eagerness and
a horror of the undertaking, and she could scarcely control herself
until the opportunity might come for a surreptitious visit to the
underground regions. Her first thought was to locate, if possible,
the secret door leading into the passage. With that knowledge in her
possession she could begin the flight at once, or await a favorable
hour on some later day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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