Bride was keenly excited, too much excited to feel any personal fear; moreover, she knew that if the dog had found any unknown occupant in that upper chamber, he would have flown at him at once and pinned him, and she should be warned by the sounds as to what was going on. Hastily mounting the last flight, she entered the room, which, as she fully expected, was in utter darkness. The sound of inarticulate moaning grew louder as she approached, and the moment her lamp threw its beams within the chamber, she saw the old custodian lying on the floor, gagged, and bound with cruel cords, his head bleeding a little from some cuts upon it, and his face drawn and white. In a moment she had sprung to his aid. The hound was sniffing round the room with lashing tail and a red light in his eyes, uttering from time to time a deep bay, as though asking to be let out to follow on the track of the evil-doers who had forced a way into the tower to do this deed of darkness. But Bride could not attend to him then. She got a strong knife out of the old fisherman’s pocket, and in another minute he was free. He rose, looking dazed and shaken; but his first thought was for the extinguished light. “They put her out zo zoon’s they’d gotten me down,” he explained in trembling tones, as he set about to kindle the beacon, not able even to drink the contents of the cup Bride had mixed for him (there was always refreshment kept in the room for the watcher on these cold nights) till he had set the lamp burning again. “They bwoys ban’t a’ter no gude. Lord help any ship that’s passed to-night. A take it they will ’ave abin an’ gone vur tu light a valse light zumwheeres ’long t’ coast. Yu can’t remember they days, my laady, when ’t wuz common ’nuff for the bwoys tu du that. But his Grace and your mawther, they zet theerselves agin it: and a’ter vour or vive o’ the worst o’ the lot ’ad abin clapped intu clink, and t’ light zet burnin’ heer, theer wuzzn’t near zo much, and a thought it wuz pretty night stopped vur good. A reckon Zaul Tresithny’s abin at the bottom o’ this night’s work, that a du. A zeed he t’other daay. ’E wuz just zo zavage’s a bear, he wuz. With the faace aw’m like a death’s ’ead ’pon a mop-stick. A zed then theer’d be mischief wi’ ’e, afore we heerd t’ last o’t.” “Oh, I trust not!” breathed Bride, with clasped hands, as she stood watching the old man kindling the lamp, slowly drawling out his words as he did so. “It would be too terrible. Saul of all people! Oh, I trust it is not so! It is awful for any of them to do such things; but some are too ignorant to understand the full meaning of such a fiendish act. But Saul is not ignorant; he would know. I pray he has had no hand in this thing!”