I opened my eyes and looked up at him, at first with a vacant stare. "She sold me with a Judas kiss!" I muttered, "a cursed traitress--with a Judas kiss. You've promised me my choice of deaths. You'll keep your word, Sir Charles, or by the God above us--you'll die a fouler death than I." I gave him a look of such concentrated rage as I concluded, that, bound though I was, he started back a step and bit his lip. "Well, well!" he exclaimed, "I'll keep my word, you need not fear." "Then bring me a cross, and nail me to it--in my senses while I live, and while I bleed to death--you'll drag her here to see me--so that I may curse her as I die!" "The man is mad!" he gasped, "mad as a March hare!" "Keep your word!" furiously I hissed. "I bind you to your word!" Sir Charles exchanged fearful glances with the negroes. I watched him, frowning like a thunder-cloud. "Come, come!" he said at last. "You must sleep over this, Hume! You must not set me a task beyond my power--I----" But I broke in upon him with a curse. "What!" I shrieked. "You bragged and bleated of the torture you had in store for me--and when I bid you kill me as I wish to die, you shrink and blanch and mouth your feminine humanity. But you've given me your promise--and you'll keep it or by--" I finished with a storm of maledictions so blasphemously horrible, and which I delivered with such wild and awful force, that even the stolid negroes staggered back and rolled their eyes. As for Sir Charles, he turned sheet white before I was half through, and with a look of something marvellously resembling terror, he turned and simply rushed out of the room. I screamed my curses after him, straining and tugging at my bonds like one possessed. But at length, thoroughly outworn with the exertion, I stopped and feigned to swoon. Next moment the cellar was in darkness, and I heard the negroes stumble out and bolt the door behind them. I'll not relate the anguish I endured that night, more than to say it made an old man of me--in mind, if not in body. I did not sleep. I could not if I would, for I was companied with memories sharp enough to sting a soul from torpor deep as death. And I would not, if I could, because I feared that those were by me who might take advantage of my slumber to extend my sleep beyond mortality. But none came near me, and through the dragging hours I heard no sound. Morning came without the black dark lessening one whit, until the negro, Beudant, brought a candle with some breakfast. He was plainly afraid of me at first, and without doubt I was not a pleasant thing to gaze upon. But his fears faded as he fed me and saw me grateful for the food. "You are in a gentler mood, monsieur, than overnight," he presently remarked. "It is better so, believe me. If I were you, I would not die upon a cross." "Just so," I answered quickly. "I do not wish to die at all, would you like to make yourself a rich man, M. Beudant?" "Why, yes, monsieur."