Shivering, her skin a-prickle as with cold, she went back to the window, climbed the bed, and gave the man a whisper. “John, there is some one coming up the stair.” “Lie down on the bed, child; I will slip out and wait.” She heard the rope chafe slightly against the window-ledge as John Gore lowered himself cautiously so as to be out of view. He hung there as a sailor can, with feet and knees gripping the rope, and one hand on the butt of the pistol that he had thrust into his belt. He had left the tools on the window-sill, and no one would see them or the knotted rope about the bar, unless they climbed up from the bed to look. Hanging there, with the wind shaking the ivy, he could hear no sound in the tower and see no glimmer of light coming from the squints. The rising moon was beginning to throw gleams down into the valley, but the western quarter of the tower was as dark as a well. It was a moment when a man may feel scared by some vague, indefinite peril invisible to him in the darkness. Or he may clinch his teeth and keep his right hand ready, knowing, if he be a man who has had his share of adventure-hunting, that his own imagination may be far more sinister than any living thing on earth or sea. There was a sudden faint click like the twist of a turned lock, a sound that made John Gore lift his chin heavenward and listen with both his ears. Then came a slow whine, as though an unoiled hinge were turning. The door of Barbara’s room had been opened; he had no doubt of that. Probably she was feigning sleep, thinking that one of my lord’s creatures had come to see that all was safe. A harsh gust of wind shook the ivy on the wall, making John Gore curse the leaves for setting up such a flutter. But above the rustling of the ivy he heard an abrupt and half-smothered cry, and then the sound as of people struggling. The bed creaked; there was an inarticulate choking as of some one striving to call for help through the smothering folds of a cloak. The black room within seemed full of movement, of piteous effort, of hoarse, savage whisperings that made his mane bristle like a furious dog’s. He gave one shout as a challenge and a warning, and then slid down the rope without heeding how it chafed his hands. Plucking out his sword and pistol from the ivy at the foot of the tower, he ran for the doorway that led from the terrace into the hall, his face meeting the moonlight that poured down through a broken window. XXXVII