“By heavens! I’d make him fight!” burst out my quiet lieutenant, in a most unprecedented upflash of rage. “See here, Captain Page; by all the gods, I’m going to take the chance of having my commission canceled, and send him to you! Here is my sword”--he drew it and flung it upon the bed. “You’ll promise me that you will not use it in a way to make me sorry that I trusted you?” “Most willingly,” I replied, smiling at his sudden ardor, and added: “But he won’t fight, Mr. Castner.” “Then kill him!” he snapped vindictively; and turned to kick hotly at the door for the guard to come and let him out. Not to lose any of the precious minutes I fell into furious labor on the hole in the wall as soon as the door clanged behind Castner. When at length the aperture was large enough to let me squeeze through, nothing was revealed save the crumbling sides of a damp earth-tunnel, with the wooden bulkhead stopping its farther end. I did not dare to creep into the tunnel for a better investigation of the _cul de sac_. If Seytoun had not changed his mind, he might be admitted at any moment, and remembering this, I hastily replaced the loosened bricks, and moved the table, with the candle on it, against the wall. Happily, I had made the breach so low that the table hid it; which was more by hit than good wit, since I had not thought of having to conceal it. These preparations were barely completed when the door-bolt clicked, and my enemy was come. Between the bolt shooting and the swinging of the door, I had time to drop down upon the edge of the bunk-bed, and to put my face in my hands; so Seytoun found me as I wished he should find me--in an attitude of the deepest dejection. He took instant advantage of it, as I made sure he would, laughing harshly and slapping his leg, and saying it was as good as a comedy to see me sniveling like a whipped schoolboy because, forsooth, I was going to be choked presently with a bit of cord! At first I took no notice of him, wishing to see him climb the ladder of triumph so high that the fall, when it should come, would jar his teeth loose. He climbed fast enough, in all conscience, pouring out the most obscene imprecations upon me, telling me how he should live to see me dancing upon nothing; how he would marry Beatrix now in spite of hell and all the base-born, light-mothered Pages that ever mewled in their nurses’ arms; how, in one stroke, he would be avenged for all that I had ever done to him. When he had run the full gamut of abuse, and was fairly at a stand for fresh epithets, I took him up, not angrily, for, strange as it may seem, I could not for the life of me stir the hot rage that had twice or thrice made me so eager to kill him.