He was starting forward, when the other went swiftly to the door, opened it, looked back with a horrible smile, and vanished. “And here endeth the first lesson,” said Mr. Tuke. CHAPTER XLIV. Upon the unfortunate gentleman, now committed to an irksome and most apprehensive solitude, fell a score of little demons of melancholy and alarm. To men of his fibre there is no chastening so bitter as confinement; and though with the master-rogue he had borne himself like the spirited knight of destiny he was, no sooner was he left alone than he found his indignation subordinated to reflections that were distracting to the last degree. What would his companions think had become of him? and, failing his return, would they follow in his tracks and fall into that selfsame snare? Was Miss Royston, with her lordling cavalier, even now established a prisoner in his house? or had she failed to respond to her brother’s invitation? Who was it that had shut “Delsrop” against the besieging rascals? and would his household, deprived of its legitimate head and in ignorance as to his fate, exhibit the nerve to conduct and sustain an effective resistance? What member of his _personnel_ had been shot that morning? A man, it appeared. Then, if not Dunlone---- He ran over in his mind the names of those in his service--two grooms, one of them a mere boy, and the imported Jim. These, with Betty, Darda, possibly Angela, and three maids, were the sum total of the defenders. Half-a-dozen girls, two men and a boy; and one of the latter already accounted for. He groaned, and set to tramping to and fro like a wild, caged beast. His impotence, the impossibility of resolving any one of these problems that tortured him, set his brain reeling. His hands had been corded behind him so tightly that the flesh swelled and lapped over the knots. Yet it was not his personal discomfort that chiefly perturbed him, or any apprehension of the force of coercion his captors would be brutal enough to employ. That he was condemned, in the midst of a stirring episode in his career, to a pitiful inaction, was what galled him like a rowel. Almost simultaneously with his interlocutor’s withdrawal from the room, a sentry, of a villainous cast, had made his appearance outside the window, where he took his stand, flint-lock on shoulder. Another (by token of his hard breathing and the intermittent click of a hammer against his coat-buttons as he shifted his position from time to time) was stationed outside the door. From the room opposite came fitfully the sound of voices in low discussion. The fire upon the hearth died upon itself and consigned the stark little room to a perfect apathy of chilliness. Frost gathered on the diamonds of the casement and turned the stolid sentry into a phantom of himself. And still the dull hours sped onwards and not a soul came to lighten his depression.