He was wrenching and tugging frantically at the handle of the entrance-door. In an instant he was out, had staggered, had sprawled with his hands to save himself, and had gone with a sliding run into the snow. He was up directly, and shrieking to those within for a light. Some one brought it flurried, and he seized and held it over some shapeless thing huddled against the porch. “Drunk?” he muttered. “No, by God!” and he stooped and gave a little pull to the inert mass. A squelch of darkness ran out into the snow, that received and held it like a blotting-paper. Mr. Corby had been stabbed to the heart. CHAPTER XLVII. When upon the poor gentleman, starved and re-fettered, descended once more the sick loneliness of confinement, he assured himself that only a little time now was needed to see the quenching of his last spark of reason. He was so exhausted and unstrung--so doubly weakened by this latest wanton cantrip of Fortune, as to feel that the spirit of venture, fluttering within him on a broken wing, was physically incapable at last of the least independence of action. He looked upon himself as one who, having half raised a fallen treasure from a near-inaccessible ledge, has let it slip out of pure carelessness into the abyss; and so regarding his folly, he was miserably ready, like the born gambler he was, to cry Kismet! over his punishment. The girl it was concerned him most--prominently for her own sake, but also because he might not guess what her seizure betokened, or what weak defences had made the fact of it possible. About her condition, or her safety in the midst of these lawless ruffians, his brain was too worn to speculate; but at least he could understand that the purpose for which she was held would not be allowed to perish upon itself of inaction. He was only numbly conscious of the passing hours; the semi-torpor induced by cold and hunger deadened the pain of his scarified wrists, and he sat or lay huddled against the hearth unmoved to the least further effort of self-release. Sometimes, as evening crept on and darkened, he was aware, in a confused manner, of jangling sounds about the house that he dimly associated with the definite business of life--the rattle of pans and of crockery; the purr of rough voices strangely attuned to the pitch eloquent of the domestic virtues; later, a harsher medley of discords--the song, the quarrel, the crash of boisterous mirth, and often enough the thud of blows or shuffle of drunken feet. Intermittently through all, the penance-walk of the sentry in the passage went monotonously on, now dragging sullenly, now moved to some spasmodic briskness as the laugh bubbled high in the kitchen, now accented with a curse like a dog’s snap at a fly. Intermittently, too, came the hum of voices from the room opposite, sinking and swooping and moaning, as if a wind of evil thoughts were there gathering for any purpose of destruction.