Now this was all a matter of a few seconds, but the noise had roused the household; and steps were heard hurrying down the stairs--as Sir David and the groom having come to their feet again were all re-making for the combatants--when the climax of the tragedy broke in a clap of fury to which the prelude had been a whisper. For, in some quarter of the house, a sudden shot rang out, and immediately there was a roar like a peal of subterranean thunder, and on its heels a hell of clanging and splintering sounds and the explosion of shattered glass--and the very floor of the room seemed to yawn and belch forth flame and cloud, as if a crater were formed beneath the foundations of the building. Half-blinded and half-stunned, Tuke staggered to his feet and stood reeling. A monstrous silence succeeded the uproar, accented only--as a spout of black smoke rose to the ceiling and blossomed out there into a great fungus of death--with falling and tinkling sounds as of glass and dropping plaster. Then, close at hand, he heard voices crying to him, and he tottered towards them. CHAPTER LII. Captain Luvaine--misanthrope, ascetic, wiry as a ferret and disciplined on a drum-head--had fallen asleep at his post. No doubt the exhaustion induced by cold, hunger, and the emotion to which he had lately been subjected, was responsible for this lapse into a condition quite humanly natural. It was unfortunate for all, however, and very particularly for the unfortunate gentleman himself, that it should have occurred in the place and at the moment most fatal to the cause he had to serve. For half-an-hour--his pistol cuddled in his left arm as if it were a wakeful baby--he measured his monotonous tramp in the little circumscribed chamber where was situated the “Priest’s Hole.” Upon a bracket on the wall a single candle burned, its flames shrugging peevishly in the cold draught that came through the high grating in the masonry. The trap of the vault was thrown open, the woodwork lying flat upon the floor; but the stone below was swung to upon its pivot, and at every recurring wheel in his march, he glanced down to see that this stone held its place, and that no stealthy pressure was applying to it from the tunnel-side. For, an extreme probability that the rogues would follow in the tracks of their escaped victim (no fresh snow having fallen to obliterate them) as far as the ice-house in the clearing, and would so learn of the existence of the underground passage, had led all engaged in the defence of the house to accept this quarter of it as the one most open to attack, and therefore to be more jealously watched than any other.