But the triumph was momentary, for, rendered savage by the pain, the young squire flung himself upon his adversary, and bore him back as a jingling of a falling key was heard. The wrestling grew wilder and fiercer, and then Horace North felt as if his legs were suddenly enmeshed. He strove to free them, but in vain; and before he could recover the ground he had lost he was flung heavily, his head coming with a crash upon the stone floor, just where the matting did not cover it, and he lay without motion, and made no sound. "Curse him for a fool! Let him lie there till he comes to," panted Tom Candlish. "Where's the key? What a fool! I heard it fall as we struggled. Matches? They went too, and if they didn't I daren't light one." He felt his way to the chancel door, but in his confusion he could not open it, as Leo had made it fast. "She's got away home by now," muttered Candlish. "Where's my hat? All right; I put it on the window-ledge. Hah!--yes, that will do." He stepped up on the oaken chest beneath the long, narrow window, opened the iron-framed casement, and, squeezing himself through, stood in a bent attitude, holding on for a few moments, and then leaped down into the black darkness. A dull thud as he came down on the gravel, a crushing blow, followed by another rapidly given; a heavy groan, and then silence. A minute later a rustling sound as of some one stealing away. Volume 2, Chapter XIV. "WHAT HAVE! DONE?" "Where am I?" No answer. All was pitchy dark, but a pleasant, cool air fanned the speaker's burning brow. "Moredock! Are you asleep? The light's out. What's the matter? What's this cloth about my legs?" There was a rustling sound as Horace North rose to his feet, dragged a fallen surplice from his feet, and began to feel about him in a confused way. But that was a wall, not the ends of coffins; that was an overturned table, not the stone slab with its hideous burden; and that-- "Oh!" Horace North reeled against the wall, and rested there as he uttered that piteous groan; for, like a flash of lightning, the ray of memory had shot into his darkened brain, and he saw once more the wretched idol he had worshipped gazing wildly at him with starting eyes--she, the woman he had set upon a pinnacle, grovelling before him in her shame! The moment before, the lady of his frank, honest love; the next moment revealed to him as low in mind, as degraded as some miserable rustic wench, ready to accept the kisses of the first man who called her "dear!" "Am I going mad?" he groaned. "Poor Salis! Poor Mary Salis! They must never know. And poor me! Fool! blind idiot! But I loved her," he moaned: "and I thought her so sweet and pure and true--a woman for whom I would have shed my heart's best blood--a woman for whom I--Pah! I must not stand puling here! Blood? Yes, blood! The brute! He's strong as a horse."