Luck was certainly on my side to-day! Here were two iron handles, much
the same as those with which I had been enabled to move the monument
from within. I grasped them firmly, and began to experiment as to which
way the stone moved. It trembled under my first effort; so exerting a
very little of my strength in the same direction the great stone began
to move. I saw a widening line of open space through which a dim light
shone in upon me. Holding the stone in poise with one hand, I covered
the front of the lamp with my cap, and then resumed the opening process.
Slowly, slowly, the stone rolled back till a clear way lay abreast of me
through which, doubled up, I could pass. From where I stood I could see
part of the wall of a building, a wall with long low windows in massive
stone; and I knew that at last I had reached the old chapel. A joyous
feeling rushed over me; after the unknown perils of the cavern passage
at last I had reached safety. I bent low and began to step out through
the narrow opening. There was fully four feet in the circumference of
the stone so that two such steps as were possible to me were necessary
to take me out. I had taken one and my foot was lifted for the second
when a clear firm voice said in a whisper:
"Hands up! If you move you are a dead man!" I stopped of course, and
raising my face, for my head was bent low in the necessary effort of
stooping, I found myself opposite the muzzle of a revolver. For an
instant I looked at it; it was firm as the rock around me, and I felt
that I must obey. Then I looked beyond it, to the hand which held it,
and the eyes which directed. These too were inflexible; but a great joy
came over me when I recognised that the hand and eyes were those of
Marjory. I would have sprung forward to her, but for that ominous ring
of steel in front of me. I waited a few seconds, for it seemed strange
that she did not lower the revolver on seeing who it was. As, however,
the pistol still covered me unpleasantly, I said:
"Marjory!" In an instant her hand dropped to her side. I could not but
notice with an admiration for her self-control and the strength of her
resolution, that she still held the revolver in her grasp. With a glad
cry she leaped towards me with a quick impulsive movement which made my
heart bound, for it was all love and spontaneity. She put her left hand
on my shoulder; and as she looked into my eyes I could feel the glad
tremor that swept through her.
For several seconds she stood, and then with a sigh said in a voice of
self-reproach:
"And _I_ did not know _you_!" The way she spoke the words "I" "you" was
luminous! Had I not already known her heart, she would in that moment
have stood self-revealed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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