"Have no fear, Sir Dick. We'll not be separated. The moat frozen, ... no moon, ... I tell you, my son, that a good fortune is smiling down upon our little adventure, ... eh!" "Have you brought everything needful?" Sir Richard inquired, when the grizzled knight's harness had been adjusted and they were starting upward. "Everything. Not even a regret have I left within the damned hole, Sir Dick!" As they climbed past the floor of the passageway, Sir Richard took note of the fact that the lights within the council hall had been extinguished. Two spots of faint illumination, however, were now shining from the youth's rooms. "Poor boy, he cannot sleep," the young knight thought, and passed upward into the yawning flue. For days he had been pouring oil over the hinges and padlocks of the trap-door at the top. The bolts yielded noiselessly. Having made everything free, Sir Richard set his back against the planks and gave a mighty heave. There followed upon the instant a startled grunt and a voice rumbled strangely above the door. "Hi, Jock!" it called. "Didst mark any quaking of the castle just then? No? Well, be damned to me, an' I thought to mysel' th' whole moldy tower were a-givin' around our ears. Has't a nippie o' sack in thy jerkin, Jock?" Sir Richard divined that the answer to the guard's question must have been a favorable one, for he at once got up from off the trap-door, after which he could hear his heavy steps dwindling in the distance along the runway. "'Twould agree passing well with the good fellow's health to drink him a gallon of it," de Claverlok whispered as he stepped out into the night and unsheathed his sword. "God's sake! Dreaming of a quaking earth were enough to set a man at tipple, ... eh?" To knot and make the rope secure around the crenelated apex of the tower was but the work of a moment. "Go!" Sir Richard whispered. "When the rope swings free I'll be after you." Immediately de Claverlok's grizzled head disappeared over the side of the embattlements. Sir Richard looked down, watching him as he diminished and became swallowed up in the surrounding gloom. He kept a firm grip of the hilt of his blade against the possibility of the guard's inopportune return. He waited till he thought enough time had elapsed for de Claverlok to have set his foot upon the frozen moat. He laid his hand upon the rope. It was still taut, and vibrating with the warrior's downward scrambling. Then, though Sir Richard had heard no sound, a soft arm was suddenly entwined about his waist. A softer voice was whispering close to his ear. "Shame upon you, Dick, to requite me thus!" it said. "Are you indeed upon the point of leaving me?" It was Lady Anna. Warm, bewitching, clad in a silken robe, all open at the throat, and loose and light and clinging. "Yea, Lady Anna, I am going. Let loose of me," Sir Richard said.