"Poor lad!" cried Ned, with such tenderness as he was wont to use to the child that had so loved and hectored him, "poor lad, you are faint for sleep. I will see where we may put you." "It is not sleep, Captain," I said, stifling a second yawn. "But I take little interest in prisoners, and I am, oh! so thirsty." "'T is the long ride, and your dinner was naught," he answered. "Keep your eyes open, and watch a while here in my place, and I will bring you food and wine. I pray you, do not close your eyes." And as he neared the door, I saw him start as hit by a thought forgotten, and--"The chamber on the right," he murmured. "How came I to forget? But he will never find the panel, even though he were a Jesuit." And so, with yet another warning that I should watch well and not sleep, he went out into the gallery. And I sat by the fire, wondering what those strange words should mean. Open indeed I did keep my eyes, but I believe my mind was not very far from dreams at the moment when a thing happened so like to a trick of sleeping fancy that it awoke me quite. I thought that I saw, in that dim light (for one great candlestick was above with His Highness of Orange, the other below in the hand of Captain Royston), a great piece of the stone wall that made the far side of the wide and lofty hearth slowly to draw back and recede from my eyes, as a door that is opened stealthily from behind. I sat erect and rubbed my eyes, and still did it draw away from me, and made a noise of rusted grinding as it went. And a nameless horror crept over my body till it reached and seemed to stiffen the roots of my hair. I would have cried aloud as I sat and expected something to come whence the door of stone had gone; but before I could find voice there came from the gap in the wall the darkly clad figure of a man, who stepped from the hearth, and stood looking down upon me. His face I could not clearly perceive, for the fire was behind him, but the sound of his voice I thought I had once already heard. CHAPTER XV "Hush!" he said gently, thinking me, I suppose, as indeed I was, at the point of calling aloud on the guard. "I am unarmed, and would not hurt you if I could. What is your name?" And his voice, for all that it was young and sweet, sounded like my father's, for which there was reason enough, as I was soon to know. "My name is Drayton," I answered simply. "And the other?" he asked. "Phil--Philip," I answered; and then I leapt to my feet as one waking from a dream, saying, as I did so, "though, sooth, I know not why I tell you." With my moving he so changed his position that the glow of the fire fell upon his face, and I knew him for the priest that had been taken in the orchard. "Nor I," he said sternly, "for it is false. I am Philip Drayton." "What, what!" I cried, in much amazement. "And is Sir Michael your father?" "Sir Michael is my father," he replied.