With one arm about Boyd's neck, and holding Andrew between Roxley and himself, Jermain set the unsteady procession on the march from the dining-parlor and out into the hall, the three shouting boisterously: "Above-stairs, all of us! Huzzah!" and singing, like the caricature of a death-hymn, as they approached the first step, that roystering refrain: "King George, God bless him forever! And down with the _White Cockades!_" CHAPTER VI. A DESPERATE SHIFT. In the meantime Lord Armitage had been sitting on one of the two stools in the Mouse's Nest. That retreat was quite too dark for him to see his hand before his face, except precisely in the corner where he was resting. Into this the high opening in the wall, alluded to, seemed to filter a gray gleam. The young refugee realized that his present insecurity was great; but he had been in deeper danger before it, and that self-control which had rather disconcerted Andrew during that moment they had been standing at the stair-top was not much assumed. "Bless the boy!" he muttered; "it is something to have won such a stout young heart! Ah, if ever I get away from this accursed land, where death dogs my footsteps to trip me up, Andrew, you shall not be forgotten, depend upon it. But, gadzooks! it looks now very little like my conferring care or honor upon any man, young or old!" He rose and peered curiously up at the aperture in the blank, black wall, with his hands clasped behind his back. "A strong draught from that, I note. I wonder with what it communicates? Some sort of an air shaft probably. Faugh, what a den is this! A day or so within it would go far to bring a gay fellow like me to suicide--provided he could lay hand on aught here to take himself away with. When can Andrew get back here to bring me word of the prisoner below? Would to God I knew! My mind misgives me. If it be from them, after all--! Still, still, there are so many of our gallant fellows hiding in thickets and caves. If it _were_ Cameron or Lochiel it would break my heart. That peasant-woman last week told me that she had given shelter to a gentleman of the Prince's army only the day before! Oh, Andrew, Andrew, my lad! make haste, for I am in worse dread for others than for myself until you ease me." He went softly--though there was no need, for the floor was stone and only the under-arching thickness of the partition was below--down the length of the Nest in the darkness, feeling his way along the wall until he perceived that he stood alongside the sliding panel. A narrow, almost undistinguishable crevice marked it out. He put his ear to this, as he had done a score of times since his entrance; but he could not catch the slightest sound, so impervious and exactly adjusted was the barrier.