He examined the room. It was not very high, just high enough to take the bed, which stood under an enormous baldaquin-like canopy from which fell heavy curtains at foot and head; a bed certainly worthy of an archbishop. There was a heavy table carved all round the edges, some arm-chairs of enormous weight, like the spoils of a grandee’s palace; a tall, shallow wardrobe placed against the wall and with double doors. He tried them. Locked. A suspicion came into his mind, and he snatched up the lamp to make a closer examination. No; it was not a disguised entrance. That heavy, tall piece of furniture stood clear of the wall by quite an inch. He glanced at the bolts of his room-door. No! No one could get at him treacherously while he slept. But would he be able to sleep? he asked himself anxiously. If only he had Tom there—the trusty seaman who had fought at his right hand in a cutting-out affair or two and had always preached to him the necessity of taking care of himself. ‘For it’s no great trick,’ he used to say, ‘to get yourself killed in a hot fight. Any fool can do that. The proper fashion is to fight the Frenchies and then live to fight another day.’

Byrne found it a hard matter not to fall into listening to the silence. Somehow he had the conviction that nothing would break it unless he heard again the haunting sound of Tom’s voice. He had heard it twice before. Odd! And yet no wonder, he argued with himself reasonably, since he had been thinking of the man for over thirty hours continuously and, what’s more, inconclusively. For his anxiety for Tom had never taken a definite shape. ‘Disappear’ was the only word connected with the idea of Tom’s danger. It was very vague and awful. ‘Disappear!’ What did that mean?

Byrne shuddered, and then said to himself that he must be a little feverish. But Tom had not disappeared. Byrne had just heard of him. And again the young man felt the blood beating in his ears. He sat still expecting every moment to hear through the pulsating strokes the sound of Tom’s voice. He waited, straining his ears, but nothing came. Suddenly the thought occurred to him, ‘He has not disappeared, but he cannot make himself heard.’

He jumped up from the arm-chair. How absurd! Laying his pistols and his hanger^* on the table, he took off his boots and, feeling suddenly too tired to stand, flung himself on the bed, which he found soft and comfortable beyond his hopes.

He had felt very wakeful, but he must have dozed off after all, because the next thing he knew he was sitting up in bed and trying to recollect what it was that Tom’s voice had said. Oh! He remembered it now. It had said: ‘Mr Byrne! Look out, sit!’ … A warning this. But against what?

He landed with one leap in the middle of the floor, gasped once, then looked all round the room. The window was shuttered and barred with an iron bar. Again he ran his eyes slowly all round the bare walls and even looked up at the ceiling. Afterwards he went to the door to examine the fastenings. They consisted of two enormous iron bolts sliding into holes made in the wall; and as the corridor outside was too narrow to admit of any battering arrangement or even to permit an axe to be swung, nothing could burst the door open—unless gunpowder. But while he was still making sure that the lower bolt was pushed well home, he received the impression of somebody’s presence in the room. It was so strong that he spun round quicker than lightning. There was no one. Who could there be? And yet. …

It was then that he lost the decorum and restraint a man keeps up for his own sake. He got down on his hands and knees, with the lamp on the floor, to look under the bed, like a silly girl. He saw a lot of dust and nothing else. He got up, his cheeks burning, and walked about, discontented with his own behaviour and unreasonably angry with Tom for not leaving him alone. The words ‘Mr Byrne! Look out, sir!’ kept on repeating themselves in his head in a tone of warning.

‘Hadn’t I better just throw myself on the bed and try to go to sleep?’ he asked himself. But his eyes fell on the tall wardrobe, and he went towards it, feeling irritated with himself and yet unable to desist. How he could explain to-morrow the burglarious misdeed to the two odious witches he had no idea. Nevertheless he inserted the point of his hanger between the two halves of the door and tried to prise them open. They resisted. He swore, sticking now hotly to his purpose. His mutter, ‘I hope you will be