'Now,' said the same voice, but in broken English this time, 'you see me, no doubt. You are David Harbor.'
'I am Chang; I helped to kill your father.'
'And will probably kill me,' answered David, somewhat bewildered, and inclined to look upon this fellow as a madman.
'You are right. To-morrow evening you will be beheaded. I myself shall carry out the sentence.'
'But why?' asked David, cringing slightly, for the ordeal was trying. Indeed, the man standing over him, with the lamp shining in his face, looked a most heartless villain.
'Why?' he repeated, mocking our hero. 'The answer is simple. David Harbor has become a nuisance. There is a man of the name of Ebenezer Clayhill; he does not love David Harbor.'
So there it was. Even in his lowest estimation of the man who had married his stepmother, David could not imagine such a depth of villainy. But this fellow Chang was in earnest. He was undoubtedly speaking the truth. What answer could our hero give to him? He merely bowed his head, while a shiver of apprehension passed through him. Then he pulled himself together and faced the ruffian.
The Chinaman swung round on his heel, gave a swift order, and strode out of the place. Then one by one the bearers followed. The door was banged to, the bolts shot home, and David was left alone, alone in his prison, with the moon staring in at him through a window high up in a stone wall, staring in inquisitively as if to ask how this young fellow would face the coming ordeal.
'So it is like that? Ebenezer's hatred of me reaches even to Hatsu,' thought our hero. 'He has hired this rascal to kill me, and it looks as if the man would succeed. So he will if I don't move a little. But I'm not dead by a long way yet; I've still got a kick or two left in me.'
If Chang, the man who had so unexpectedly and suddenly led an attack upon the little party journeying via Hatsu to interview Twang Chun, the governor of the province, imagined that he had left David in a condition of terror at the thought of the execution he had threatened for the evening of the morrow, he was very much mistaken, and showed therefore that he knew his prisoner very little indeed; for David was not the one to be long down-hearted. It was not in his nature to give in without a serious struggle. No sooner had the door of his prison been banged and barred, than his spirits rose wonderfully, while he set about seeking for a remedy to enable him to beat his enemies. And the first thing that caused him joy was a discovery he made within a couple of minutes.