"Good; yet thou didst run manfully just now with those hell-hounds after us. Dicon, thou knowest that our enemy Mr. Blewer is in the town?"
"It was he who set them on at me for a spy. He thought to have rid himself thus easily of a rival and a foe. It may be he will do so even yet; but if I die to-night, I sell my life dear!"
He spoke through his shut teeth, and I felt the strange quiver, that was half like fear and half like exultation, run down my spine again. All this while we were rapidly picking our way along the leads and roofs, lighted by the glow of the burning ship upon the river, which I had no time to stay and look at, as I fain would have done; for the question of life and death was paramount with us, and it was no moment for pausing to admire the blood-red river like a flaming mirror, nor the strange fantastic shadows cast by the leaping flames. We were glad of the light for making our own way amongst the leads and chimney-stacks and along narrow parapets, where a false step would have been destruction; but all the while our ears were strained for the sound of hammering and pursuing footsteps, and we knew that as soon as we heard them we must crouch down in some of the many deep niches and hiding-places of that strange region, else would the brilliant light lead to our instant discovery.
All the while we moved my lord kept casting his eyes hither and thither, and at last I heard him exclaim,--
"Hist, Dicon! they are after us. And here is the very place for us. In with thee, boy! There is room for thee, I trow. I will follow and guard the entrance. He shall pay dear who seeks to hale us thence."
My lord spoke through his shut teeth, and I was quaking all over as I looked about, yet could see nothing like a hiding-place. But the Viscount's eyes had been sharper than mine, and the next moment he pushed me gently but firmly into a narrow, narrow niche between two great chimney-stacks--a long black crevice filled with masonry at the farther end, looking like a mere slit in the wall, and in which, unless I had tried, I would not have believed that I or any other man could stand. But the crevice widened a little after I had pushed myself into it; and it was in the deepest of deep shadow, for the dark chimney-stacks rose high above our heads, and the narrow, narrow aperture by which we had squeezed ourselves in faced away from the river, so that not a single shaft of light crept into our retreat.