The Yeoman did not reply. He cast his eyes to the floor and confusedly fingered his cap.
The Count Aldarin--so must I style him--reached a folded parchment from a writing desk and then asked--
“Why dost thou not speak, good Robin? What art thinking of?”
“Why, heaven save your _lordship_,” said Robin, speaking in a whisper, and gazing full in Aldarin’s face, “_I was just wondering whether the murderer embraced the Count ere he strangled him?_”
Aldarin started aside--his features were writhen into a fearful contortion, and his whole frame shook like a leaf of the aspen tree. Again he turned his visage, it was calm, as the face of innocence, and a smile was on his pinched lip.
“Receive thy warrant as Seneschal of the Castle of Albarone,” said Aldarin, as he held forth the parchment--“nay, kneel not, good Robin; keep thy seat.”
Robin held forth his hand to reach the parchment--his fingers touched it, when Aldarin stamped his foot upon the floor, and the slab of red stone fell quick as lightning beneath the yeoman. A deep and dark well was discovered. In an instant the stool affixed to the stone was empty, and far below, in the depths of the pit the echo of the falling slab, sunk with a sound like the rushing of the winter wind through the corridors of a deserted mansion.
A face, with eyes rolling ghastly, with the lower jaw sunken and the tongue protruding from the mouth, appeared above the side of the cavity, at the very feet of Aldarin, and a muscular hand convulsively clutched the oaken plank, while the body of the stout Yeoman, was seen through the darkness of the pit, as he clung with the grasp of despair, to the floor of the room.
“Devil--” shouted the desperate soldier, as he made a convulsive effort to lighten the grasp of his hand on the smooth plank. “I’ll foil thee yet. ’Tis not the fate of an honest man to die thus! My doom--”
“Is DEATH!” shrieked the scholar, and drawing the glittering dagger from his robe, he smote the fingers of the Yeoman, with its unerring steel. The joints of the hand were severed.
The grasp of the soldier failed, he gave one dying look, and then far, far down in the pit, a whizzing noise like the sound of a falling body was heard, and as it grew fainter and fainter did Aldarin stand in attitude of listening, gazing down into the shadow void, his arms outstretched, his eyes wildly glaring, his lips apart, and every lineament of his face expressive of triumph, mingled with hate and scorn.