Chapter II: Part 2

"What presumption!" muttered Constans, under his breath. "These fellows are becoming more insufferable every day, and my father sees nothing." Constans resolved that the man should be packed off immediately upon the conclusion of the meal. He could easily persuade Sir Gavan that the fellow had none too honest a look, while his wares were assuredly the cheapest trash. He must be got rid of before the women had been beguiled into spending all their pin-money.

The repast dragged out to its end, and the women withdrew to the upper end of the hall, comparative privacy being secured by large leather screens set up along the edge of the dais. The men remained at the table for deeper potations and the smoking of rank black kinnectikut tobacco in huge wooden pipes.

A heavy thunderstorm, the first of the season, had come up, and Constans recognized, to his vexation, that he would have no decent excuse for turning the peddler out-of-doors. So he kept his seat at the table in sulky silence, watching the man closely, and ready to note anything of further suspicion in his actions and bearing. But he had his trouble for his pains, for the fellow was the itinerant chapman to the life, even to the stock of gross stories with which he kept his bucolic audience in an uninterrupted guffaw. Pah! would Sir Gavan never finish his second pipe and give the signal to rise?

The storm had turned into a heavy downpour, and the peddler was consequently sure of his night's lodging. He had been summoned again to the presence of the ladies, and, as before, Constans stood aloof and wondered irritably how his fastidious sister could find aught in common with this wayside huckster. She was talking to him now with an animation rare with her, her checks flushed and her eyes glowing.

"And you have been in Doom--in the city itself?" she asked, incredulously.

"Yes, gracious lady; and not once, but a score of times. The brocades that I promised to show you after supper will be my witness. And there are some superlative satin and silk lengths which my Lady Rayne wished particularly to see. Will you allow me, then?"

The peddler, opening an inner compartment of his pack, drew out several pieces of stuff wrapped up in brown linen. Removing the covering, he spread the goods upon the rug before the ladies, holding up each separate piece to the light and expatiating upon its merits in the approved fashion of the shopman. The two women gave a little gasp of astonishment; never had they seen such wondrous beauty of color and finish; their little market-town of Croye held nothing to compare to this.

"I must send for Meta to advise me," said the Lady Rayne, glancing fondly from one rich fabric to another. "She ought to know good silk when she sees it, after living so long in Croye; and you, Issa, seem strangely indifferent to-night. You hardly looked at this piece of brocade."

Meta, the Lady Rayne's bedwoman, speedily appeared, and mistress and maid fell into earnest converse. Issa, as in duty bound, listened; then her attention seemed to flag again. She bent over the open pack and picked up a chain of filigree work. It was beautifully fashioned and looked like gold.

"It is gold," said the chapman, answering the question in her eyes. "The pure gold of the ancients; you never see that pale yellow nowadays. Ah, yes, a pretty trinket to have brought from the heart of Doom for the delight of a fair woman's eyes, and well worth its price of a man's life. But, then, fortune was kind, and I did not have to pay."

"Tell me about it," said the girl, beseechingly, and her breath came short and hot.

Whereupon the chapman drew a little nearer and began a wondrous tale of a secret visit that he had lately made to Doom, the Forbidden; of how he had crossed the river on a raft, the moon being in its dark quarter; of his landing upon a shaking wharf, where each foot-fall left a print of phosphorescent fire on the rotting planks; then of the marvels that he had seen there--vast warehouses covering whole acres of ground and filled with incalculable store of goods; lofty buildings, whose chimney-pots were in the clouds; palaces of sculptured stone, now empty and despoiled, the habitation of foxes and unclean nocturnal creatures.

Then again of hidden treasure, heaps and heaps of yellow gold; of the fierce Doomsmen who guarded it so well; of pitfalls and gins and siren voices that lured the soul astray; of ghastly shapes that crept along the crumbling walls; of mystery in every sound and shadow; of treacheries and alarms and the ever present terror of death--a tale of amazing wonder, at which the blood ran alternately warm and cold and the heart fluttered with a certain fearful joy.

How the maid hung upon the word, her little breasts heaving and her lips parted! "You have seen all these things?" she panted. "How wonderful! And you were not afraid? That was like a man--to be brave----" She blushed deeply, stammered, and turned to the neglected brocades. Constans, standing close at hand, was moved to new anger. The impertinent, how dared he! Yet he had listened himself, and in spite of himself, for assuredly the fellow talked well.

The evening was now well advanced and the customary hour of retirement was at hand. It was still raining, but Guyder Touchett, who came in dripping from his nightly task of posting the watch, remarked that the wind was changing and that it was likely to clear when the moon rose. Of course the peddler would now spend the night at the keep, and at his own request he was allowed to remain in the hall, a straw pallet being brought in for his accommodation.

* * * * *

"The Rat's-Hole!"

Constans repeated the words half aloud, holding the paper close to the guttering candle. It was but a tiny scrap, scarce large enough for the writing that it held. But paper of any kind is rare in these days, and so the gleam of white had caught his eye as he went up-stairs to his sleeping apartment. The handwriting was unfamiliar, and besides it was in back-hand, and it may be disguised as well; he was hardly an expert in such fine distinctions. But it was plainly a message, and its possible import startled him. For the Rat's-Hole was the secret exit that existed behind the jamb of the fireplace at the upper end of the hall. So cunningly had the panelled door been joinered into the wainscoting that a man might search for hours and yet not discover the spring that threw it open. Furthermore, the wainscoting was but a screen for the real door of iron-bound oak giving passage directly through the outer wall of the keep to the open country. A jealously guarded secret, this matter of the Rat's-Hole, and supposed to be known only to the master of the household and his immediate family. Even among them its existence was never referred to in ordinary conversation, while its actual use was restricted to the gravest of emergencies.

"The Rat's-Hole!" A message, an agreement, an appointment? By whose hand had these words been written? For whose eye had they been intended?

It would have been the wiser course to have communicated at once with Sir Gavan, but the latter, feeling somewhat indisposed, had retired early, and Constans hesitated to disturb him. Moreover, the boy stood in awe of his father, and of late a feeling of estrangement had been growing up between them. To Sir Gavan, Constans, with his dreamy, inactive nature, was a keen disappointment--so different from his brother Tennant. And Constans felt that his father did not understand him nor, indeed, cared to do so. Latterly, they had gone their own ways, and now at this perplexing juncture Constans could not bring himself to take his father into his confidence.

When, a few moments later, the lights had been formally extinguished for the night, Constans made his way back to the hall; he had to pass close by the pallet occupied by the peddler, and he paused an instant to listen to his deep and measured breathing. Surely the man slept.

Even in the dark Constans knew how to put his hand on the spring in the wainscoting, and it yielded to his touch. It was discomposing to find the key of the real door standing, ready for turning, in the lock. In theory, the key was never out of the master's immediate possession. An oversight, then? Constans's mind reverted to the one occasion in his remembrance on which the Rat's-Hole had been used, that day a fortnight back, when his sister Issa came out of the birch-copse, with her hands full of May-bloom and Quinton Edge had waited under cover of the alders. It was possible; his father might have forgotten. And yet----

Constans took the key and slipped it into the bosom of his doublet. Then closing the secret door in the wainscoting, he drew one of the big leather screens into convenient position and crouched down behind it. The dying fire gave out a flickering and uncertain light; he watched the grotesque procession of the shadows on the opposite wall until his eyes grew heavy. The odor of a smouldering bough of balsam-fir hung in the air--warm, spicy, soporific. He slept.

VI

TROY TOWN

Constans awoke just as the footsteps died away; he listened, but again the stillness was profound. He felt his way to the secret door; the wainscot screen stood ajar. It was plain that some one had come to the Rat's-Hole only to discover that the key of the outside door was missing. Constans realized that he, too, had missed something--his chance to get to the bottom of the mystery. Shame on such a sentinel!

Without any definite plan of action, Constans made his way to the lower hall. The moonbeams were pouring a flood of light through the east windows and he could see plainly. The peddler's couch was empty, save for his gabardine of gray and the false hair that had served him for a beard. There were two figures dimly visible in the obscurity of the vaulted entrance to the water gate. They were working at the clumsy fastenings of the doors. As Constans ran up he recognized his sister Issa and the man who called himself Quinton Edge.

Without a word Constans seized the girl by the arm and swung her behind him. He struck at the Doomsman with his hunting-knife, but the latter caught his wrist with the grip of a wolf-trap. Yet even at that moment of stress Quinton Edge's voice preserved its soft, mincing inflections; the man wore his irritating affectations of speech as jauntily as he did the ostrich plumes in his cap.

"A brave ruffling of feathers--but gently, gently boy, you are frightening the lady. She goes with me of her full consent. Is it not so, sweetheart?"

"You lie!" said the boy, thickly.

The man laughed. "I tell you," he went on, "that the girl is mine by her own choice, and you have only to stand aside quietly to save the house and your own skin. But softly now; you are tearing the lace of my sleeve. A plague on your clumsy fingers!"

With a wrench Constans twisted himself free and turned to face his sister. "Issa!" he implored.

But she, with eyes like rain-washed stars, only looked beyond him to where Quinton Edge stood, softly smiling and holding out his womanish white hands. She would have rejoined him, but once again Constans forced her back. The dangling rope of the alarm-bell grazed his hand; he clutched at it, and a clang re-echoed through the court-yard, rousing the recreant warders from their slumbers. In that same instant Quinton Edge blew his whistle.

The Doomsmen must have already crossed the moat and been close up to the water gate, for the response to their leader's call was immediate. Quinton Edge had just time to remove the last of the bars securing the barrier when the night-watch streamed out tumultuously from their quarters under the arch, and he was obliged to retreat into the court-yard. But already the outlaws had forced apart the wooden leaves of the water gate; now they filled the vaulted passageway, and by sheer impact of superior weight began to drive back the bewildered and disorganized defenders. Friend and foe together, the mass surged into the quadrangle, a blind, indefinite cluster of struggling men, like to a swarm of hiving bees.

The storm had blown over, but the moon was every now and then obscured by masses of scurrying cloud-wrack, and in these periods of semi-darkness Doomsman and Stockader were hardly to be told apart. So closely packed was the scrimmage that the use of any missile weapon was impossible. The dagger and the night-stick (the latter a stout truncheon weighted with lead) were doing the work, and effectively, too. And in that press a man might be struck and die upon his feet, the corpse being stayed from falling through its juxtaposition to the bodies of the living.

The men of the keep, now that they had recovered from their first discomfiture, rallied manfully. So stubborn and bitter raged the struggle that there was not a sound to be heard outside the noise of scuffling feet and the thud of blows. A man when hard beset for his life has no breath to spare for either oath of despair or shout of triumph. But not for long were the scales to swing so evenly; presently the ranks of the Stockaders yielded again to the pressure and broke into separate groups. Then were to be heard the groans of the wounded and dying; then for the first time the yell of the Doomsmen broke forth, ear-piercing in its exultancy.

Constans had managed to reach the shelter of the Great House, half dragging, half carrying the fainting form of his sister. Already Sir Gavan, with Tennant and the house-servants, were under arms and making what preparations they could for the final stand. A hopeless task it seemed, for the outlaws were now in full possession of the rest of the keep. The retainers occupying the general quarters in the south barracks had fallen easy victims. Surprised, out-numbered, and poorly armed, they had been quickly cut down as they reached the court-yard, and active resistance to the invaders was at an end.

Now the attack was turned directly upon the entrance to the Great House, and Sir Gavan, with his handful of followers, waited on the threshold for the inevitable issue. Already the ponderous door of iron-banded oak was groaning and splintering under the hail of blows. And in the forefront, with a laugh upon his lips, hewed Quinton Edge.

The barrier was down at last and the wolves were free to fall upon their quarry. A score of men, all told, against a hundred; the outcome was hardly doubtful. Yet it was not Gavan of the Greenwood Keep who held up his hand in sign of parley, but the Doomsman, Quinton Edge.

"The maiden Issa," he said, speaking with a smooth insolence that made Constans set his teeth. "Give her safely to my hand and your goods and your lives shall go free of further damage. A cheap bargain; but speak quickly, old man, these hounds of mine are not to be held in leash for long."

The partisans on either side had fallen back, leaving the two leaders face to face. Sir Gavan plucked twice at his throat, where the veins stood out like cords, constricting the vocal passages so that he stuttered thickly as he spoke.

"This--this gallows-scape!" he stammered. "This burner of peasants' hayricks, this pitiful plunderer of hen-roosts and cattle byres! If it were a man, now--to nail the insult to his lips----"

"We lose time," interrupted the Doomsman. "I have named my price."

"The price--ah, yes, the price. Tennant, Constans, you heard what he said. But where is my child? Let the girl stand forth; she is her father's daughter, and she shall answer for herself."

"I will abide by it," said Quinton Edge, with cool confidence.

The half-circle opened and Issa stood before them; a mere child she looked in her simple slip of white and with her fair hair all unbound. A vague terror seized upon Sir Gavan. What was this question that he was about to ask of his daughter? Could there be other than the one answer? How quietly she stood there and waited. Yes, and they were all waiting upon him; he must speak.

"Issa!"

It seemed to him that he had shouted aloud; then he realized that he had not spoken at all. "Issa!" he said, again, and she turned towards him.

"This man; he is not known to you. How could it be?"

"Yet it is the truth, my father," answered the girl, steadily. "It is just a month ago that chance set us face to face--one day when I rode alone in the green drive."

"And thereafter?"

"Once he came to the walled garden, adventuring the thousand chances of discovery. Yet how he managed to cross the stockade-line I know not, for I was frightened, and begged him to leave me. And this he did most courteously, only swearing that he would again return."

"The third time?"

"That was the day--the day of the first May-bloom--the Ochre brook and the Doomsmen----" The girl's voice faltered.

"Yet never a word to me or to your mother?"

"It was not my secret," she answered, bravely; and upon that Quinton Edge himself took up the word.

"The blame is mine, since I used the peril in which I stood to set a seal upon her lips. A true and loyal maid is your daughter, and it was only after she had twice said me nay that I resolved to take without the asking. So I came that day which we both remember, and waited under the alder bushes, and once again I missed my cast. Yet was the quest not altogether fruitless, for I carried away this token from my lady's hostile garden."

He drew a faded spray of the May-bloom from his doublet and touched it lightly to his lips.

"What gentleman could refuse to redeem so dear a pledge? You have seen how I took head in hand and sat me down under your own roof-tree, my good Gavan of the keep. Faith, it was an even chance on which side the platter would fall, but this time the luck was mine. We should have been leagues away in the sun's eye by now, only that a peevish boy would have his way."

"And this--this is also true?" said Sir Gavan, and it seemed that the preceding silence had been very long.

"It is true." She had answered quietly, almost mechanically, but the heart of the Lady Rayne thrilled to the new note in her child's voice.

"Issa!" she cried, softly, and fell to weeping, not as a mother for her daughter but as one woman who sorrows for another.

"Issa!" she said, again, but neither then nor thereafter did the girl vouchsafe her mother look or word, all her soul seeming to hang upon the will of the man who had brought this woe upon her house. There was no need for word to pass; reading the command in her lover's eyes, she slipped from her mother's detaining clasp and placed her hand in his. Now, Issa was exceeding fair to look upon, and Quinton Edge's blood stirred hotly within him. And so for once he lost his head and did a foolish thing (only that no woman would agree that it was foolish), for there, in the presence of all, he quickly drew her face to his and kissed her on the lips. Then turning to his men, he made as though to send them from the house.

But it was not to be. A keen-pointed, heavy throwing-knife hung at Sir Gavan's side. Without a word he snatched it from the sheath, poised and flung it with all his force at his enemy's heart, a master throw and executed like a flash of light. Issa felt rather than saw the coming of the missile, and with an instinctive movement contrived to interpose her own delicate body. The steel bit deep into the white flesh, and with a little, shuddering cry the girl sank to the floor; out leaped Quinton Edge's sword. Constans, supporting his mother, felt her hand grow cold in his. He laid her gently down upon a convenient settle and thanked God that she, too, was safe.

It seemed to Constans that he was wandering in a bristling thicket of steel points; thunderous crashes re-echoed in his ears; the red light from the burning building eddied about his feet, a sea of blood and flame. His father and Tennant were down, never to rise again; a few paces in front of him Guyder Touchett headed a little knot of the defenders, swearing furiously as he hewed and hacked. A half-dozen against ten times their number; the issue could not be doubtful. Even as he gazed, two of the six sunk to their knees and then fell face downward, a dreadful sign that even a child might understand.

Now, Guyder Touchett stood alone, and about him a snarling pack of Dom Gillian's wolves, waiting cautiously upon one another, for the Stockader had a long sword-arm. Thereupon a man broke out of the press, signing the prudent ones to fall back. It was Quinton Edge, and, as ever, he was laughing, only that now his laughter sounded like to a bell that has cracked in the ringing. The swords clashed together; then the Doomsman dropped his point.

"You are too good a man for crows' meat," he said, shortly. "Stand clear and save your ears; my business is with the white-faced boy behind you."

But Guyder Touchett, ruddy, full-bodied, and loving his life as well as any man, only girded at him, saying:

"Is there, then, a deeper hell than this? I follow where my master has gone, and you, my lord, shall show me the way."

"The more fool you," quoth Quinton Edge, and drove at him.

Again the blades engaged, and a great fear suddenly tightened at the boy's heart. His champion had been exhausted by his previous efforts, and now his strength was going fast. Constans saw Touchett stagger and Quinton Edge preparing for a final stroke; he turned and ran for the upper end of the hall--the Rat's-Hole.

The key was still in his bosom, and in a few seconds he had passed the postern, closing and locking it behind him. Five minutes' hard running and he was free of the stockade and at the summit of a hill that commanded the scene which he had just left. The conflagration was progressing with astonishing rapidity; already the Great House itself was in flames, and dark figures could be seen issuing from the water gate. There! the red cock was crowing from the top of the bell-tower, and now the whole court-yard was a furnace of fire. A spark carried by the wind fell on his naked shoulder, where it bit like a fiery serpent. Yet he scarcely felt the smart; he stood motionless, looking upon the wreck of his little world, the only one that he had ever known.

"So in the end he made me a coward as well," said the boy, speaking softly to himself. "Is it that a slave must be a slave--always?"

He drew a long breath. "No, not always. But in the mean time I am to go on living and bearing everywhere his mark--Quinton Edge's mark. Well, I will begin by learning how to wait."

He stood irresolute for a moment longer, gazing at the scene of the night's tragedy as though to impress it indelibly upon his memory. Then turning his back to the east, where the faint saffron of early dawn was now showing, he started off on a long, swinging trot that speedily carried him down the slope and into the deeper shadow of the wood beyond.

VII

THE BREAD OF AFFLICTION

Two miles from the keep was a cave that Constans had discovered on one of his hunting-trips, and which, boylike, he had proceeded to fit up with some rude furniture for lodging and cooking, little dreaming that he should ever stand in actual need of these necessities.

Thither he betook himself, impelled primarily by the mere instinct for refuge and shelter. Fortunately, the larder had been replenished within the past week, there was an abundance of dry fuel stacked up in the interior of the cavern, and the woods were full of game. But during those first two or three days it is doubtful if Constans would have remarked either the presence or the absence of these creature comforts; he ate when he was hungry and went to sleep when it grew dark. The rest of the time he sat motionless, thinking, thinking--living for the most part in that past that now seemed so infinitely far away.

Of course, the cavern had been the storehouse of his treasures. Here he kept a spare hunting-bow and a full stock of arrows, together with his fishing lines and nets and a miscellaneous assortment of traps and tools. Here, too, was the secret depository of his cherished spying-glasses and of another equally marvellous but unfortunately valueless piece of mechanism--a revolver of large caliber. This latter had belonged to his grandfather (for whom he had been named), and upon his death Constans had claimed and taken possession of it. The weapon was in perfect order, for its former owner had been careful to keep it well cleaned and oiled; an absurd whim, of course, since without its ammunition it was useless. The boy used to puzzle mightily over it, setting the hammer and watching the cylinder as it revolved, then pulling the trigger and listening to its fascinating click. But he never got any nearer to the secret.

Even more precious than the pistol and binoculars were his books, an oddly assorted library that included the child's pictorial history already mentioned, Dryden's translation of the _Iliad_, an imperfect copy of _The Three Musketeers_, and _The Descent of Man_. These, indeed, made up the full list of books belonging to the keep, and Constans had been permitted to appropriate them, nobody else caring to waste time over their stained and worm-eaten pages.

With Constans, however, it had been different. In company with the other children he had been set at the task of learning his letters, and at first he, too, had rebelled at the uncongenial labor. What possible use could these ugly, crooked characters ever be to him? And then, suddenly, he found in them a magic key unlocking a door that opened upon an undiscovered country--that of the mighty past.

Naturally he experienced some difficulty in viewing this new old world in anything like its proper proportions, and it was the literal baldness of the child's school-book that first gave him anything like a true perspective. Here was both the written story and the visible picture of the world as it once was, as it might be again. Studying these records and achievements of the ancient civilization, Constans found himself possessed of the knowledge of many things and consumed by the desire to lay hold of many more.

But all this lay in the past--ages ago, when as yet no Doomsman had landed at the Golden Cove, and the pine-tree banner still flew from the fighting platform of the Greenwood Keep. Now nothing mattered to the boy sitting dull-eyed and inert in the darkest corner of his miserable refuge, while outside it was raining in torrents. But on the third day it cleared, and the rays of the morning sun, striking level with the mouth of the cave, fell full upon the lad's face, rousing him in a double sense. He sprang to his feet and drew in a deep breath of the morning air. How blue the sky! How golden the sun! As he sat eating his frugal breakfast of oat-cake and honey he rapidly reviewed his present condition and future prospects, coming at last to the decision that he would go to Croye and see what his uncle Hugolin might be inclined to do for him.

It was inspiriting, the mere fact that he had determined upon a course of action, and Constans immediately began his preparations for departure. It did not take long to put together his worldly wealth--the four books, the binoculars, the pistol, and the chief of his other possessions; now he had everything compactly stowed away in a shoulder pack and was ready for the journey.

The town of Croye was situated on the Greater river (formerly the Hudson) and some ten miles north of the ancient city of New York. It boasted a population of quite fifteen hundred souls, and this, with its importance as a trading centre, made it a notable municipality for these latter days. Its appearance, however, does not call for any extended description; assuredly, it was not imposing. A heterogeneous jumble of low, half-timbered houses and mud-plastered hovels; dirty, unpaved streets, a mean-looking market-place, where the shrill clamor of huckstering never seemed to cease; some pretentious-looking public buildings, with stuccoed fronts; outside of all, the inevitable earth rampart, topped by a palisade and pierced by sally-ports at the cardinal points--such was Croye, the principal city of this western hemisphere in the year 2015, or ninety since the Great Change.

Constans frowned as he gazed upon this unlovely picture. Yet he determined that he would find something of good in it, and as though answering his thought, the sun reappeared at that very moment from behind a passing cloud, its rays lighting up the red tiling used as roofing in the houses of the better class--the one note of cheerful color among these dingy browns and grays. It was an omen, and he accepted it as such.

It was to one of these red-topped mansions that Constans finally found his way, after experiencing several rebuffs from churlish citizens of whom he had ventured to inquire for the whereabouts of his uncle. Now, as he laid his hand upon the knocker, he was conscious that the feeling of despondency had again fallen upon him; he recalled the old story of Messer Hugolin's bitter opposition to the marriage of his sister Rayne and Gavan of the keep, of how he had refused to attend the wedding and had sent no gift. Since then there had been no real intimacy between the families, although the breach had been outwardly healed and formal civilities infrequently passed. A poor prospect, it would seem, for the success of Constans's appeal. But blood is blood, and there was literally no one else to whom he could turn in this his extremity. He let the knocker fall.

Messer Hugolin, a stout man, with crafty lines creased in his broad face, received his nephew with nominal cordiality and listened attentively to his story. But he was not over-prompt with either advice or offer of assistance, and Constans, with a sore heart, finally rose to go.

"Don't be in a hurry," said his uncle, coolly. "Let me think this over again. After all, we are of the same stock, although your father always flouted me for a mean-spirited churl. Poor Gavan, we may forgive him now."

After another period of cogitation and incidental homilies upon the sinfulness of pride and free living, Messer Hugolin came to the point; he offered to take Constans into his employ as an apprentice in the tannery. Of course, Constans would have no wages until his indenture was out, but he would, at least, be assured of lodging, food, and clothes, the bare necessities of existence. Not an especially attractive proposition, but Constans, after a short consideration, concluded to accept it. He had a purpose in remaining here in Croye, almost within sight of Doom the Forbidden; he had not forgotten that therein dwelt one Quinton Edge.

And now a new life began for the boy, and a hard one. Lodged in a corner of the garret, clad in the meanest garments, fed on the coarsest fare, his lot was little better than that of the actual serf, and in some respects inferior to it, for it was good policy to treat the slave with some decency and so secure a full life's work from the human machine. Constans, on the other hand, was bound for four years only, and it was policy to drive him at full speed.

Messer Hugolin's business was of a general nature. He bought and sold everything in the way of raw product and finished goods, but cloth and leather formed the staple of his trade. The latter he manufactured himself, and his tannery was the largest in Croye. It occupied extensive yards along the river-front, and Constans entered upon the agreeable occupation of unloading stinking hides from the barges which came down from the upper river twice in the week, a routine varied only by long hours of pounding at interminable lengths of white-oak bark, preparing it for use in the tan-pits. Hard, dirty, malodorous work it was, but he kept at it steadily, his purpose always in view.

Little by little his plans had been taking shape, and now at last he had arrived at something definite. A secret, of course, and fortunately opportunity had been given him in which to develop his idea. To explain more particularly:

On ordinary days the working-hours were from dawn to dark, but Sunday was his own, save for the hour immediately following sunrise and that preceding sunset, when everybody was required to attend upon public worship.

Every Sunday, then, Constans made his way through the town barriers immediately upon their unclosing, and betook himself to a wooded river-cove about a mile south of the town. For three months he had been working on a canoe, shaping it with fire and adze from a poplar log, and now, after infinite difficulty, the task approached completion. Could he have had a confidant, a helper, the work might have been done in a third of the time, for Constans was not much of a mechanic. But there was no one among his fellow-workmen whom he dared trust, and so he toiled on alone.

The canoe had been launched, and, to Constans's delight, she was but slightly lopsided. A few stones brought her to trim, and she paddled beautifully.

He had fixed upon the third Sunday in August for the great trial, for the Monday following was a civic holiday, the anniversary of the founding of the city. The double event would give him abundant time in which to make a reconnoissance of his enemy's position and then return to Croye to resume his position in Messer Hugolin's tanyard. For his foothold there must not be endangered; if he returned at all, he would find it more necessary than ever.

Permission to absent himself from Saturday night to Tuesday morning had to be obtained from the city authorities. They objected at first, but finally accorded their consent. With his uncle, the matter was quickly settled. Messer Hugolin did not approve of holidays for apprentices, but he dared not controvert the law, and Constans was already in possession of the blue ticket which would enable him to pass the city barriers after sunset on Saturday. So Messer Hugolin contented himself with black looks and an acid jibe at the vanity of his civic associates, who multiplied holidays that they might have opportunity to display themselves in their gold chains and red robes of office.

"And harkee, boy!" he concluded, harshly. "Let me see you at roll-call Tuesday morning or not at all. With flour at ten tokens the quarter, there is no bread of idleness to be eaten in my house." And thereupon they parted without further speaking.

It was a warm August evening when he finally pushed out from shore and laid his course down-stream. He had not ventured upon the experiment of a sail, but the tide was beginning to run out, and that, with the current, should carry him to his destination without the dipping of an oar. But he reflected that the moon would rise at nine o'clock, and as it was barely past the full the light might betray him to watching eyes. He could take no risks, and so must reach the city under cover of darkness. Accordingly, he bent to his paddle, taking it easy at first, and then lengthening out the stroke as he gained confidence in this hitherto untried art.

VIII

IN THE SHADOW OF DOOM

An hour wore on, and Constans was approaching the suburbs of the ancient municipality. But it did not suit his purpose to make a landing here. His plan was to reach the lower end of the island upon which the city was built, then to work his way northward on foot until he should discover the innermost citadel of the Doomsmen. To get a fair idea of his task, he proposed to ascend one of the immensely high buildings which stood crowded together in the down-town district. From such a vantage-point he could surely fix upon landmarks for his future guidance in penetrating the labyrinth of streets. It would not be a pleasant experience to lose one's way, and, perhaps, stumble by mistake on Master Quinton Edge's front door.

Now, as Constans travelled onward, the ruined city began to grow upon him in ever heavier and darker mass. Here and there a half-demolished church-spire raised itself above the neighboring roof-line; plainly this had been one of the old-time residential sections and of the better class. Still farther down the stream and the water-front stood crowded thickly with wharves and warehouses, the scene of the mighty commerce of the past. The ships themselves were there, great monsters of iron and steel, scaled and honeycombed with red rust. But the wharf-slips had long since silted up, and the vessels, careening little by little with the subsidence of the water, had finally broken away from the restraining hawsers and lay on their beam-ends in the mud, a sorrowful spectacle.

The moon was rising and it was time to go ashore. Accordingly, he directed his course for a pier that extended somewhat farther than its fellows into the stream. There was just water enough to float the canoe within arm's-length of the girders--a fortunate circumstance, since Constans had not liked the idea of trusting himself upon the treacherous-looking mud-flat left uncovered by the ebbing tide. Securing the boat under shadow of the structure, he took his hunting-knife and basket of provisions and climbed easily to the floor of the pier, then picking his way across its broken planking he reached solid ground. At last he stood within Doom the Forbidden.

Now this street, which ran parallel with the river, was of unusual width, and Constans crossed it quickly, seeking for cover in some narrower and darker thoroughfare. A cross-street opened directly in front of him. He plunged into it without hesitation, for the moonlight was now in full flood and there might be sharp eyes about.

In the open spaces along the water-front grass grew thick and tall as in a meadow, but in this narrow, crooked lane the wholesomer, sun-loving plants found little encouragement to existence. In their stead, pale-colored creepers mantled the house walls, and everywhere were moss stains and the spore of the various fungoid growths. Constans's footsteps fell hollowly upon the pavement slippery with weed and the August damp, and as he walked along an unearthly radiance suddenly illuminated his path; from every cornice and eaves-end hung balls of the pale St. Elmo's fire; not a house but boasted its array of corpse-candles that flickered with a greenish flame.

A terrifying sight, but harmless. Far more dangerous, could he have known it, were the invisible but deadly gases from the century-old corruption that rose to meet him and were unconsciously inhaled. Then, as the fumes mounted to his brain, sober reason was ousted from her throne and imagination rioted unchecked, peopling the void with horrors and ineffectual phantoms. From the sashless windows grotesque faces stared down upon him, scowling malignantly, while others, with still more hideous smile, invited him to enter and become one of their dreadful company. Insane laughter re-echoed in his ears, and the music of lutes, irresistible in its languor-compelling potency. Already had Constans stopped twice to listen, and upon each occasion he had been obliged to exercise all his failing strength of body and mind to resume his forward march. If he halted again it would be forever; of that he felt perfectly assured, but neither the imminence nor the character of the peril in which he stood seemed sufficient to arouse him from his lethargy. Yet he kept on, walking with the shuffling stride of a mechanical doll; now he wavered and hesitated, as though the propelling spring had wellnigh run down. The night reek, hot and damp, hung like a poisoned veil upon his mouth and lips; he could not breathe; he gasped and threw up one arm as does a swimmer who looks his last upon a pitiless sun and sky.

The wind had risen with the moon; it had been growing in strength, and now a strong gust rattled among the chimney-pots. One fell with a crash, and a tiny fragment of brick struck Constans on the check, cutting the skin. The shock and the trickle of blood brought him to with a sharp shock; he ran forward a few steps and found himself sinking. The roadway immediately in front of him had doubtless been undermined by the action of water; for the space of a dozen yards or more the pavement was but a shell concealing an abyss.

Constans had already proceeded too far for retreat; he must go on or founder where he stood. He flung himself forward, the oblong blocks of granite, with which the street was paved, grinding together underneath his feet as the mass yielded to the downward pressure. He was sucked in to his knees, but instinctively he kept the upper part of his body extended horizontally, his out-stretched hand seeking for some chance holdfast. Then, as he was beginning to despair, he found it, a section of small diameter lead piping that had been uncovered by the breaking away of the surrounding earth. It bent under his clutch but did not give way. With one last effort he pulled himself clear, gained the firm ground beyond, and lay there trembling.

When afterwards he came to reason soberly over the adventure, the conclusion seemed obvious that the pitfall had been a consequent upon the breaking out of one of the ancient springs, so that the water, in endeavoring to find an outlet, had finally undermined the whole roadway. The chasm, as he looked back upon it, extended dear across the street. Its depth was only conjectural, but the mass presented the treacherous appearance of quaking sand, and Constans shuddered as he gazed. Yet he had escaped; the peril was past; let him forget what was behind and press forward.

Half a block farther on and he found himself in a cul-de-sac. The street was filled from house-wall to house-wall with an immense mass of broken stone, brick, and other debris. The cause was not far to seek.

Immediately upon the left rose one of the fabulously high buildings for which the ancient city had been famous. It could not compare in magnitude with the tremendous structures that he could discern still farther ahead, but its dozen and a half of stories loomed up imposingly when contrasted with the moderate sized houses adjoining it. Constans looked up in wonder at its towering facade, then started back with an exclamation of alarm.

It appeared that the foundations of the structure had in some way become weakened, for the whole building had settled and was leaning over at a terrifying divergence from the perpendicular. Being constructed of iron truss-work similar to that of a bridge, the essential framework still held together, but the outside walls, mere shells of stone and brick, had cracked and given way under the strain, falling piece-meal into the street below. Even as he looked, a stone dropped from a window pediment and crashed into splinters on the pavement a few yards beyond where he stood. The angle of inclination seemed to grow larger as he gazed at it; the enormous mass poised itself above him, monstrous, informed, threatening to strike.

With that uncomfortable contraction of the scalp-skin that attends upon the sudden presence of peril, Constans backed hastily away; not for worlds would he have ventured again under that overhang of artificial cliff. Yet behind him was the stretch of sunken pavement; he could not risk another passage of that. A single alternative remained--to enter one of the small houses that lined the street, ascend to its roof, and so escape to the nearest cross thoroughfare.

With a sigh of relief, Constans threw open the scuttle and climbed out upon the leads. He had entered at random one of the mean-looking edifices that hemmed him in at the right and left, and it was pleasant to escape from the close atmosphere of its long-unused staircases and corridors. Apparently the house had been occupied as a tenement in the ancient time; the marks of its degradation had survived the universal decay, and there was even a fetid suggestion in the air of old-time squalor and disease. Glad he was to be free of it all, and he let the scuttle fall to with a bang.

After surveying the different routes as best he could, Constans determined to work his way to the southward. He took one forward step and stood transfixed; from below then came a faint but unmistakable tap, tap upon the closed scuttle. The bare suspicion that there could be some living thing in that hideous interior, that it was appealing to him for aid, made him physically sick. But better to meet any horror face to face than to wrestle longer with the invisible presence of Fear; he threw aside the hatch, and a big white owl flew out, its wing grazing his face. He could have shouted aloud, so nakedly had his nerves been laid bare in the last quarter of an hour; then setting his teeth hard he took hold of himself and laughed at his own vaporing. The worst was over now; he was sure of that, and so again took courage.

It was an easy matter to pass from one connecting roof to another, and thereafter down a fire-escape to the side street. A few steps took him round the corner and into a wide thoroughfare leading directly to the more important business quarter.

Constans looked about him in wonderment. The high buildings stood shoulder to shoulder, hemming him in on every side; the street itself was but a fissure in a mountain-range. The moon had now risen high in the heavens, and her beams performed odd tricks of shadow play as they danced through these colossal halls of emptiness and silence. Nothing seemed real or substantial; these enormous masses of masonry and iron looked almost dreamlike, the ghosts of a forgotten past, shadows that must surely vanish with the morning sun.

To sober his imagination, Constans began counting the number of stories in a sky-scraper that reared its monstrous bulk directly in front of him. Thirty-six in all, and so higher by half a dozen floors than any of its neighbors. It should make an excellent observatory, and he determined upon exploring it.

The street doors stood wide open, and the entrance-way was half blocked up by piles of dust and other refuse blown in from the street by the winter storms. On the left, as one entered, was the principal suite of offices; it had been occupied by a banking firm, to judge from the desk fittings and the long array of safes and vaults. These latter were open and empty, the doors having been shattered by some powerful explosive. In all probability the vaults had been closed and locked by their owners, and had afterwards been looted by the criminals who thronged the doomed city and who would naturally seek their richest booty in the financial district. The floor was literally knee-deep in papers of all description, and in the heap were a number of bundles of the old-time bank-notes, neatly labelled and banded. These the plunderers had evidently discarded as beneath their notice, for all that they represented wealth so vast as to be wellnigh incalculable. With the Great Change at hand these paper promises had become valueless; only the precious metals themselves were worth the picking up, and the plunderers had accordingly made a clean sweep of the specie drawers. It was by the merest accident that Constans, in kicking aside a pile of elaborately engraved stock certificates, uncovered two of the smaller gold coins, a five and ten dollar piece. He put the treasure-trove carefully away, but in spite of this promising beginning he was not tempted to proceed further on this golden trail. He had another purpose in view, and so found his way to the principal staircase and began the upward climb.

Interminable it seemed, and the sense of loneliness and oppression, which lay heavy on Constans's spirits, increased steadily as he went from one landing to another. Each succeeding story was so precisely like the one he had just left; it was always the same long, marble-paved corridor, with every door and window exactly duplicated. How could living men and women have endured the appalling uniformity of this human beehive? Everywhere, too, were the same recurring evidences of the haste and panic that had characterized the final moments of that terrible hegira. Hats and garments, cash-boxes and account-books, littered the hallways, and were piled in little heaps at the entrances to the elevators--impedimenta that must inevitably be abandoned at the last if life itself were to be saved. And the final tragedy--an elevator cage that had jammed in its ways and so hung fixed between two landings. Its occupants had suddenly found themselves entrapped, with no one to hear or to help. One can fancy the growing uneasiness, the wild amaze, the terror that was afraid of the sound of its own voice. Constans hurried by; he had looked but that once.

Onward and upward, and at last he had gained the topmost floor. It was hardly worth his while to ascend to the roof itself, and so he walked into a room that faced the north and consequently commanded a view of the city along its longitudinal axis. He gazed long and earnestly into the obscurity, and far in the distance he caught the faint twinkle of a solitary light--a camp-fire, perhaps. He tried to fix its bearings in his mind; if it were a fire it must indicate the neighborhood of the Doomsman stronghold.

For a long time Constans stood at the window seeking to penetrate the mystery of the darkness that surrounded him; then at last nature asserted her rights, he yawned vigorously, and his eyelids fell. There was a brown leather lounge in the room, still in tolerable condition, and he threw himself down without even troubling to remove the thick coating of dust that covered it. He slept.

IX

THE KEYS OF POWER

The sun was high in the sky when Constans awoke. For a moment or two the unfamiliar environment puzzled him; then the keen edge of remembrance sheared through the mists of sleep and he sprang to his feet, alert and ready for whatever might befall. He walked over to the window facing the north and looked out.

For miles and miles the ruined city stretched away, a wilderness of brick and mortar. Here and there were areas of blackness and vacancy, where fire had worked its will, but these latter were confined for the most part to the region along the water-front and to the poorer residential portions. The business section, with its substantial shops and warehouses, and the central district, made up of the clubs, churches, theatres, and the handsomer private houses, remained intact, in outward appearance at least. Viewed under the rays of a glorious midsummer sun, the city seemed fair and proud as of yore, a stupendous monument to the industry and genius of the race.

And yet, withal, the spectacle was a singularly mournful and depressing one, for nowhere were there any signs of life. Not a plume of vapor waved against the azure sky, not even a dog ranged the grass-grown streets. The silence reigned infinite and profound, and Constans started in alarm as it was suddenly broken by the scream of an eagle out of the blue. Here was the picture of a desolation incomparably more complete than that of the untrodden desert upon which the life-giving spirit has never breathed. For in this place there had existed a very citadel of being, and behold! a night had passed and it was not.