The Bride of the Tomb, and Queenie's Terrible Secret

"Rave on, my beauty," he answered, laughing tauntingly. "Flap your pretty wings against your prison bars, my little bird, you will only ruffle your feathers in vain. By Jove, you only make me more determined! I never saw you so beautiful, so utterly fascinating! I did not think you had so queenly a spirit, my fair one! you would make your fortune on the tragic stage!"

"Oh! go, go," she gasped, lifting her hand with a wild gesture toward the door, "go, leave me, unless you wish to see me dying!"

He paused irresolute an instant; then her flashing eye and dauntless air cowed his craven spirit into submission. With a slight bow he turned and went out of the door.

Face downward on the bed, Lily wept and sobbed unrestrainedly. She was determined, if release did not come ere long, to die by her own hand. "Better than dishonor," thought she with another burst of anguished tears.

She looked about her for some instrument to secrete in case she should be driven to the last stronghold of honor. There was nothing to secure. Old Haidee had made sure of that. "Well," she thought, "if there is nothing else I can strangle myself with my handkerchief."

The hours wore on to twilight. Old Haidee brought her supper, grumbled because she did not eat it, and scowlingly withdrew. Lily was left alone with her sad thoughts for companions. She went to the window, pulled aside the curtain, and looked out. The twilight had faded, a few pale stars glimmered in the cloudy sky, a crescent moon gave forth a weak and watery light. A wild thought darted into her mind. "Oh! if I could escape through these broken bars. Ah! why not?"

She stood still and listened. Familiar sounds from the adjoining room informed her that the Leverets were retiring. She crouched down and waited perhaps half an hour. Then a dual chorus of snores announced that her lynx-eyed guardians slept.

Breathlessly she stole to the window and removed the iron bar. It left an aperture large enough to admit her slight form. She tried the other bars, but they seemed more firmly fixed than the first one she had tried. They resisted her strongest efforts.

"If I only had a strong rope," she thought to herself, "I could secure it to these bars and slide down it to the ground."

She leaned her head through the aperture and looked down to see how far she would have to descend. The distance appeared to be about thirty feet.

"If I only had a rope," she thought again, "I could certainly gain my freedom—freedom! that means home again, papa, Ada, Lancelot!"

She sat down, her heart beating wildly at the thought. They believed her dead. She pictured their wild, incredulous joy at first when she burst in among them, their own living darling. What a story she would have to tell, and how swiftly the vengeance of papa and Lancelot would descend on Mrs. Vance and Harold Colville. Her breath came quick and fast, her courage mounted high within her.

"I must escape," she murmured with passionate vehemence; "surely there must be some way out of this horrible prison."

She thought of all the stories she had heard and read of the escape of prisoners—she remembered that she had read of one man who had torn his bed-clothes into strips and made a rope of them by which he descended from the window. Why could not she do the same?

Cautiously, so as not to awaken the sleepers in the next room, she removed the bed-covers. There were not many, for the sultry summer weather precluded the possibility of their use, but there were two strong linen sheets.

"These would do, I think," she murmured to herself. "I am so light it would not need a very strong rope to bear my weight. I will tear these sheets into four long strips each. That will make eight strips. I will tie them together in knots, fasten the rope thus formed to a bar, and lower myself from the window. If the rope is not long enough I must jump the remainder of the distance. Then, free from this dreadful prison, I must trust in Providence to find the way home."

She set to work diligently. She was obliged to be very cautious for fear the sound of her work should penetrate the ears of her jailers. She had nothing with which to cut the cloth, and it was strong and difficult to tear. But by dint of hard labor with teeth and fingers she at length accomplished it, and set to work tying the slips of linen together.

It took some time to make these knots secure. When that was done she secured the end of her impromptu rope to the lowest bar of the window, and looked out to see how far the end escaped the ground. Joy, joy! it was only about ten feet.

"I can easily jump that distance," she thought, with a thrill of triumph at her success.

She looked about for some wrapping to put over her thin blue dress. A long dark cloak with hood attached hung conveniently against the wall.

"They must have put that around me when I was brought here," she said, "so I will wear it to go away in," and, taking it down, she rolled it into a compact bundle and threw it out of the window.

Nothing now remained but to follow the bundle. She stood still a moment with streaming eyes raised to Heaven while with clasped hands she invoked the divine mercy and protection on her perilous undertaking. Then shuddering, she climbed into the window, forced her body through the narrow opening, and, catching to the rope, swung herself downward.

Hark! there was a swish in the shrubbery in the garden below as if some heavy body had dashed through them. Her heart leaped into her throat, her clasp on the rope grew unconsciously looser, and she slipped much lower; so low that she heard distinctly on the ground beneath a deep, low, hurried breathing.

In an agony of dread and fear she clung tightly to the rope and waited for some demonstration from below. Some unexpected peril had intervened between her and freedom.

Hush! Hark! Suddenly, as if all Hades had broken loose, there rose a fearful, blood-curdling sound on the soft warm air of the summer night. Louder and deeper still it grew, and Lily, hanging there by the clasp of her frail little hands, midway between the window and the ground, knew that it was the cruel, hungry, relentless baying of a deep-mouthed blood-hound.

A scream of terror burst from her lips as she heard the dangerous creature at work beneath her wreaking its vengeance on the cloak she had thrown down—tearing it and rending it with fangs and paws. Thus, she thought, with a gasp of agony, the terrible beast would soon be rending her warm, living body.

Its vengeance sated on the cloak, the blood-hound began to make hungry leaps into the air towards Lily's body, at the same time uttering murderous yelps that froze the blood in the poor young creature's veins. She felt herself growing weak and faint, and knew that she could hold on but a few minutes longer ere she must faint and fall into the devouring jaws of the blood-thirsty animal. Oh! God, she thought, what a horrible death, to be torn limb from limb by that hungry brute! Papa and Lancelot would never know all she had suffered.

She had escaped death by steel, death by living entombment, to be rent in twain by this awful blood-hound!

Suddenly, with a cry of rage, a night-capped head was thrust out of a window above. The Leverets had been awakened by the noise, and now hastened to the rescue. Lily heard them coming and tried to hold on yet a little longer; but her strength was spent, her bruised hands relaxed their hold, and with a shriek of horror she was hurled downward into the hungry jaws that were waiting for her. She heard the wild, prolonged howl of joy given by the dog, felt its hot breath on her face, then unconsciousness supervened and she knew no more.

At that moment when her death would have been but the work of an instant, a powerful hand grasped the dog's collar and dragged him, howling and yelping away to his kennel, while old Haidee raised the unconscious girl carefully up and looked at her limp form in the moonlight.

"Is she dead?" muttered the old witch. "Has the hound killed her? Here, Peter," as the old man came back from fastening the dog into his kennel, "carry the girl up-stairs—I believe the dog has killed her."

They carried her back and laid her down upon the bed whose coverings she had stripped and rent with such high hope an hour ago.

White and cold she lay there as if indeed life had been driven from its beautiful citadel forever. Old Haidee carefully examined her face and limbs. There was no sign of any wound from the animal's fangs.

"He has not bitten her. If she be dead, it is sheer fright that has killed her," said she. "Peter, you ugly brute, stand aside. If she were to revive, the sight of you would be enough to frighten her to death!"

Peter removed his homely countenance to one side, while old Haidee pursued her task of bringing the unconscious girl out of her swoon. Cold water, camphor, burnt feathers and ammonia were successively tried by the old crone before faint breath began to flutter again over the pale lips. Her eyes opened and she looked up in bewilderment.

"Where am I?" she moaned. "What is the matter—oh! what is that?"

Her wandering gaze had fastened on old Peter Leveret, and she regarded him with looks of horror. And no wonder, for old Peter was hump-backed and deformed, and had a countenance so wicked it resembled that of a brute more than a human being. A shock of bristly, unkempt red hair surmounted his visage, and his straggling beard was of the same fiery hue. He leered maliciously at her looks of terror.

"Pshaw! that is only my old man, miss," said Haidee, shortly. "You need not put on so many airs at sight of him, for I do assure you that if he had not pulled old Nero off you just in the very nick of time, the hound would have torn you to pieces long before this."

"I thank you," said Lily, timidly, forcing herself to look gently at the repulsive old creature. "Oh, where did the dreadful dog come from?"

"We keeps it chained up all day in the garden, and at night we lets him loose to purwent you from escaping, miss," answered old Peter, doggedly.

"Strange that I never heard him before," mused Lily, reflectively.

"He never had occasion to make himself heard before," said Haidee, grimly.

Lily shuddered and remained silent.

"Pray, miss," said old Peter, who had been examining the window curiously, "how did you get the iron bar out of this here window? You don't look strong enough to have wrenched it out."

"The woodwork was rotten," she answered, quietly. "I pulled the bar out at the first effort."

"Peter," said old Haidee, "go into the third room from this and see if the bars are strong in that window."

Old Peter hobbled out on his errand, and Haidee said, shortly:

"I did not think you would try to give us the slip, miss, or I would have warned you long ago about old Nero. There is no use trying to escape from here—you are as secure in this house as if you were in your grave. Grave perils await you the moment you step over this threshold. Old Nero was but a foretaste of what you may meet with, so I advise you to marry Mr. Colville, and content yourself."

"I will never, never marry him, Haidee," said the young girl, sadly, yet dauntlessly. "And you need not try to frighten me from trying to escape, for I shall use every endeavor to that end. I can but die, and death is preferable to what I must endure in this house."

She lay back and closed her eyes wearily.