The Midnight Queen [40]
not?"
His highness growled a respectful assent.
"Then let him be brought before us," said the queen. "Go,
guards, and fetch him."
Two of the soldiers bowed low, and backed from the royal
presence, amid dead and ominous silence. At this interesting
stage of the proceedings, as Sir Norman was leaning forward,
breathless and excited, a footstep sounded on the flagged floor
beside him, and some one suddenly grasped his shoulder with no
gentle hand.
CHAPTER IX.
LEOLINE.
In one instant Sir Norman was on his feet and his hand on his
sword. In the tarry darkness, neither the face nor figure of the
intruder could be made out, but he merely saw a darker shadow
beside him standing in the sea of darkness. Perhaps he might
have thought it a ghost, but that the hand which grasped his
shoulder was unmistakably of flesh, and blood, and muscle, and
the breathing of its owner was distinctly audible by his ads.
"Who are you?" demanded Sir Norman, drawing out his sword, and
wrenching himself free from his unseen companion.
"Ah! it is you, is it? I thought so," said a not unknown voice.
"I have been calling you till I am hoarse, and at last gave it
up, and started after you in despair. What are you doing here?"
"You, Ormiston!" exclaimed Sir Norman, in the last degree
astonished. "How - when - what are you doing here?"
"What are you doing here? that's more to the purpose. Down flat
on your face, with your head stuck through that hole. What is
below there, anyway?"
"Never mind," said Sir Norman, hastily, who, for some reason
quite unaccountable to himself, did not wish Ormiston to see.
"There's nothing therein particular, but a lower range of vaults.
Do you intend telling me what has brought you here?"
"Certainly; the very fleetest horse I could find in the city."
"Pshaw! You don't say so?" exclaimed Sir Norman, incredulously.
"But I presume you had some object in taking such a gallop? May
I ask what? Your anxious solicitude on my account, very likely?"
"Not precisely. But, I say, Kingsley, what light is that shining
through there ? I mean to see."
"No, you won't," said Sir Norman, rapidly and noiselessly
replacing the flag. "It's nothing, I tell you, but a number of
will-o-'wisps having a ball. Finally, and for the last time, Mr.
Ormiston, will you have the goodness to tell me what has sent you
here?"
"Come out to the air, then. I have no fancy for talking in this
place; it smells like a tomb."
"There is nothing wrong, I hope?" inquired Sir Norman, following
his friend, and threading his way gingerly through the piles of
rubbish in the profound darkness.
"Nothing wrong, but everything extremely right. Confound this
place! It would be easier walking on live eels than through
these winding and lumbered passages. Thank the fates, we are
through them, at last! for there is the daylight, or, rather the
nightlight, and we have escaped without any bones broken."
They had reached the mouldering and crumbling doorway, shown by a
square of lighter darkness, and exchanged the damp, chill
atmosphere of the vaults for the stagnant, sultry open air. Sir
Norman, with a notion in his head that his dwarfish highness
might have placed sentinels around his royal residence,
endeavored to pierce the gloom in search of them. Though he
could discover none, he still thought discretion the better part
of valor, and stepped out into the road.
"Now, then, where are you going?" inquired Ormiston for,
following him.
"I don't wish to talk here; there is no telling who may be
listening. Come along."
Ormiston glanced back at the gloomy rain looming up like a black
spectre in the blackness.
"Well, they most have a strong fancy for eavesdropping, I must
say, who world go to that haunted heap to listen. What have you
seen there, and where