Chapter 8 THEREFORE THEY GO THEIR WAYS.

I ought to explain that the passage leading to that "haunted" chamber sloped upwards steeply enough to require a step here and there along it. It might even be called a stairway; therefore the little room-which had been the goal of Yaspard's present raid-was situated on a much higher level than the larger and more dilapidated apartment.

It was not possible to walk round and peep into the room, from which a flickering light was streaming through a tiny slit in the thick wall that did duty for a window. But we must not suppose that the courage of a Viking-boy was going to be daunted by trow-laughter or ghost-lights. No; nor by stone walls and high windows! The walls of Trullyabister were rugged, and, on that side at any rate, perforated by holes convenient for supporting the toe of a boot, and for otherwise assisting an athletic youth, thirsting for information, to solve the mysteries of the interior.

"I'll know what it means, or--" Yaspard did not finish his sentence in words; he shut his mouth up tight, and, scrambling over the ruins like a monkey, he was soon climbing up to the window.

The Harrisons watched him with intense interest, and when his hands were on the window-sill their excitement reached a climax.

It was with some difficulty that the bold adventurer raised himself high enough to see into the room, and it was only for one instant that he occupied such a position. Just as his face appeared at the window another face-a horrid face, from which a pair of large melancholy eyes glowed with a wild fierce light-presented itself opposite Yaspard, and stared out at him in a manner to startle the stoutest man alive.

Our hero did not wait for a second glance at that dreadful apparition, but descended from his equivocal position much more rapidly than he had reached it.

"What was it? Tell us quick," whispered Lowrie, and both he and his brother were trembling with fear. They had caught a glimpse of the face that had met Yaspard's, and its unearthly appearance had been greatly exaggerated by the shadows and the distance. Although they were too intelligent to credit any story of trows, they had lively imaginations, and had been bred in a land where the mysteries of creation take fantastic shapes in the minds of a wonder-loving and superstitious peasantry. They had shrunk from penetrating the secrets of that haunted room, and were not altogether surprised, though entirely frightened, that "something" had "appeared" to rebuke and check their leader's audacity.

While Yaspard gasped for breath after his hasty descent the Harrisons again begged, "Tell us quick about it," but Yaspard was in no hurry to tell. He retreated again into the ruin, whither his companions followed, and, sitting down by the loaded keschies, he cast his eyes on the ground and would not speak.

There was something awesome in the silence, in the surroundings, in the whole adventure, therefore it is not to be wondered that Lowrie felt creepy, and Gibbie's teeth chattered in his head.

At last the elder brother took courage to say, "Let's go back to our boat. There's nae gude tae be got o' sitting here like gaping fish left dry and high upon a skerry."

"Put the keschies in the passage, anyway," said Yaspard, agreeing to the proposal; but the Harrisons were not willing to enter that passage again, so they suggested another hiding-place, namely, the chimney, which was stopped up and grown over above, but had capacious ledges inside which suited admirably for the purpose they required. Their things were deposited there, and then the three adventurers stole silently away from Trullyabister, two feeling crestfallen and very uncomfortable, the third plunged in thought, and looking the beau ideal of a pirate chief meditating over some dark and deadly project.

It was not until the Osprey had passed the Hoobes, and was being swiftly rowed to Noostigard, that Yaspard broke the eerie silence which he had maintained in a most unusual manner. "It all works in!-works in beautiful!" he remarked. Now, that was not at all the kind of speech the others had expected, and their amazement was so great that they paused in their rowing and gazed at him in speechless astonishment.

He laughed then, his own hearty laugh, which somehow had the effect of dissipating all the fears with which they had been beset, but did not diminish their surprise and curiosity.

"Ye might tell us now!" they begged, in coaxing tones; and Yaspard answered, "I just believe Mr. Neeven is a wizard, and Tammy a sort of trow. Anyway, they are as bad as Vikings, for they have captured a poor lady and shut her up in the haunted room, with her baby too-all just the way people did ages ago! And now, don't you see, we've got to rescue them; we are the noble warriors who defend the weak and rescue them from thraldom!"

"Has he gone stark mad?" Gibbie asked of Lowrie.

"Not he," retorted Yaspard. "He is telling you the exact truth-believe it or not, as you please. I saw the mother, and I saw the baby; and I saw the back-I am glad he wasn't looking my way-of their tyrant and jailer, Mr. Neeven. So there!"

"A mother and baby in the haunted room! But how did they get there, can anybody imagine?"

"They are there, and that is enough for us."

"It's the strangest thing I ever heard tell o'," ejaculated Lowrie; "and yet," he added, "we must allow we did hear something uncommonly like a bairn greetin'."

"Of course we did," retorted Yaspard.

"But what kind of a critter was it came to the window?" Gibbie asked. "That was surely no human critter."

"The prettiest lady in creation would cast an ugly shadow from that hole," was the ready reply, which satisfied the brothers, who believed that their imaginations, and the dread they were in, as well as the uncertain light, had caused them to fancy they saw something peculiar. They were then quite ready to denounce Mr. Neeven for his inhuman conduct, and eager to devise some plan by which the poor prisoners might be rescued.

Yaspard had no difficulty in winning their approval of his next plan; and indeed, so ardently did they desire to set about it, that they were almost sorry when he said, "Easy, easy, boys! One thing at a time! Don't let us forget, in our haste to be after this business, that we have other important matters on hand. We have to find Gloy, and we have to meet the lads of Lunda at Havnholme this afternoon. We haven't much time on our hands, if Gloy has to be found before we go to receive his ransom."

"Strikes me," muttered Gibbie, "that we are in a mess about Gloy."

"It's puzzling, but it will all come right," was the chief's reply, spoken in his usual cheery style, which cleared the cloud from Gibbie's brow, and sent him home believing as implicitly as before that Yaspard would find a way of making things come straight. "He always does," the brothers agreed, as they softly stole up to their room, leaving the Viking to paddle himself across the voe.

At breakfast next morning Mrs. Harrison asked in some surprise what they had done with Gloy, for she had expected her nephew would certainly be brought to her house. She was not a little disturbed on hearing of his disappearance, but the factor said, "There's nae harm come to the lad. Ye need not be frightened. It's plain enough some boat has come by, and the men have insisted on his going wi' them. For, mind ye, yon geo is a dangerous place if a high tide happened tae set in."

He would not listen to his boys' arguments against such an explanation. Neither Gloy's declaring himself still "The Prisoner," nor Pirate's honesty as policeman, could shake Harrison's belief in his own theory of the matter. "You'll see I'm right," he ended with; "but I wad like tae ken what way young master is going tae redd it up wi' the lads o' Lunda. My word! he will hae a bourne keschie o' crabs to sort wi' them, if he canno' tell what's come o' their maute." [1]

While Gibbie had been answering questions and their parents had been talking, Lowrie was fidgeting in his chair, trying to gather courage to tell the yet more startling incident which occurred during the midnight trespass on Trullyabister.

At last he managed to say, "Faither, I never could hae thought that Mr. Neeven was a-was a bairn-stealer and a wumman-stealer."

James Harrison stared at his son, as well he might, and one of the older girls cried out, "What in a' the world have ye got in your crazy head, Lowrie?"

Then Lowrie told all he knew about the mother and baby prisoned in the haunted room, and his father listened to the story with a preternatural solemnity of countenance.

Mrs. Harrison, the girls, and small children stared and were dumb, as Lowrie enlarged upon the baby wails which had stirred his soul, and the great glowing eyes that had appeared for one brief moment at the small window. It was all the most remarkable tale that had ever been told at Noostigard, and it was not spoilt by any verbal interruption.

When the story was ended Harrison asked, in a curious low voice that seemed shaken by some strange emotion, "And so ye'll be for letting out Mr. Neeven's prisoners instead o' shutting up your ain? Weel, my boys, tak care that ye dinna find yoursel's in a trap, as mony a wild fellow o' a sea-rover has found himsel' in times past. Mind ye, yon Vikings, that ye hae sae muckle sang about, did not aye come aff wi' the best o' it. Sometimes they had tae tak their turn in the prisons too."

"Yaspard will tak care we don't come off second best," said the boys confidently; but their father shook his head.

"I'm thinking," he said, "ye'll find ye've got a rale Viking tae deal wi' if ye tackle Mr. Neeven, or meddle wi' ony o' his affairs. I wadna be in Yaspard Adiesen's shoes if he gets intil Mr. Neeven's birse." [2]

"But, faither, it's a crying shame of him to keep such puir critters prisoned in such a place; and surely Yaspard is right to wish to set them free."

"I'll no say he's wrang. I think it is a shame, but I'm just warning you tae be careful;-I mean that ye tell your chief (as ye ca' him) tae be careful-very careful."

"We'll tell him what you say," they answered.

Harrison would not allow his wife or girls to discuss the matter, and a significant look he gave them served to silence them on the subject for that time.

[1] "Maute," a comrade, chum, or mate.

[2] Bristles.