The Argosy — page 99: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

86 How Lord Roland Met lus Wife. refused its office. It mattered not; a moment, and a figure, guided by the feeble gleam, gained the entrance, paused an instant, and then darted in. Great Heavens! It was the girl herself! The shock of seeing her the sharer of his danger (for he had thought of nothing but old Isaac, or some other man) struck upon him like a dash of water in the face of one fainting. ‘Go back!” he cried, with furious struggles at his chain. ‘Go back! you will be killed. Don’t touch the candle—don’t blow it, for the love of God! Go back!” Then seeing that the girl, so far from going, came straight towards his seat, he pointed with his finger to the root which held his chain. ‘‘Can you undo that hook ?” The girl stepped quickly to it, and released it in a moment. The chain fell from the root; he moved, and it slipped through the ring. With a mad strength, to which her weight was as a feather, he caught the girl up in his arms, and rushed from the cave. The instant he was out of it, he turned sharply to the right, along the cliffs. Not till he was fifty yards from the cave’s mouth did he set his burden on her feet; then he himself sunk down upon a boulder, shaking like an aspen. Almost at the same moment there came a roar like thunder, and from the cavern’s mouth a blast of smoke and flame burst fifty feet into the air. ‘There was a crash of falling rocks, a sense as though the firm earth trembled, a fierce, brief rushing in the air. Then all was still. At the instant of the explosion the girl had uttered a loud shriek, and then sunk trembling by his side, with her hands clasped close before her eyes. Her companion was almost as much shaken, though from a different cause. ‘‘ Great Heaven!” he mur-. mured; “to think that you were nearly there!” But the next moment he regained his self-possession. It was his task to re- assure her. | ‘There is nothing more to fear,” he said, as lightly as he could. ‘The danger is quite over; and you are safe, and so am I, so there is no harm done.” The girl withdrew her hands, and looked at him, still trembling ; then took a deep breath once or twice. ‘‘I am frightened,” she said. ‘How terrible it might have been! how horrible! But thank Heaven I was in time! How did it happen? Tell me.” ‘* Not now,” said Roland. ‘*You have had enough of horrors for one night; let us think of them no more. Rather, let me thank you for my safety.” As he spoke, he rose and stood before her; some- thing about him made a clanking sound. The moon was rising, and by her light the cause was visible. ‘The chain with which he had been bound was still about his waist, from which its long ends trailed behind him ; so like an iron tail that neither could help laughing. The chain, which had been passed twice round his body, had then been knotted; but as its ends were free, the united efforts of the pair = ‘| GOMIIGIOOKSECOIT