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Updated: June 17, 2025
Tessin sprang up from his chair, and half crossed the room. The stranger took an uncertain step forward. His legs rattled as he moved, and Wyley saw that the links of broken fetters were twisted about his ankles. "Have two years made so vast a difference?" he asked. "Well, they were years of the bastinado, and I do not wonder." Tessin peered into his face. "By God, it is!" he exclaimed.
Scrope seated himself hurriedly. "Nothing has changed, eh?" Knightley asked, like a man fresh from his sleep. Then he stood, and quietly, slowly, walked round the table until he stood directly behind Scrope's chair. Scrope's face hardened; he laid the palms of his hands upon the edge of the table ready to spring up; he looked across to Wyley with the expectation of death in his eyes.
He spoke habitually in a quiet, decided voice, like one that has the soundings of his nature; beneath it, Wyley detected, continually recurring, continually subdued, a note of turbulence. Here, in a word, was a man whose hand was against the world but who would not strike at random.
No one was prepared to deny, however much he might doubt, what Wyley said. Wyley continued: "At some point of time before this duel Knightley's recollections break off. At what precise point we are not aware, nor is it of any great importance.
Love that can flow...." And then the song broke off, and silence followed. Wyley looked again at Knightley, but the latter had not changed his position. He still sat with his face shaded by his hand. The Surgeon was startled by a light touch on the arm.
Wyley would not stir from the place where he could gaze upon his old home burning to the ground. He stood rooted to the spot, like one fascinated and enchained by a power he could not resist, grasping his precious bundle to his breast, and clinging firmly to the arm of the Longville doctor, who had been one of those who hastened to his rescue.
"A little after midnight," repeated Wyley. "Ensign Knightley and Lieutenant Scrope, I understand, immediately fight a duel, which seems to have been interrupted before any hurt was done." The Major and Scrope agreed with a nod of their heads.
However, a sortie had been commanded at daybreak as a last effort to relieve Charles Fort, and the two officers on the balcony speculated over their pipes on the chances of success. Meanwhile, inside the room Surgeon Wyley lectured to his remaining auditor, who, too tired to remonstrate, tilted his chair against the wall and dozed.
'Thank you, master, said Stephen, the tears starting to his eyes, so unexpected was this gentle greeting to him; 'I'll try to be like father. 'Well, my boy, said Thomas Wyley, 'we are come up here on purpose to give you our advice, as you are such a mere lad. I've been thinking what can be done for you.
He pushed the door open, he set a foot in the passage, and then the roar of a gun shook the room. "Ah!" remarked Wyley, "the signal for your sortie." Knightley stopped and listened. Major Shackleton stood in a fixed attitude with his eyes upon the floor. He had hit upon an issue, it seemed to him by inspiration. The noise of the gun was followed by ten clear strokes of a bell.
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