Burrell was seated alone in his library, musing over the labyrinth from
which he saw no immediate prospect of escape; plan succeeding plan, as,
unnoticed by him, the twilight had deepened into the night. His doors
were ordered to be locked at an early hour--a command which, it is to be
supposed, the servants obeyed or disobeyed according to their own
pleasure.
The Lords' Commissioners, Fiennes and Lisle, who were travelling round
the country on special business, had been his visiters for three or four
days; and on the evening on which they took their departure, he was, as
we have described him, musing in his library, upon no very amicable
terms with himself, when his reverie was broken by a knock against the
glass of an oriel window that was sunk deep into an embrasure of the
wall. He started from his seat, and was so alarmed at perceiving the
face of a man close to the fretted frame-work, as to draw forth a
pistol, and present it towards the intruder. In an instant the shivered
fragments of an exquisitely tinted pane flew into the library, and a
voice exclaimed,-"It's me!"
"And what is the motive of this destruction?" stormed forth the Master
of Burrell, in an angry tone, proceeding at the same time to open the
window; "were there not people enough below to bring up your message?
and are there not doors enough for you to enter, without clambering
twenty feet up a straight wall, and shattering this beautiful picture,
the Marriage of St. Catherine, in a thousand pieces?"
"As to the marriage of St. Catherine," observed his visiter, stepping
through the casement, "I wish I could break all marriages as easily; and
as to the motive, your honour, I did not like to wait quietly, and see a
pistol-ball walk towards my witless pate, to convince, by its effects
thereupon, the unbelieving world that Robin Hays had brains. As to the
domestics, the doors were locked, and they, I do believe, (craving your
pardon, sir,) too drunk to open them. As to the wall, it's somewhat
straight and slippery; but what signifies a wall to one who can be in
safety on a tow-line, and only that between him and eternity? Thank God!
there is nothing on my conscience to make my footing tremble--or----"
"Robin Hays," interrupted Burrell at last, "I have listened to you with
much patience, because I know you love to hear the sound of your own
voice; if you bear either message or letter from my worthy friend Sir
Robert Cecil, let me have it at once."