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Now, here was what had startled Richard Shelton. The sun had moved
away
from the hall windows, and at the same time the fire had blazed up high
on the wide hearth, and shed a changeful glow upon the roof and hangings.
In this light the figure of the black hunter had winked at him with a
white eyelid.
He continued staring at the eye. The light shone upon it like a gem; it
was liquid, it was alive. Again the white eyelid closed upon it for a
fraction of a second, and the next moment it was gone.
There could be no mistake. The live eye that had been watching him
through a hole in the tapestry was gone. The firelight no longer shone
on a reflecting surface.
And instantly Dick awoke to the terrors of his position. Hatch's
warning, the mute signals of the priest, this eye that had observed him
from the wall, ran together in his mind. He saw he had been put upon his
trial, that he had once more betrayed his suspicions, and that, short of
some miracle, he was lost.
"If I cannot get me forth out of this house," he thought, "I am a dead
man! And this poor Matcham, too--to what a cockatrice's nest have I not
led him!"
He was still so thinking, when there came one in haste, to bid him help
in changing his arms, his clothing, and his two or three books, to a new
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