Here was much gained, but Tom had cast no ray of light upon the
matter of Dorothy's imprisonment. The next day lord Herbert sent for
him to his workshop, where he was then alone. He appeared in a state
of abject terror.
'Now, Tom,' said his lordship, 'hast thou made a clean breast of
it?'
'Yes, my lord,' answered Tom; 'there is but one thing more.'
'What is that? Out with it.'
'As I went back to my chamber, at the top of the stair leading down
from my lord's dining parlour to the hall, commonly called my lord's
stair,' said Tom, who delighted in the pseudo-circumstantial, 'I
stopped to recover my breath, of the which I was sorely bereft, and
kneeling on the seat of the little window that commands the archway
to the keep, I saw the prisoner--'
'How knewest thou the prisoner ere it was yet daybreak, and that in
the darkest corner of all the court?'
'I knew him by the way my bones shook at the white sleeves of his
shirt, my lord,' said Tom, who was too far gone in fear to make the
joke of pretending courage.
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