The Doomsman | Page 8

began to incline the other way. It was but the weight of one
man's hand in the scale-pan, yet there are still many of us who
remember how heavy that hand could be.
"Infamous is the adjective deliberately applied, and with reason.
Dominus Gillian, to give him his full name, was a renegade, the
unworthy son of a distinguished Stockader family. Admittedly a man of
fine intellect and force, it is equally unquestionable that he was entirely
devoid of moral sense. He possessed a genius for organization, and he
succeeded in consolidating the unruly Doomsmen into a compact and
disciplined body of outlaws. Murder and rapine were quickly reduced
to exact sciences, and, unfortunately, the House People could not be
made to see the necessity of united action; the townsman and the
stockade dweller preferred to contend with each other rather than
against the common enemy. As a consequence, the freebooters had a
clear road before them, and so was established that intolerable tyranny
under which the land still groans. All this occurred upward of sixty
years ago.
"It only remains to add that Dominus, or, more colloquially, Dom
Gillian, still lives, albeit he must be verging upon ninety years of age.
For many years he has not been seen in the field, and it is even asserted

that he no longer takes active part in the councils of the Doomsmen. Be
that as it may, his will still remains dominant to animate and direct the
malign powers created by his wicked genius. And the evil that men do,
doth it not live after them?
"Such is the world, or, rather, one infinitesimal portion of the cosmos,
in the year 2015, according to the ancient calendar, or 90 since the
Terror."

IV
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
Gavan of the Greenwood Keep was a prosperous man according to the
standard of these latter days, and his estate was reckoned to be the
largest and finest holding in all the western country-side. A man might
walk from break of day until darkness and yet not complete the
periphery of its boundary-lines, but the palisaded portion included only
the arable land and home paddocks and was of comparatively limited
extent. Viewed from a bird's-eye elevation, this stockaded enclosure
appeared to be laid out in the shape of a pear, the house being situated
near the small end. The greatest length of the area thus enclosed was a
mile and a half, and it was three-quarters of a mile wide at the big or
southern side, tapering down to a couple of hundred yards at the
northern entrance or barrier.
A quarter of a mile back from the north gate stood the keep, not one
distinct building, but rather several, built in the form of a hollow square
and consolidated for mutual protection. The principal entrance, the one
at the northern end, was called the water gate, for it should be explained
that the keep stood on the bank of the Ochre brook and access was only
possible by means of a drawbridge. Some day Sir Gavan intended to
turn the course of the stream so as to carry it around the keep and
thereby secure the protection of a continuous moat. But hitherto other
duties had seemed more pressing, and the plan was still in abeyance.

Entering through the covered way of the water gate, with guard-room
and bailiff's office to the right and left, one found himself in the
court-yard, some fifty yards in the square. On the right were the
cow-barns, horse-stalls, granaries, tool-houses, and store-buildings,
while the dwelling proper, known as the Great House, occupied the
entire left of the square, the kitchens and other offices adjoining the
retainers' quarters on the south. An enormous hall, running clear to the
roof, took up the central portion of the house, staircases and galleries
affording access to the store and sleeping-rooms on the second and attic
stories. The roof proper was surmounted by a parapetted and
loop-holed structure called the fighting platform, and it was thither that
Constans had repaired upon receiving the startling intelligence of his
sister's disappearance. Let us rejoin him there.
In the leisurely moving figure glimpsed through the birches, Constans
had instantly recognized Issa. Plainly she had been out flower-hunting;
with the aid of his binoculars he could determine that she carried a
bunch of the delicate pink-and-white blossoms that we call May-bloom.
She was directing her steps straight for the house, but either she was
unaccountably deaf to the continuous clanging of the alarm-bell or, still
more strangely, unaware of its significance; she walked as though in a
reverie, slowly and with her head bent forward. Thunder of God! it was
a trap, and the foolish girl would not see. Unquestionably, the
Doomsmen had forced the stockade at