CHAPTER X

IN EVIL PLIGHT

\ HEN Charlie recovered his senses he found himself
lying bound in a room lighted by a dim lamp, which
sufficed only to show that the beams were blackened by
smoke and age, and the walls constructed of rough stone-
work. There was, so far as he could see, no furniture what- .
ever in it, and he imagined that it was an underground cellar,
used perbaps at some time or other as a store-room. It
was some time before his brain was clear enough to under-
stand what had happened, or how he had got into his pres-
ent position. Gradually the facts came back to him, and
he was able to think coherently in spite of a splitting head-
ache and a dull throbbing pain at the back of his head.

“T was knocked down and stunned,” he said to himself
at last. “I wonder what became of Stanislas; I hope he
got away. ‘This does not look like a prison. J should say
that it was a cellar in the house of one of the gang that set
upon me. It is evident that some one has betrayed me,
probably that Jew, Ben Soloman. What have they brought
me here for? I wonder what are they going to do with
me.” His head, however, hurt him too much for him to
continue the strain of thought, and after a while he dozed
off to sleep. When he awoke a faint light was streaming
in through a slit two or three inches wide, high up on the

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