First, the villain and heartless vagabond sought to win my good-will and purchase my compliance, so as to get me, like a treacherous
warder, to deliver up to him the keys of the fortress I had in charge.
For ten seconds there was silence as though all had been struck dumb; even the warder stepped back, mechanically retreated to the door, and stood immovable.
The man whom he had thrust back followed him into the room and succeeded in seizing him by the shoulder; he was a warder; but Nikolay pulled his arm away.
Swinging himself up boldly by means of this friendly vine, he crept through the window and in a moment more had sprung upon the
warder from behind and gripped him hard about the throat.
Now, although the
warder's room was a very uncomfortable one (being, in every point of decoration and convenience, several hundred degrees inferior to the common infirmary of a county jail), it had at present the merit of being wholly deserted save by Mr.
Returning in less than three minutes, a
warder announced ``that the Prior Aymer of Jorvaulx, and the good knight Brian de Bois-Guilbert, commander of the valiant and venerable order of Knights Templars, with a small retinue, requested hospitality and lodging for the night, being on their way to a tournament which was to be held not far from Ashby-de-la-Zouche, on the second day from the present.''
Another sable
warder (a carpenter, who had once eaten two geese for a wager) opened the door, and showed me into the best parlour.
I don't think they can kill Drugger Davis on that old vague story of the poison; and as for the convict who killed the
warder, I suppose it's obvious that you haven't got him.
Beneath the leaden sky, And by each side a
warder walked,
Yet prison doors were ill
warders of his fame, and letters of recall followed closely upon pardon; but death overtook the exile before he could reach the capital, and at the age of sixty his wanderings came to an end.
Now after making this allowance, the truth remained that if I could find out something about a castle before ringing the door- bell -- I mean hailing the
warders -- it was the sensible thing to do.
She was a five-hundred-ton boat; and besides her thirty-eight jail-birds, she carried twenty-six of a crew, eighteen soldiers, a captain, three mates, a doctor, a chaplain, and four
warders. Nearly a hundred souls were in her, all told, when we set said from Falmouth.