to alarm, no refuge at hand. The spot was well chosen.

The doors of the inn were closed; there was a light in the room below:
but the outside shutters were drawn over the windows on the first floor.
My uncle paused a moment, and said to the postilion,--

"Do you know the back way to the premises?"

"No, sir; I does n't often come by this way, and they be new folks that
have taken the house,--and I hear it don't prosper over much."

"Knock at the door; we will stand a little aside while you do so. If any
one ask what you want, merely say you would speak to the servant,--that
you have found a purse. Here, hold up mine."

Roland and I had dismounted, and my uncle drew me close to the wall by
the door, observing that my impatience ill submitted to what seemed to
me idle preliminaries.

"Hist!" whispered he. "If there be anything to conceal within, they will
not answer the door till some one has reconnoitred; were they to see us,
they would refuse to open. But seeing only the post-boy, whom they will
suppose at first to be one of those who brought the carriage, they will
have no suspicion. Be ready to rush in the moment the door is unbarred."

My uncle's veteran experience did not deceive him. There was a long
silence before any reply was made to the post-boy's summons; the light
passed to and fro rapidly across the window, as if persons were moving
within. Roland made sign to the post-boy to knock again. He did so
twice, thrice; and at last, from an attic window in the roof, a head
obtruded and a voice cried, "Who are you? What do you want?"

"I'm the post-boy at the Red Lion; I want to see the servant with the
brown carriage: I have found this purse!"

"Oh! that's all; wait a bit."

The head disappeared. We crept along under the projecting eaves of the
house; we heard the bar lifted from the door, the door itself cautiously
opened: one spring, and I stood within, and set my back to the door to
admit Roland.

"Ho, help! thieves! help!" cried a loud voice, and I felt a hand grip at
my throat. I struck at random in the dark, and with effect, for my blow
was followed by a groan and a curse.

Roland, meanwhile, had detected a ray through the chinks of a door in
the hall, and, guided by it, found his way into the room at the window
of which we had seen the light pass and go, while without. As he threw
the door open, I bounded after him and saw, in a kind of parlor, two
females,--the one a stranger, no doubt the hos