to make another
attempt was wanting, and, with a feeling of despair increasing, he began
to plan what he should do till morning--whether he could get round to
the back and find an entrance to the stables and pass the night in a
loft, so as to try and steal in some time in the morning, and reach the
attic unseen.

"But Waller will be going up and finding that I am gone," he thought.
"He will see the rope hanging out of the window, and--Oh, what an idiot
I have been! If I had only waited and been patient for another day or
two, perhaps--" He stopped short, for he was conscious of what sounded
like a deep sigh close at hand, then of a heavy stertorous breathing,
and, dimly seen, not a couple of yards away, he made out the shape of a
big, heavy, stooping man, passing over the lawn very slowly, and as if
looking for him. For that was the only interpretation that he could
place upon the man's movements.

It was not Waller, nor the gardener, for certain; but who it could be,
in his excitement, he could not hazard a conjecture. He himself was
fugitive and spy, and the only interpretation natural was that this man
was hunting for him, and he was lost.

So startled was the boy by the adventure, so exhausted by what he had
gone through, that it never occurred to him to make a dash for liberty.
He crouched there, literally paralysed, and for the moment he could not
believe it true that, due to his silence and position, he was unseen,
and the man had passed away into the darkness, and his heavy panting
breath had died away. In the reaction came the thought of what he ought
to do, and with it the wonder that it had not occurred to him before.

Pausing a few brief moments to make sure that he was quite alone,
Godfrey rose from his crouching position, and, with the rope gliding
through his hand, he stepped outward on to the lawn at right-angles to
the front of the house, to feel the next minute the sharp needles of the
big fir-tree brushing his face and making a crickling, crackling noise
as the rope, which passed through his hands, rustled among the boughs.

The next minute he had forced his way in close up to the trunk, and,
running the rope through his hands, till he got hold of the free end, he
fastened it round his waist and then began to climb.

It would have been easy enough getting from bough to bough, which stood
straight out, and was facile for one who mounted as if he were going up
a ladder; but there was the rope