diers come?"

"No," cried Waller hotly, "but I have. There, it's no use to try and
keep up that sham. What have you been doing? You may just as well
confess. There, you have got your boots on, too. You have not been
doing that for nothing."

"What do you mean?"

"That you are trying to hide something, and you only got into bed to
hide it when you heard me coming. What have you been doing?"

"What have I been doing?"

"Yes. I know."

Godfrey was silent.

"I did trust you. Thought you wouldn't attempt to do anything without
confiding in me. You have been trying to do, something with the rope."

"Well," said Godfrey sourly, "suppose I have! What then? And how did
you know?"

"How did I know? Why, I was just taking a walk round outside, and I
thought I'd have a look up at your window, and I don't know how it was,
but I seemed to have a fancy that you had been striking a light, and had
got a candle burning; and that meant for one of the servants to see,
perhaps Joe Hanson, when they all knew that I was downstairs. You
didn't do such a mad thing, did you?"

"No, of course not," said Godfrey sulkily.

"Then what did you do?"

"What do you mean?"

"What do I mean? What made you throw a rope out of the window so that
the end of it hit me right across the head? What rope was it? How came
you by it? Oh!" The boy dashed to the great press, pulled out one of
the lower drawers, and thrust in his hand. "I thought so! You have
been getting out that coil to fasten it to the window, and let it slip."

Godfrey was silent.

"Do you know the end of that hit me right across the head when you
dropped it?"

Still no answer.

"How I could have been so stupid as to let you see, I don't know. Why,
you meant to go off on the sly by yourself. Were you going to run right
away?"

"No," replied Godfrey. "There, I'll tell you. I couldn't bear it any
longer. It was so dreadful being shut up, and I only wanted to go and
have a walk in the woods. I meant to come up again."

"And you let the rope slip, and lost it. Lucky for you. Do you know
what it meant? You being strange to this place, and not knowing which
way to go, either losing yourself in the dark, or else blundering into
the village, where you would have been seen by some one. Why, the
chances are that you would have blundered up against Joe Hanson, who
generally goes round of a night seeing that the fowls are all right and
no fox about afte