, at any rate, until the lights of the house are all out."

We went upstairs together and found my Cousin Tom already busy: he had
my clothes all in a great heap, ready to carry down to the hiding-hole
above the door; my papers he already had put away into the little recess
behind the bed, and the books, most of which had not my name in them, he
designed to carry to his own chamber.

We worked hard at all this--my Cousin Tom in a kind of fever, rolling
his eyes at every sound; and, at the last, we had all put away, and were
about to close the door of the hiding-hole. Then my Cousin Dorothy held
up her hand.

"Hush!" she said; and then, "There was a step on the paved walk."

CHAPTER IX

When my Cousin Dorothy said that, we all became upon the instant as
still as mice; and I saw my Cousin Tom's mouth suddenly hang open and
his eyes to become fixed. For myself, I cannot say precisely what I
felt; but it would be foolish to say that I was not at all frightened.
For to be crept upon in the dark, when all is quiet, in a solitary
country place; and to know, as I did, that behind all the silence there
is the roar of a mob--(as it is called)--for blood, and the Lord Chief
Justice's face of iron and his bitter murderous tongue, and the scaffold
and the knife--this is daunting to any man. I made no mistake upon the
matter. If this were Dangerfield himself, my life was ended; he would
not have come here, so far, and with such caution; he would not have
been at the pains to smell me out at all, unless he were sure of his
end; and, indeed, my companying so much with the Jesuits and my
encounter with Oates, and my seeking service with the King, and for no
pay too--all this, in such days, was evidence enough to hang an angel
from heaven.

This passed through my mind like a picture; and then I remembered that
it was no more than a step on a paved path.

"If it is they," I whispered, "they will be round the house by now. We
had best look from a dark window."

But my Cousin Tom seized me suddenly by the arm in so fierce a grip that
I winced and all but cried out; and so we stood.

"If you have brought ruin on me--" he began presently in a horrid kind
of whisper; and then he gripped me again; for again, so that no man
could mistake it, came a single step on the paved path; and in my mind I
saw how two men had crossed from lawn to lawn, to get all round the
house, each stepping once upon the stones. They must have entered