n the dark. Now my
heart would so beat that it sickened me, of sheer terror that I should
be found; and this especially when a man would stay for a while talking
on the stairs within an arm's length of where I lay: now it was as I
might say, more of the intellect; and I pondered on what I heard my
Cousin Tom say, and marvelled at his shrewdness; for fear, if it does
not drive away wits, sharpens them wonderfully. He had, of course, put
me in greater peril, by saying that I was gone to Rome; but he had saved
himself very adroitly, for no witness in the house could tell that I had
not done so; for here was my chamber empty, and I and my man and my
clothes and my books and my horses all vanished away. At one time, then,
I was all eyes and ears in the muffled dark, hearing my heart thump as
it had been another's; at another time I would be looking within and
contemplating my own fear.

Again and again, however, I thought of my Cousin Dorothy and wondered
where she was and what she was at. I had not heard her voice all that
time; and, on a sudden, after the men had been in the house near an hour
I should say, I heard her sob suddenly, close to me, in a terrified kind
of voice.

"Keep them, Nancy, keep them here as long as you can. It will give
him--"

"Eh?" said a man's voice suddenly beneath. "What was that?"

"I said nothing," stammered my Cousin Dolly's voice.

Well; there was a to-do. The fellow beneath called out to Mr. Harris,
who was upstairs; and I heard him come down. My Cousin Dolly was sobbing
and crying out, and so was the maid Nancy to whom she had spoken. At
first I could make nothing of it, nor why she had said what she had; and
then, as I heard them all go into the parlour together, I understood
that if my Cousin Tom had been shrewd, his daughter had been shrewder;
and had said what she had, knowing that a man was within earshot.

But there was nothing for me to do but to lie there still; for I could
hear nothing from the parlour but a confused sound of voices, now three
or four speaking at once, now a man's voice (which I took to be the
magistrate's), and now, I thought my Cousin Dolly's. I heard, too, above
me, my Cousin Tom speaking very angrily, and understood that he was kept
from his daughter--which was the best thing in the world for me, since
he might very well have spoiled the whole design. At last I heard Dolly
cry out very loud; then I heard the parlour-door open and three or four
men came t