“Thou wert here first, then, Cuthbert my son, and hast met with no accident by the way.”
“How long hast thou been in the ruins, father?”
“But just arrived from the inn where I have left my horse,—why?”
“Because I heard a footfall.”
“Nay, it was fancy; we will soon do our errand and depart. Has thy journey been, like mine, uneventful?”
“He pressed the centre of the bud sharply with his thumb.”
“Not uneventful, father; Nicholas Grabber, the red-haired page at the inn, is no more. He had played the spy over night, learnt all our arrangements, and even the fatal secret of the chamber: had he lived we had been lost.”