"Poachers, no doubt." his father answered. "Macklin has been warning me of this for some time. Take your mother back to her room. There is no cause for alarm, Lucetta—if the affair were serious, we should have heard more guns before this. You had best return to bed at once. When I learn what has happened I will bring you word."
He strode away down the lower corridor, calling as he went to Narracott, the butler, to fetch a lantern and unbolt the hall-door, and entered the gunroom with Father Halloran at his heels.
"I cannot ask you to take a hand in this," he said, finding his favourite gun and noiselessly disengaging it from the rack, pitch dark though the room was.
"I may carry a spare weapon for you, I hope?"
"Ah, you will go with me? Thank you: I shall be glad of someone to carry the lantern. We may have to do some scrambling: Narracott is infirm, and Roger,"—this was the footman—"is a chicken-hearted fellow, I suspect."
The two men armed themselves and went back to the hall, where Father Halloran in silence took the lantern from the butler. Then they stepped out into the night.
Masses of cloud obscured the stars, and the two walked forward into a wall of darkness which the rays of the priest's lantern pierced for a few yards ahead. Here in the valley the night air lay stagnant: scarcely a leaf rustled: their ears caught no sound but that of the brook alongside of which they mounted the coombe.
"Better set down the lantern and stand wide of it," said the Squire, as they reached the foot of the White Rock gully. "If they are armed, and mean business, we are only offering them a shot." He paused at the sound of a quick, light footstep behind him, not many paces away, and wheeled about. "Who's there?" he challenged in a low, firm voice.
"It's I, father." Walter, also with a gun under his arm, came forward and halted in the outer ring of light.
"H'm," the Squire muttered testily. "Better you were in bed, I should say. This may be a whole night's business, and you have a long journey before you tomorrow."