There was always a fearful joy in this sport for the little boy. The vast glooms; the imagined crouching shapes; the starts and shrieks of discovery over some object which would reveal itself when approached—no dim, half-shrouded face, but just a ghostly bowl or ornament; the crawling silences and puckered shadows—the appalling venture of it all was just endurable if one kept the prize in view. And then this elder brother did such things. Once, actually, standing on a mantelpiece, he had become the figure of a pale-faced Moroni Cavalier, whose picture hung convenient; and Elizabeth and little Hal had passed and repassed hand in hand without ever discovering the imposition. And to-night again, it seemed, was to record one of his inspirations.
Long before the two hours were passed in fruitless search Harry was so tired that he could scarce drag one foot after the other. But he was still trailing his weary toes undaunted when the Earl came home. Prepared to attend the Princes to bed, Elizabeth, by then worn out, had transferred her place in the hunt to a couple of menservants, who, amused and unsuspecting, accompanied the little boy.
Northumberland, being informed that the Duke was hiding, tarried impatiently awhile, until, seeing his growing irritation, one of the servants whispered to his charge. The child, brightening and clapping his hands, shrieked out, “O, Jamie! In the gardener’s house!” The Earl turned on the speaker.
“What is that?”
“His Highness,” answered the man, “ran into the servants’ hall, demanding of Job his key to hide withal. He’s been there, my lord, these two hours.”
“There? Where?”
“In Job’s lodge in the garden, my lord.”
The Earl, hastily calling his attendants, hurried, the little boy trotting beside him, to the house—only to find it empty and the bird flown. Undetected in his disguise, the young Duke, after slipping from the window of the lodge into the darkness without, had made his way down to the river, where, at a certain spot, by preconcerted arrangement, a boat awaited to convey him to a Dutch vessel. And the demure deviser of all this pretty scheme had been from first to last the little good Princess.
She looked up when the Earl came to acquaint her of the result of their evening’s play. Her eyes filled; her lips quivered; but she was too long inured to shocks to express surprise.
“He hath fled, then,” she said. “I can only pray, sir, for his preservation. Yet be sure you have left no corner unexplored.”