For some moments he leaned over, staring, his heart going like an excited bird’s. In that dim and melancholy twilight he could not make out much, but quite unmistakably the outline of rough stone steps descending. Still he did not quite understand. It was obvious now that the notch was for the use of anyone hidden below and desirous of emerging; yet the position of that sunken part of the wheel would preclude the possibility of the panel being pushed outward. How was it managed? There was nothing for it but to go down and see. Only he must have a light. He shivered with impatience: he could hardly command it to hurry away, and make for the house, and, as privately as he could, procure tinder and taper. But he did it, and got back unobserved.
The aperture left by the dislodged board was not great, yet it was more than sufficient for an ordinary person to pass. Brion descending through it, in a state far too wrought up for perturbation, easily gained the upper step; and there he crouched, to look for the first solution of the puzzle. It was simple enough, after all. There was a slot cut in the side of the pit into which the panel could be run, and, when there, it anchored the wheel in place. The boy, elate with his discovery, came out and put the device to an immediate test. He turned the wheel, slipped in the panel, brought it over the hole, and, manipulating it from the upper side, found the slot and slid the board in. The whole thing, it seemed to him, had the virtues of extraordinary simplicity combined with absolute secrecy. Who would dream that the wheel, an engine of everyday use, covered the entrance to a subterranean hiding-place? He would never have discovered it himself but for that accident of his jerkin hooking itself on a tough splinter.
But now there faced him the deeper essay. He did not hesitate over it a moment, but, entering and descending with his light, found himself, at some three yards down, in a little stone-lined chamber excavated out of the soil. It might have measured a cubic nine feet or so, and was quite empty. Its walls were dank, there was a smell of the unopened vault about it, and that was all. There appeared to be no egress from it in any direction but up the steps. Probably it had been devised for a hiding-place in the days so far back as the Wars of the Roses, when it was convenient for all militant gentry to possess a handy burrow.
Satisfied that he had seen all that was to be seen, Brion ascended again to the light, pushed the panel into place, revolved the wheel a little so as to shuffle, as it were, the cards, and retired, rich in the possession of the second of two secrets with which that Spring had endowed him. True, there seemed small object in reserving this latest to himself; yet one never knew.
CHAPTER XV.
THE RETURN OF THE WANDERERS
It was late in July when Brion, returning one noon from a visit to the Glen—where, against his better sentiments, he had found an irresistible attraction in watching the trout and grayling blowing rings in the water—was conscious, as he approached the Moated Grange, of something in its atmosphere which had not been there when he left it. A livelier smoke seemed to rise from the kitchen chimney: there were signs of hoofmarks in the dust about the bridge. With a beating heart he pushed open the wicket; there was a shout, and the next moment he was in Clerivault’s arms.
‘Marry come up!’ cried that dear paragon. ‘Is not here a gallant guerdon for my toils! Nay, hold away, while my hungry eyes make a feast of thee!’
His lids blinked; he looked gaunter, more fantastic than ever; for all his cherished grudge against him it warmed Brion’s heart to hear again the high husky voice with its intermittent squeak. He had nothing to give his friend for the moment but smiles and welcome.
‘Have you really come back, Clerivault,’ he said—‘and for good?’
‘For good, sweetheart? Ay, for no harm, at least.’