He stopped. He stopped exactly in the middle of the road, and a trembling quivered down one knee, and he was looking across the meadows to his left.
Ahead of him towards the left, clear against the moonlit sky, rose Chatterham prison. The light was so pale-sharp that he could even distinguish the trees of the Hag's Nook. A yellow gleam was moving among those trees.
For a long time Budge stood motionless in the middle of the white road. He had some vague idea that if there were dangers ahead, and you stood absolutely still, they could not hurt you-as, they said, a fierce dog would not attack a motionless man. Then, very meticulously, he moved his bowler hat and wiped his forehead with a clean pocket handkerchief. One queer- little idea was twisting through his brain, almost pathetic in its intensity. Over there, where the goblin-light fluttered, was a test for the adventurer Budge. He had come home in the high night with the swagger within him. So, later on, the butler Budge must look at his white bed with a small shame, and realize that he was only the butler Budge, after all….
Whereupon Mr. Budge did what, for his butler-self majestically moving in the Hall, would have seemed an insane thing. He climbed the stile, bending low, and began to move up across the slope of the meadow towards the Hag's Nook. And it is to be recorded that his heart suddenly sang.
It was still squashy from the recent rain. He had to climb the slope in full moonlight, and too late he remembered that he could have approached the Hag's Nook by a more circuitous route. Still, it was done now. He found himself puffing, with little saw-like cuts being drawn up and down in his throat; and he was hot and damp. Then, with an obedience which an eighteenth-century Budge would have accepted without thanks and even without comment, the moon slid behind a cloud.
He found himself on the edge of the Hag's Nook. There was a beech tree ahead, against which he leaned with a feeling as though his bowler were tightening against his brain, and a throat sore from running. He panted now.
This was mad.
Never mind the adventurer Budge. This was mad.
Ahead, the gleam showed again. He could see it near the well, some twenty or thirty feet ahead, through the twisted boles of trees. It flashed as though for a signal. Evidently in reply, another gleam winked out high above and away. Budge, craning his neck upwards, could have no doubt: it was from the balcony of the Governor's Room. Somebody had set down a light there. He saw the shadow of a very stout man bending over the railing, and this shadow seemed to be doing something to the rail.
A rope shot downwards, curling and darting with such suddenness that Budge jumped back. Hitting the side of the well with a dull plop, it straggled and then slid over the edge. Fascinated, Budge poked his head forward again. Now the light beside the well had turned into a steady beam; it seemed to be held by a small figure-almost, he thought, like a woman. A face moved into the beam; a face craning upwards, and a hand was waved towards the balcony far above.