"It's the cat," gasped Harriet. "He's going mad—we can't wait." Her words seemed to force their way between heartbeats.
Lionel guided her down the scarcely visible steps, and together they started up the drive. Martin Luther trotted between, rubbing against one and the other in turn. His plaintive mew had given place to an excited, cooing tremolo. Suddenly from somewhere at the right came again the sharp, wailing cries they had heard at first.
They stood stock still, and as they harkened the same strange impulse came to them both. Without a word they turned sharply from the gravel, and, mounting the soft turf of the bank, scrambled through the laurel bushes and ran in the direction of the sound.
It was a forlorn hope, but they followed it, followed it desperately. Now the mewing sounded near, now faint and far off. At one time they lost it altogether, then, all at once, it seemed to come from somewhere below their feet.
"I say! Look out!" cried Lionel, catching Harriet's arm. "You nearly went over!"
They were standing close to the edge of a dark declivity, in reality not very steep, yet of sufficient depth to be dangerous to any one coming upon it unawares. This last remnant of the ancient moat, for such it was, lay only a few yards from the oldest wing of the house, yet so artfully was it screened on two sides by dense shrubbery and on the third by a crumbling, ivy-covered wall, once part of the old tower, that its presence was known to only two people at Ipping House—the curate and little An Petronia.
Harriet, straining her ears, became suddenly conscious that Martin Luther had stopped mewing! And, as she listened fearfully there came a faint, pulsating sound, vibrant, velvety, the most comfortable of nature's voices, whose very name is the synonym for curled contentment; Martin Luther was purring!
Whereupon there crept into Harriet's heart the dawn of hope she had thought gone forever. And presently there came, seemingly from the very center of the earth, a familiar voice, faint but lifelike:
"Poor pussy! Poor old puss! Good Martin Luther!"
"Horatio!" she screamed at the top of her voice.