Roland went to bed that night without troubling himself much about his brother. He had been deeply wronged, and he was a man who, not easily offended, was, when once alienated, implacable. He did not find it easy to forgive. Though he had shaken hands with his brother he had not forgiven him, and he came down to breakfast the next morning quite prepared to keep up his rôle of injured innocence, and to prevent his brother from experiencing much satisfaction in the reconciliation. Richard had always been an early riser, and Roland quite expected to find him in the dining-room waiting, but he was not there. He waited some little time, and then desired Mrs Brock to see if Mr Ferrier was in his room, and it was not till she returned with the intelligence that he was not and that his bed had not been slept in, that Roland began to wonder in anxious earnest where his brother could be.
A very short search showed that he was not in the house or grounds. Could he have gone to the churchyard? No, thought Roland; Dick wasn't that sort of fellow. Perhaps he had gone over to Gates, and had stayed all night. In a very short time Roland was at The Hollies questioning eagerly, and, with an inexplicable feeling of dread and anxiety growing stronger upon him with each moment, he learned that Dick had not been there. He would go down to the village, and Mr Gates volunteered to come with him, though he laughed cheerfully at the idea of there being anything to worry about in Dick's non-appearance. 'He's playing off some trick on you,' he said. 'However, come along, and we'll soon find him.' So they walked together towards the village.
'Hullo,' said Mr Gates, as they passed the mill, 'that door's no business open! Perhaps Dick's up to some games in there.'
The door he pointed at was one opening from the mill on to a flight of stone steps that ran sideways outside the building from the second storey to the ground.
'Whether he's there or not,' the lawyer went on, 'some one has been there, and we'd better see who it is.'
So they went down, and, crossing the courtyard, between whose stones the grass was springing already, ran up the steps and passed through the open door.
The whole place was flooded with the brilliant morning sunlight.
The two made a few steps forward. They saw the hole in the floor, and paused. Then Roland's heart seemed to stand still, for he saw on the board at the edge of the gap a hat, and his brother's silver-headed walking stick, and he knew what had happened. With an exceeding bitter cry he turned from Gates and sprang down an inner staircase, glancing at each floor as he passed it, and on the stones at the bottom he found what he sought—Dick. Or was it Dick? Could this mangled, twisted, bloody mass be his brother? The pitiless light came through the cobwebbed windows, and showed plainly enough that it was Dick, or Dick's body.
'Run for Bailey,' he shouted to Gates, who had followed him; and he went.
Then Roland lifted Richard's head. Was he alive? Yes. At the movement a spasm of agony contracted his face, and his eyes opened. A look of relief came into them when he saw his brother.