With that he sent a clear cry of “Cave!” ringing down the stream.
In ten seconds Sir James was back on his own land.
The Twins crawled through the bracken to a narrow path, went swiftly and noiselessly down it, and through a little gate on to the high road.
As he set foot on it the Terror said with cold vindictiveness: “We’ll teach him not to answer our letters.”
He climbed over a gate into a meadow on the other side of the road, took their bicycles one after the other from behind the hedge, and lifted them over the gate. They reached home in time for dinner.
During the meal Mrs. Dangerfield asked how they had been spending the time since tea; and the Terror said, quite truthfully, that they had been for a bicycle ride. She did not press him to be more particular in his account of their doings, though from Erebus’ air of subdued excitement and expectancy she was aware that some important enterprise was in hand; she had no desire to put any strain on the Terror’s uncommon power of polite evasion.
She was not at all surprised when, at nine o’clock, she went out into the garden and called to them that it was bedtime, to find that they were not within hearing. She told herself that she would be lucky if she got them to bed by ten. But she would have been surprised, indeed, had she seen them, half an hour earlier, slip out of the back door, in a condition of exemplary tidiness, dressed in their Sunday best.
They wheeled their bicycles out of the cats’ home quietly, mounted, rode quickly down the road till they were out of hearing of the house, and then slackened their pace in order to reach their destination cool and tidy. They timed their arrival with such nicety that as they dismounted before the door of Deeping Hall, Sir James Morgan, in the content inspired by an excellent dinner, was settling himself comfortably in an easy chair in his smoking-room.
They mounted the steps of the Court without a tremor: they were not only assured of the justice of their cause, they were assured that it would prevail. A landed proprietor who preserves his pheasants and his fish with the usual strictness, can not allow himself to be prosecuted for poaching.
The Terror rang the bell firmly; and Mawley, the butler, surprised at the coming of visitors at so late an hour, opened the door himself.