Joan, the Curate

by Florence Warden

It was dark outside, with the rain-clouds and the falling drizzle; it was pitch dark within, so that he could not even tell whether the window opened from a room or a passage. He listened; but at first there was nothing to be heard but the wind among the tree-tops on the hill above, and the sound of the tread of footsteps in the soft straw of the farmyard.

Presently there was a stifled laugh, a murmur of rough voices, and then the tramp of horses’ hoofs coming nearer and nearer along the road. Then there was a low whistle, which was answered by a voice close to where he stood under the window.

The men from the barn had gone out to meet their comrades returning from the raid.

On an instant the place seemed to be alive with unseen creatures, whispering, laughing, singing softly. Sheltered from observation from below, for the present at least, Tregenna crouched down in the thatch, and wondered how long he would be safe from his late assailant. The next moment he saw a head appear above the eaves of one of the outhouses.

There was only one thing to be done, and he did it. Springing erect, he clutched at the sill of the open window, drew himself up to it, got inside, and closed it fast. Just as he secured the latch he saw, dimly indeed, but unmistakably, the figure of a rough-looking countryman on the roof outside. The closed window, however, baffled the fellow, for he went on crawling about over the thatch without any suspicion of the way by which his prey had escaped him.

Tregenna fancied, as he watched from behind the security of the latticed window, that he recognized in the fellow a rough-looking lad whom he had seen at work in the Parsonage garden.

The question now was, having got safely into the house, to get safely out again.

He groped about him, found the opposite wall at a distance of some five or six feet, and soon discovered that he was in a corridor, running along the back wall of the house. Following it, he came to a corner, where the corridor, now cutting through the house to the front, with rooms on each side, led to a wide staircase with a handsome carved oak railing.

Here, however, he came to a standstill, not daring to go down. For the hall below led straight into the farmhouse kitchen, and there was no door.

Tregenna caught sight of a couple of men who were busy rolling spirit-kegs into a corner of the great room; and he was prone on the floor on the instant, watching and listening. But though he heard plenty of noise, the entrance of the smugglers fresh from the raid, the greetings of their comrades from the Gray Barn, the rolling of barrels across the rough tiled floor, he saw no more. The outer door was out of his sight, and so was the fireplace; and it was between door and fireplace that the movement of the company lay.