“The tea isn’t ready yet,” she whispered. “I’ll make it, and you can come back for that.”
He nodded and went off, not without trying to utter some husky thanks, which the girl would not hear. He had one of her candles and a box of matches in his pocket. Left alone in the great bare room, poor Freda felt all the womanish fears which the need of active exertion had kept off for so long. Terror on her father’s account, grief for poor starving Dick; above all, an awestruck fear that God would not forgive such black crimes as some of those laid to their account, caused the bitter tears to roll down her cheeks, while her lips moved in simple-hearted prayer for them.
Presently the old dog, whom she had been feeding, pricked up his ears and growled ominously. She sprang to her feet, but at first heard nothing. Crossing the floor quickly and lightly, she opened the door and listened. Somebody at the front of the house was knocking. The summons, however, was neither loud nor imperative, and she crept through the passages, fancying that it might perhaps be only Barnabas Ugthorpe who had come back for her. Creeping into the deserted kitchen, she peeped through the dusty panes of the window, which was heavily barred. She could just see the outline of a large hooded cart, and a couple of men standing beside it. At once she knew it was the cart which had followed Barnabas Ugthorpe’s.
Retreating from the window as noiselessly as she had come while the intermittent knocking at the front door went on a little louder than before, she returned through the passage and slipped into the court-yard. She knew where to look for the grating of which Dick had spoken, having noticed it in the course of her investigations on the occasion of her previous visit. It consisted of two iron bars placed perpendicularly across a small opening in the wall of the very oldest part of the building—the portion known as “the dungeons.” Freda crept to the grating and stooped down. Yes, there was a light inside. She took up a handful of earth and stones, as she had been told to do, and threw them in with a trembling hand.
Instantly the light was extinguished.
Freda stole away from the grating, afraid that if the front door were burst open and the police were to find her there, her presence might afford a clue to her father’s hiding-place. If she got on to the top of the old outer wall, she thought, she might watch the course of events without herself being seen. She had hardly reached this post of vantage when she heard a crash and a noise as of splintering wood, and a few moments later she saw the black figures of half a dozen men dispersed about the court-yard below. She was crouching down in the narrow path that ran along the ruinous old wall, and peeping over the fringe of dried grass and brambles which grew along the edge. Suddenly she felt a hand placed roughly over her mouth and eyes, so that she could neither see nor cry out. After the first moment, she did not attempt to do either, but remained quite still, not knowing in whose grasp she was. She heard the man breathing hard, felt that his hands trembled, and knew that he was in a paroxysm of physical terror. Was it her father himself? That thought would have kept her quiet, even if his rough clasp had been rougher still. As it was, the pressure of his hand caused her teeth to cut through her under-lip.
Crouching still in the same cramped attitude, and still gagged and blindfolded by the mysterious hand, she presently heard a stealthy footfall close behind, and then a whispered word or two.
“Let her go,” hissed Dick’s voice peremptorily.
The next moment Freda felt herself free, heard a soft thud on the earth below, and saw the figure of a man crouching close under the wall on the outer side.
“Oh, Dick, will he get safe away?” she whispered, breathing the word close to his ear.