“Saint Hilda was always good to wanderers,” she thought. And the next moment her heart sprang up with a great leap of joy, for her hand, feeling every excrescence along the wall, had at last touched the long swinging handle of a rusty bell.
Freda pulled it, and there was a hoarse clang. She heard a man’s footsteps upon a flagged court-yard, and a rough masculine voice asked:
“Who’s that at this time of night?”
“It is Captain Mulgrave’s daughter. And oh! take me in; I am tired, tired.”
The gate was unbolted and one side was opened, enabling the girl to pass in. The man closed the gate, and lifted a lantern he carried so as to throw the light on Freda’s face.
“So you’re the Captain’s daughter, you say?”
“Yes.”
Freda looked at him, with tender eyes full of anxiety and inquiry. He was a tall and rather thickset man with very short greyish hair and a little unshaved stubble on his chin. Her face fell.
“I thought——” she faltered.
“Thought what, miss?”