At last he came in sight of the ruined tower, the patched-up walls of which bulged out dangerously, threatening constantly to fall, a mass of ill-assorted fragments of brick and stone, wood and tiles, into the disused graveyard beneath.
“Steady, my beauties, steady!” said he to the yelping hounds. “Your work is going to begin, my dears! Steady now, steady!”
And he made his way, with the hounds still straining at the leash, to the spot he had picked out that afternoon.
“There are some old bones for you in there, or I’m much mistaken, that will be worth a king’s ransom to me, and a good home for the rest of your days to you, my beauties.”
The hounds growled and sniffed, and leaped up about him, as if madly eager to begin their grim hunt. Close up to the wall of the old graveyard he came, and peered over at the irregular mounds, overgrown with rank grass and weeds. There was little daylight left, but his keen eyes could still see dimly into each dark corner, filled with old stones and decaying vegetation. His hands were trembling, stolid as he was, with his eagerness to let the hounds go. His eyes were hungrily roaming over the neglected enclosure where he believed the clue to his secret to lie, when suddenly a sound came to his ears which paralyzed his arms and seemed to stop his fast-drawn breath. It was the voice of a little child.
Looking again more intently than before into the chaos of broken and misplaced tombstones, he saw, peering out from behind a tuft of shaggy briar and weed, the face of a little child. It was tiny Kate Brander. Ned looked at the fierce brutes and shivered. Another moment and they would have been loose in the graveyard, ravenous and blood hungry. Then the expression of his face changed.
“Yes, he has got the best of this move; curse him! But the game’s not played out yet.”
And, with a lowering face, and slow, heavy gait, he turned, with his yelping brood, towards the road home.
CHAPTER XX.
The stolid calmness of Ned Mitchell’s every-day demeanor, which was but a mask for strong passions and still stronger resolutions, broke down entirely under his disappointment. If the mouldy old graveyard of St. Cuthbert’s had been a paradise of sweet sights and sounds and scents, he could not have been more maddened by the impossibility of entering it. Even the innocent child herself, whose presence among the ruined graves had prevented him from letting his hounds loose, shared his anger.