CHAPTER XXIII.
Deborah had scarcely got outside the door when she perceived that something more than moral force would be wanted to keep Sep Jocelyn up to the simple task she wished him to perform. The mere thought of intruding unbidden upon Amos Goodhare caused him so much trepidation that she was able to measure the awful extent of the influence the old man had established over the younger ones. When, therefore, Sep had stopped and hesitated half-a-dozen times, she put her hand through his arm and gently urged him forward.
“You had better go back; let me take you back,” he whispered, afraid of the strength of her compelling will.
“Not until you have shown me Goodhare’s hiding-place, and I have assured myself that Lord St. Austell is safe,” she answered firmly.
Sep took a few steps forward with a groan, and stopped short in some relief a couple of feet from the wall at the turn in the passage.
“You’ll have to come back now,” he whispered; “and I’ll try to find out another way round. You can’t get over this wall.”
“Can’t I?” said the country girl contemptuously. “You go first and just give me a hand on the other side.”
He obeyed very reluctantly, and he scarcely got over the wall himself when the athletic young girl was by his side. After that, with a sort of dismal acquiescence in the fact that she must have her own way, he led her without further pause to the door of the house which they had made their hiding-place.
Here at last for a moment the girl’s brave spirit seemed to fail her. For Sep removed the lower boards of the door noiselessly, and she saw that the house was as black as night inside, and felt the hot fumes of stifling smoke which, coming up through the hole made in the floor of what had once been the back-shop, spread slowly through the whole house, and escaped, through what cracks and crevices it could find, into the open air.
Sep snatched at the opportunity of persuading her to go back.