He crossed the path and came close to the glass, listening. For there were certain sounds to be made out, as of the pushing about of heavy furniture, with an occasional succession of short, sharp raps, as of some person knocking for admittance at a closed door.
Bayre took out his pocket-knife and tried to slip the catch of the window nearest to him. After a few attempts, during which the sounds within became louder, he succeeded; but the slight noise he made over this coincided with a sudden cessation of the sounds within.
There was a rapid step across the floor, and he heard someone breathing heavily on the other side of the still closed shutters. Then the footsteps retreated quickly, and Bayre stood listening, shaking the shutters gently, preparatory to making an attempt to burst them open.
That he was on the track of the mystery at last he felt certain. These strange nocturnal sounds, this haunting of the house by a being who was declared by Olwen to be a woman, would be satisfactorily explained if only he could effect an entrance now while the disturbance was in full swing.
So thought Bayre, and after only a few seconds’ pause he stepped back, with the intention of dealing such a blow upon the shutters as would probably force them open.
But before he could do this he heard a click and the fall of the iron bar with a clanking sound against the wood, and the next moment the shutters flew back and his uncle, with a small lantern in his right hand, stood face to face with him.
Bayre was startled, and an exclamation broke from his lips; for he had never seen on any human face such an expression of rage and defiance, proud, menacing, savage, as now distorted the rugged features, the light eyes, wrinkled cheeks, and long hatchet chin of old Bartlett Bayre.
His voice was hoarse and broken with passion as he cried,—
“I thought so. I thought so. You rascal, you thief! It is you who play the spy upon me, who haunt my house and listen at my doors, you, you, you.”
And as he spoke the old man shuffled out upon the path, lantern in hand, and shook his clenched fist in the young man’s face, panting and husky with rage.