"What were you saying, Grimes?" asked Mr. Sykes. "That Sir Richard had not paid your pension? That is strange. The agent has plenty of money in his hands, for he has got all the rents of Langley, and Sir Richard has not drawn a farthing."
"Ay, but he says he has no orders," said Grimes, with a hasty and uneasy manner. "But what I am saying now is, that man will break his neck if he goes up there: I tell you he will. I put my hip out once doing just the same thing."
"Ha!" exclaimed Sykes: "I thought that was at the fire, Grimes. But what you say is very true. He will break his neck. Call him down, sir,—call him down: he is your servant."
The last words were addressed to Edward, who instantly called to Pierrot to come down,—which the good man unwillingly did; for he had imbibed just a sufficient quantity of liquor to make him full of sport without shaking his nerves.
Now, it is to be hoped that the reader read and pondered well the description given of that old tower in the seventh chapter of this eventful history; but, as there are some readers, and a great number of them, who will skip certain passages which they in their superciliousness think of little importance, I may as well recall the words of Edward Langdale while he was narrating the scenes of his early life to Clement Tournon and Lucette. "The whole of the house was burned," he said, on that occasion; "and the greater part of the walls fell in, with the exception of those of the ivy-tower, which were very ancient, and much thicker than the rest. Even there the woodwork was all consumed, and the staircase fell, except where a few of the stone steps, about half-way up, clung to the masonry."
Since Edward had seen the place or marked it with any particular attention, some changes had come over that tower, though they were not very apparent. We shall be compelled to notice them more in a moment or two. Suffice it for the present to say that those stone steps which Edward had mentioned were still sticking out about half-way up the tower, and that, somehow or another, Pierrot had contrived nearly to reach them.
However, Mr. Sykes took no notice of the careful forethought of an old sexton for a foreign servant's life, though he thought his benevolence strange, but went on round the old building, the piles of rubbish, and the blackberry-bushes which encumbered them, speaking a word or two every now and then to Dr. Winthorne, and keeping Mr. Grimes in pretty constant conversation. There is a game which young people play at, called, I think, "Hide-and-Seek;" and Mr. Sykes was determined to have a game with the old sexton. The seeker, when he approaches the object of his search, is told that he is hot; when he goes far from it, that he is cold. Now, in the neighborhood of most parts of the old building Grimes's face said, as plainly as possible, "Cold; cold as ice;" but when Mr. Sykes brought him near to the old ivy-tower again there was a tremulous motion of the hanging under lip, an anxious twinkle of the eye, and a fidgety motion of the hands, which said, as plainly as possible, "Warm; warm; very hot." This was the more apparent when the party came in face of that part of the tower where about a third of the wall, rent from top to bottom by the great heat, had fallen and strewn the ground with ruins. Mr. Sykes did not look up at the tower at all. His eyes were fixed upon the face of Mr. Grimes, and he was reading it as a book. Dr. Winthorne was reading it too. Edward Langdale and the Prince de Soubise were talking together in French; but their eyes were about them all the time.
Suddenly Edward exclaimed, in English, "Why, Pierrot could have gone up very easily. There is a stone taken out of the wall every two or three feet, and between them somebody has made steps by jamming in large blocks of wood with smaller stones. Besides, the tough old stems of ivy would take any one up who has hands to hold by. Pierrot! Pierrot!"
"No, no!" cried Dr. Winthorne: "send for a ladder from the church. My man shall go."