"I'll tell you what, captain," said the man who was standing behind, and whom they called amongst themselves Little Harvey, "I wish Wiley was out from amongst us; he will get us all into mischief some day. He does not do things in a gentlemanlike way. I guess what he has gone after, but he has not succeeded, I see." And as he spoke, he gave a significant glance towards Langford, as if he were in some degree connected with the matter in question.
"Indeed!" said Gray; "I suspect your meaning, Harvey; but let us hear more plainly what you think. Though I direct and guide, and am always willing to take the greatest dangers on myself, still we are comrades, and should treat each other as such. What is it you think, Harvey?"
"I won't say what I think," replied the man; "but I'll say what I saw. When you sent the boy Jocelyn down to the Manor, Wiley cross-questioned him both before he went and when he came back; and when he heard him give you a message about a gentleman meeting you on the moor, he whispered a good dead to Hardcastle, who came up and asked me if I would go along with them upon an enterprise which must be quite secret, and which must be done without your knowing it. I refused; and told him, I thought that after the business down in the lane, he had better not let Wiley lead him; but to that he answered, that this was a matter which could not fail as the other had done, and that it would be over in five minutes. I said I would not go, however, and they went without me."
"Hark, they are coming!" said Gray, as the sound of horses' feet was heard stopping opposite the house. "Let them in the back way, Jocelyn, and bring in supper. Here! Come with me, Master Harry." And he led the way back into the hall by which they had at first entered, and in which there still remained the lamp that the boy Jocelyn had carried when he gave them admittance. Gray carefully shut the doors behind him; and when he stood alone in the passage with Langford, he unbuttoned his vest, and took from an inner pocket a key of a very peculiar and extraordinary form.
"There is the key, Master Harry," he said, speaking quickly, and with, strong passions of some kind evidently struggling in his breast. "Your own fate is now in your power! Manage it as you will!"
"But tell me how this has been obtained," said Langford.
"I have no time for long stories," replied his companion sharply. "There it is! that is sufficient. But I will tell you so far, I--I alone--though directed by one who knew the house well, walked through it this night, from one end to the other; and within six yards of the old man himself, with nothing but a door between us, took this key from the hiding place where he thought it so safe, and brought it away undiscovered. Now, Harry, leave me! I am not in a humour to speak much. I have matters before me that may well make me silent. Mount your horse, and be gone with all speed. Why do you linger? Oh! I will send out ere ten minutes be over, and if there be a possibility of undoing what has been done amiss, it shall be undone, on my honour. Take the back road," he added, as he opened the door for Langford; "and for worlds go no more upon the moor to-night! I ask you for my own sake," he added, seeing his companion hesitate; "not for yours, but for mine!"
Langford made no reply, but mounting his horse, rode away with feelings of a nature the most mingled and the most painful.
Those of the man he left behind were of a different character, but still terrible. With Langford there were feelings which he seldom experienced, doubt and hesitation as to his own course of action, mingling with vague apprehension of evil, and deep regret to see a man possessed of many noble qualities, who had been his friend, his companion, and even his protector in the early days of youth, now plunged into a current, terrible in itself, and terrible in its consequences--following a course which he had long suspected that Gray did really follow, but without having conviction forced upon him till that night.
With Franklin Gray it was very different; his whole feelings, for the time, were swallowed up in one stern and gloomy resolution.