“My father must have come to meet yours, Dick,” whispered Tom at that point. “I know they suspect there’s something wrong, and they have gone down to watch the drain, or to meet Mr Marston.”
“Yes,” said Dick, in a tone which did not carry conviction with it. “That must be it.”
“What shall we do? Go back to bed?”
“Ye–es, we had better,” said Dick thoughtfully. “I say, Tom, we have done quite right. We couldn’t have gone away.”
“Hist! did you hear that?”
For answer Dick strained out of the window. He had heard that—a sudden splashing in the water, a shout—and the next moment there was a flash which cut the darkness apparently a couple of hundred yards away, and then came a dull report, and silence.
The boys remained listening for some moments, but they could not hear a sound. The signs of the coming morning were growing plainer; there was a faint twittering in some bushes at a distance, followed by the sharp metallic chink chink of a blackbird; and then all at once, loud and clear from the farm-yard, rang out the morning challenge of a cock.
Then once more all was still. There was no footstep, no splash of pole in the water.
For a few minutes neither spoke, but listened intently with every nerve upon the strain; and then with a catching of the breath as he realised what had gone before, and that he had seen his father steal carefully down in the direction of the mere, Dick sprang from the window and gripped his companion by the arm.
“Tom,” he gasped, “quick! come on! Some one else has been—”