“Yes, it horrible.”
“We’ll go and see the wounded again, and then look how Stubbs has managed, and go to our room.”
The doctor said that the two servants were badly hurt, but not dangerously, and he and Hulton were going to stay and watch them till morning. Wyatt protested but Hulton was firm. “Let me have my own way,” he said. “I can be of use over this, and I’ve been of little enough lately.”
So the two officers went down to the yard, visiting posts on their way, and upon reaching the room used as a magazine, it was to find that Stubbs and a squad of gunners had moved everything to an inner chamber on the ground-floor, where it would be far more difficult for an attack to be made.
Stubbs was just locking up as Wyatt and Dick approached, and triumphantly showed them the key.
“It’s just under Mr Darrell’s bedchamber, gentlemen,” he said; “but I suppose he won’t mind.”
“Oh, no; not at all,” said Dick, with a queer smile, which looked to be absolutely without mirth. “Only,” he added, “I should not have chosen my sleeping-place there.”
“I didn’t think of it, sir, till I’d got nearly everything in; but I’ll see what we can do to-morrow.”
“No,” said Wyatt shortly, and to Dick’s great discomposure; “it is a capital place for it, Stubbs, and it shall stay.—But there are two ways of looking at such things, Darrell,” he continued. “I’ll be hanged if I’m going to sleep over a powder-magazine that our enemies are trying to blow up, and I certainly won’t let you.”
“Enemies, sir!” said Stubbs. “Then you feel that it is the work of the enemy?”