“Pooh! What does that matter?” cried the gardener, who, like the boy, spoke loud enough for the constable to hear. “He wouldn’t mind. He’d sink to the bottom and walk about safely all over the mud.”
“That he wouldn’t,” cried Waller. “He’d shoot up to the top again like a cork.”
And then the banter ceased, for the sergeant’s men passed through the swing gate, and to Waller’s great relief he was able to make his way back to the hall, very silent now as he went over the day’s proceedings, and thought of the chances of the men coming back to make a fresh search, while the gardener kept on harping metaphorically upon the broken ladder, and what “master would say” when he came back.
At last the boy got rid of him, and made his way into the house, where he had a hard fight to curb his inclinations to rush up at once to his room.
This desire he kept down till he had made sure that the servants were at their dinner, and then, after a cautious saunter about the grounds to convince himself that the gardener had gone to his cottage, Waller hurried up, and paused breathlessly at the door of his den, which he opened and closed, and then locked himself in.
The next minute he had crept out of the window, to hold on by the sill and feel with his feet amongst the ivy for the stone gutter which ran all along the front of the house. Upon this, half hidden by the ivy, he proceeded cautiously to his right, where a deep gully between two gables went right across the house, with the ivy positively rioting and pretty well filling it up with long strands and great berry-bearing clumps. Here, completely hidden, Waller crept along three or four yards.
“Only me,” he said merrily, “Don’t shoot! How are you getting on?”
A head and shoulders were slowly raised from among the thick glossy leaves, and he was confronted by Godfrey’s sombre countenance.
“Miserably,” he said. “I had hoped that this despicable hiding was at an end. Pray help me to-night to get away.”
“Oh, I know what’s the matter with you,” cried Waller. “You are hungry and tired out. But come along back into my room. But I say, you found it easy enough to get here, didn’t you? I was in a fright at first; then I thought that you would be sure to creep out.”