"Yes," replied the gardener, abruptly.
"Then, why—why do you not answer it?" said Egerton, not daring to speak in a firm or commanding tone.
"Why—if you're koorious to know, I han't no objection to tell you," responded the old gardener, after a few moments' consideration. "You see, when the establishment was broke up just after Lady Ravensworth left the Hall on a sudden, and when her lawyer come down here to discharge the servants, except me and my wife, who was put in charge o' the place, he goes through the whole building, has all the shutters shut, and locks up all the rooms——"
"Yes, yes—of course," interposed Dunstable, hastily: "because the mansion was to be sold just as it stood, with all the furniture in it."
"But he give us the keys, in course," continued the gardener; "on'y he told us to keep the rooms locked, and the shutters shut, when we wasn't dusting or cleaning. Well, the wery next day arter we see the sperret in the balcony, me and my wife come up to this room together, and sure enow the shutters was open!"
"And they had been closed before?" asked one of the young ladies, in a tremulous tone.
"As sure as you're there, Miss," replied the old man, "what I now tell you is as true as true can be. But the door was locked—and that made it more koorious still."
"It is clear that the shutters in this one particular room had been left open when all the others were closed," said Colonel Cholmondeley, with a contemptuous smile; for he began to grow weary of the old man's garrulity.
"Well—and if they was," cried Abraham Squiggs, in an angry tone,—for the Colonel's remark seemed to convey an imputation against his veracity,—"me and my wife shut 'em up again, and locked the door when we went out."
"And what followed?" inquired two or three of the Misses Bustard, speaking in low voices which indicated breathless curiosity.