After dinner Miss Thane had the tact to suggest that they should sit down to a game of loo, and in this way the evening passed swiftly, Ludovic’s problem being for the time forgotten, and the game proving so engrossing that it was not until after eleven o’clock that Miss Thane thought to look at the timepiece on the mantelshelf. The party then broke up, and the ladies had just picked up their candles when Nye’s voice was suddenly heard somewhere above-stairs, raised in ferocious surprise.
Sir Tristram, signing to the others to remain where they were, went quickly out into the coffee-room, just as Nye came down the stairs, dragging by the collar a scared-looking stable-boy. When he saw Shield he said: “I’ve just found this young varmint in Sir Hugh’s bedchamber, your Honour. Down you come, you! Now then, what were you doing up there?”
The stableboy whimpered that he meant no harm, and tried to squirm out of the landlord’s hold. Nye shook him, almost lifting him from the ground, and Sir Tristram said: “Is he one of your lads, Nye?”
“Ay, sir, he’s one of my lads right enough, but he’ll belong to the Parish Constable in the morning,” said Nye with awful meaning. “A thief, that’s what he is, and will likely be transported. That or hanged.”
“I ain’t a thief! I never meant no harm, Mr Nye, I swear I didn’t! I ain’t took a thing that belongs to the big gentleman, nor wouldn’t!”
“What were you doing in his bedchamber?” demanded Nye. “You’ve no business inside the house, and well you know it! Came creeping in through a window, that’s what you did, and don’t you dare to deny it! There’s the ladder you used for anyone to see. Feeling in the pockets of Sir Hugh’s coats he was, sir, the young vagabond! What’s that you’ve got in your hand? Give it up this instant!”
The boy made a futile attempt to break away, but Nye seized his right arm and gave it a twist that made him cry out and relinquish the object he had been trying to conceal. It was a quizzing-glass belonging to Sir Hugh Thane.
Nye stared at it for a moment, his countenance slowly reddening with wrath. His grip tightened on the stableboy’s collar. “So that’s it, is it?” he said. “You’ll be sorry for this, Sam Barker!”
Sir Tristram, taking the glass from him, interposed in his quiet way: “Let him go, Nye. Now, my lad, if you speak the truth no harm shall come to you. Who told you to steal this?”
The boy cowered as far from Nye as he was able, and said: “It were Mr Lavenham’s gentleman, your Honour, and ’deed I didn’t know there was any harm! He come asking me if I’d like to earn twenty guineas for myself, all for finding an eyeglass Mr Lavenham mislaid here. It was the big gentleman as had got it, he said, and if I found it, and no one the wiser, there’d be twenty golden guineas for me. It weren’t like stealing, sir! I ain’t a thief!”