The lower floor of the barn had been used as a box-room for trunks and a general store-house, though the central floor-space was made into a court for Badminton; when nephews and nieces, small spars of Main and Mizzen and the co-lateral Yardarms, came to play upon a retired quarter-deck.
The upper floor had ever been sacred to the Admiral and his hobbies.
From below, the upper region was reached by a private stairway of wood outside the building. Of this entrance the sailor had always kept the key. A little wooden balcony ran round the angle of the building to where, at one end, a large window had been built in the wall.
Lothian went up the outside stairs noiselessly as a cat, and round the little gallery to the long window. Here he was in deep shadow.
The two leaves of the window did not quite meet. The wood had shrunk, the whole affair was rickety and old.
As he had anticipated, the night-comer had no difficulty in pushing the blade of his shooting knife through the crevice and raising the simple catch.
He stepped into the room, long empty and ghostly.
First, he closed the window again, and then let down the blue blind over it. A skylight in the sloped roof provided all the other light. Through this, now, faint and fleeting moonlights fell.
By the gallery door there was a mat. Lothian stepped gingerly to it and wiped the india-rubber boots he wore.
Then he took half a wax candle from a side-pocket and lit it. It was quite impossible that the light could be seen from outside, even if spectators there were, in the remote slumbering village.