“No one has crossed the fields within view since he has stood guard?”
“Not a mouse, your worship.”
“Very well. Now go and search the lower rooms thoroughly, and then come back to me here. I shall rest on this chair awhile.”
So saying, Sir Francis Hartleton sat down on the chair which Ada had stood upon to enable her to reach the panel that opened to the vault.
How little the poor, persecuted Ada imagined that a powerful friend was very near to her.
Jacob Gray was now almost afraid to breathe, so close was the magistrate to him. Had the wainscotting not intervened, Gray could, had he been so minded, have touched Sir Francis’s head without moving from where he stood.
At length he spoke again.
“I wonder,” he said, “if this girl that the Seytons speak of, and yon poor creature, Maud, raves of as an angel, be really the child that was saved from the Smithy on the night of the storm and the murder? I have only one very substantial reason for thinking so, and that is, that the name of Britton is mixed up with the business. To be sure, the dates correspond pretty well with what the young man, Seyton, says he thinks is her age. It’s rather strange though, that no one except Maud mentions Learmont at all in the matter, and her mention of him is nothing new. ’Tis a mysterious affair, and, at all events, this man, Gray, is at hide and seek for some very special reason indeed.”
The man who had been sent to examine the lower rooms now returned.
“Well,” said Sir Francis.