"Well, if he's taken," she said, "they'll be here. That's very sure. They'll search the premises. They mustn't find you here, Mr Jim. If they find you, they'll question you, and you know too much by a long way."
"Shall I go?" I asked. "I'm willing to clear out, if you wish."
"Go?" she said. "Go? I will turn no poor boy out into the road. I have a boy of my own, somewhere walking the world. No, I'll put you in the drawing-room. Come with me, and don't make a noise."
She led me downstairs to the foot of the lowest staircase, which was rather broad, with high steps of stout old oak.
"Look," she said, as she stepped away from me—I suppose to touch some secret spring—"this is the drawing-room."
As she spoke, the two lowest stairs suddenly rolled back upon a sort of hinge, showing a little room, not much bigger than a couple of barrels, arranged underneath them. There were blankets and a mattress upon the floor of this little room, besides several packages like those which I had seen in the lugger.
"You'll have to stay here, Jim," she said kindly. "But first of all I must get together Dick's papers and that. Come on and help me."
Very soon she had gathered together a few papers and packets of tobacco and lace, which might have brought Dick into trouble. She laid these away in the recesses of the secret room, and told me to get inside, and go to sleep, and above all things to keep very still if people came along upon the stairs. I crept inside, rather frightened, and lay down among the blankets, to get some rest. Then Mrs Dick swung the two stairs back in to their place, a spring clicked, and I was a prisoner in the dark, shut up in the drawing-room.