"He has fascinated you as he has fascinated Mother and Nance," Dan replied. "But it stands to reason, boy, that he can't be quite all right. What does he want poking about in a deserted old hole like Deal?"
"What he has said a thousand times; just what he so beautifully gets—quiet and seclusion."
"Perhaps you are right and I am wrong; but all the same I shall be glad to see the last of him."
The night was one of bright moonlight at the end of February. The bedroom windows were open to the cold clear air. Tom was not sleepy, and he lay for a long time recalling the dreams and emotions that had so stirred him earlier in the evening, as he had listened to the Marquis's playing. He kept whistling softly to himself such bars of the music as he could remember. Dan's chamber faced west, and Tom's bed was so placed that he could look out, without raising his head from the pillow, over the court in the rear of the Inn and into the misty depths of Lovel's Woods beyond the offices and stables.
As he lay half-consciously musing—it must have been near midnight—his attention was suddenly riveted upon the court below. It seemed to him that he heard footsteps. He was instantly wide awake, and jumped from the bed to the window, whence he peered from behind the curtain into the courtyard. Close to the wall of the Inn, directly beneath the window, a shadow flitted on the moonlight-flooded pavement, and he could hear the crumbling of the snow. Cautiously he thrust his head out of the window. Moving rapidly along near to the house, was a little figure wrapped in a dark cloak, which looked to Tom for all the world like the Marquis de Boisdhyver.
For the moment he had the impulse to call to him by name, but the conversation he had so recently had with Dan flashed into his mind, and he decided to keep still and watch. The figure moved rapidly along the west wall of the Inn almost the entire length of the building, until it arrived at the entrance of the bowling-alley which abutted from the old northern wing. Reaching this it paused for a moment, glancing about; then inserted a key, fumbled for a moment with the latch, opened the door, and disappeared within.
Tom was perplexed. He could not be sure that it was the Marquis; but whether it were or not, he knew that there was no reason for any one entering the old portion of the Inn at midnight. His first thought was to go down alone and investigate; his second was to waken Dan.
He lowered the window gently, drew the curtains across it, and bending over his friend, shook him gently by the shoulder. "Dan, Dan, I say; wake up!"
"What's the matter?" exclaimed Dan with a start of alarm, as he sat up in bed.
"Nothing, nothing; don't make a noise. I happened to be awake, and hearing footsteps under the window, I got up and looked out. I saw some one moving along close to the wall until he got to the bowling alley. He opened the door and disappeared."