He opened this door with a cautious hand, and stepped softly into the room. Stephen lay with his head half covered with the bed-clothes, and his loud snoring resounded through the chamber.
"The rum-punch has done the trick for you, my friend," Mr. Milsom said to himself.
He crossed the room with slow and stealthy footsteps, opened the door communicating with the rest of the house, and went along the passage leading to the hall.
With cautious steps he groped his way to the door opening on the secondary staircase, and ascended the thickly carpeted staircase within.
Here a lamp was left dimly burning all night, and this lamp showed him another cloth-covered door at the top of the first flight of stairs.
Black Milsom tried this door, and found it also unfastened.
This door, which Black Milsom opened, communicated with the little passage that had been made across the room usually tenanted by Captain Copplestone. Within this room there was a still smaller chamber—little more, indeed, than a spacious closet—in which slept the faithful old servant, Solomon Grundy.
Both the doors were open, and Black Milsom heard the heavy breathing of the old man—the breathing of a sound sleeper.
Beyond the short passage was the door opening into the sitting-room used by the young heiress of Raynham.
Black Milsom had only to push it open. The intruder crept softly across the room, drew aside a curtain, and opened the massive oak door which divided the sitting-room from the bed-room.