"As you say," said Lawrence, faintly echoing the low laugh of his companion, which reverberated far away, in mocking unearthly discords, as though challenging the pair to explore the place's long-forgotten intricacies. "I doubt they must have been as successful as if they sought needles in a bottle of hay."
"Shut the door!" said Rumbold.
Lawrence obeyed, and what further Richard Rumbold had to say was heard by no eavesdroppers save the slug and reptile creatures who had long made the place their own.
A change for the worse.
Some hours later the door opened again, and one of the two men reappeared. Peering first cautiously right and left, he locked the door behind him and stole hurriedly up the steps. The figure of this man is assuredly that of Lawrence Lee, but strangely unlike his light bright step is that stumbling, swaying gait; and can that ashen white face, those eyes startled and staring, as if they had met some fearful thing, indeed be his? And where is Rumbold?
CHAPTER VI.
SOMETHING IN THE WATER.
One thing only was quite certain, that the maltster was to be seen next morning at the usual hour among his men. As for Lawrence Lee, whatever Rumbold had confided to him remained a secret as far as the nature of it was concerned. To hide, however, from Ruth that something was amiss with him was a more difficult task, and he had failed in it.
During these last weeks, moreover, the Rye House had grown into a very prison of dulness. Rumbold, always a sombre and taciturn man, had come to be like a stone statue moving about the place, never speaking but when absolutely compelled.
The recollection of all this, and of the events of the past day, crowd bewilderingly now upon Ruth's mind, as she sits, with her chin resting upon her hand, gazing out into the night, from which the young May moon is slowly fading. Only a few stars cheer the surrounding darkness, excepting yonder where the yellow lamp-light streams through the close-drawn curtains of the guest-parlour window of the King's Arms.