Who can have been tampering with them? Surely not Adam Lockit. Rather than be unfaithful to his trust, and let down his bridge after sunset, he would dispute every ounce of it with his life's blood. But what about Barnaby? Barnaby! and even at that moment Ruth cannot forbear a smile at the bare notion of Master Diggles' Dutch courage displaying its mettle within six hours of either side of midnight. Even supposing he could have performed the miracle of stealing a march on Lockit, and getting possession of the gatehouse keys.
No. One alone, beside Adam Lockit, has the means of working those chains—the master of the Rye House himself.
Spell-bound and breathless, Ruth stands listening to the stealthy but heavy tramp tramp of those feet mounting the stone stair which leads from the arched door in the wall of the gateway to the Warder's Room.
Soon the sounds cease; to be quickly broken again by hurried whispers and the low hum of voices. Muffled and indistinctly as they reach her ear, the tones seem familiar to Ruth, and her heart stands still. What—what if Lawrence—?
Hardly has his name escaped her pale parted lips before with swift noiseless tread she has stolen to the wall, and falling on her knees before the sliding panel, slips it back, and stepping into the darkness beyond, crouches down.
Not an instant too soon, if movements so cautious and catlike as hers could have betrayed her; and that was possible, judging by the distinctness with which she on her part can catch every syllable that is being uttered in the Warder's Room by the party of men gathering, as she can plainly see through a long crack in the wood, about the long table.
A cold welcome.
"All right, Master Hannibal," says a voice she does not know. "We wait your pleasure."
"Nay," objected another, which Ruth at once recognized for one of those she had heard upon the bridge, "your commands, Master Rumbold."
"By my faith! there you speak by the book, colonel, like the good soldier you are," shiveringly said a voice, whose delicate tones were also not strange to Ruth. "Pleasure's a fish that I for one should be for angling after in other preserves than the slush and bog of the Rye. Hu! hu!" shuddered the speaker. "And not so much as a stick of a blaze on your sepulchre of a hearth here, Master Hannibal! A merry welcome truly to bid your boys! and all of us as wringing wet as any of the rat vermin in your styx of a moat below there. I'm drenched to my skin."