But nobody came in, in spite of this lucid direction; and the timid tapping, which seemed to proceed from very small knuckles, was repeated again. Mr. Ketch was fain to go and open it.
A young damsel of eight or so, in a tattered tippet, and a large bonnet—probably her mother’s—stood there, curtseying. “Please, sir, Mr. Ketch is wanted.”
Mr. Ketch was rather taken to at this strange address, and surveyed the messenger in astonishment. “Who be you? and who wants him?” growled he.
“Please, sir, it’s a gentleman as is waiting at the big green gates,” was the reply. “Mr. Ketch is to go to him this minute; he told me to come and say so, and if you didn’t make haste he should be gone.”
“Can’t you speak plain?” snarled Ketch. “Who is the gentleman?”
“Please, sir, I think it’s the bishop.”
This put Ketch in a flutter. The “big green gates” could only have reference to the private entrance to the bishop’s garden, which entrance his lordship used when attending the cathedral. That the bishop was in Helstonleigh, Ketch knew: he had arrived that day, after a short absence: what on earth could he want with him? Never doubting, in his hurry, the genuineness of the message, Ketch pulled his door to, and stepped off, the young messenger having already decamped. The green gates were not one minute’s walk from the lodge—though a projecting buttress of the cathedral prevented the one from being in sight of the other—and old Ketch gained them, and looked around.
Where was the bishop? The iron gates, the garden, the white stones at his feet, the towering cathedral, all lay cold and calm in the moonlight, but of human sight or sound there was none. The gates were locked when he came to try them, and he could not see the bishop anywhere.
He was not likely to see him. Stephen Bywater, who took upon himself much of the plot’s performance—of which, to give him his due, he was boldly capable—had been on the watch in the street, near the cathedral, for a messenger that would suit his purpose. Seeing this young damsel hurrying along with a jug in her hand, possibly to buy beer for her home supper, he waylaid her.
“Little ninepins, would you like to get threepence?” asked he. “You shall have it, if you’ll carry a message for me close by.”