"Safe always. I have sworn it."
"I am sorry this should have happened," said Cyril, after a pause.
"And so am I," returned Robert Hunter. "Circumstances, not my own will, led to it. It is a pity I missed the omnibus."
"Yes," said Cyril, speaking abstractedly, as if his thoughts were far away. "But if you step out well you may be at Jutpoint by half-past ten."
"Scarcely so," thought Robert Hunter. Cyril, perhaps, did not know the hour now.
"What! Have you missed the omnibus, sir?"
The question came from a woman who met them, Captain Copp's servant Sarah. She was coming along without her bonnet in the frosty night.
"Yes, I have; and must walk it for my pains," answered Mr. Hunter.
"Are you going to the Red Court, Sarah?" asked Cyril.
"I am, sir; I'm going there to fetch Miss Chester," returned Sarah in her hardest tone. "And a fine tantrum master's in over it, roaring out that I ought to have come a good hour ago. Why didn't they tell me, then?"