"I think so, but I cannot be sure. It was at the top of a leaf certainly. If we could but find it out--find that it is so, it might prove to be a way of release from him," she added; "I mean some way or other of release might come of it. Oh, and think of the blessing of feeling free! I am sure that, but for him, Adam would contrive to escape to a safer land."
There was no time to say more. The night was drawing on, and Karl had to go in to his impatient brother. Impatient! What should we have been in his place? Poor Adam Andinnian! In his banned, hidden, solitary days, what interlude had he to look forward to but these occasional visits from Karl?
"I will think it over, Rose, and try and find something out," said Karl as they went in. "Have you told Adam?"
"No. He is so hot and impulsive, you know. I thought it best to speak to you first."
"Quite right. Say nothing to him at present."
In quitting the Maze that evening, Adam, in spite of all Karl could say or do, would walk with him to the gate: only laughing when Karl called it dangerous recklessness. There were moments when the same doubt crossed Karl's mind that had been once suggested to him by Mr. Plunkett--Was Adam always and altogether sane? This moment, was one. He absolutely stood at the gate, talking and laughing in an undertone, as Karl went through it.
"Rubbish, Karlo, old fellow," said he to the last remonstrance. "It's a dark night, and not a soul within miles of us. Besides, who knows me here?"
Karl had locked the gate and was putting the key in his pocket, when a sound smote his ear and he turned it to listen. The tramp, tramp, as of policemen walking with measured steps was heard, coming from the direction of the railway-station, and with it the scuffle and hum of a besetting crowd. It brought into his mind with a rush and a whirl that fatal night some twelve months before, when he had heard the tramp of policemen on the other side the hedge--and their prisoner, though he knew it not, was his brother, Adam Andinnian.
"Adam, do you hear!" he cried hoarsely. "For the love of heaven, hide yourself." And Sir Adam disappeared in the Maze.
What with the past recollection, what with his brother's near presence, what with the approach of these police--as he took them to be--what with the apprehension ever overlying his heart, Karl was seized with a panic of terror. Were they coming in search of Adam? He thought so: and all the agony that he often went over in his dreams, he suffered now in waking reality. The hubbub of exposure; the public disgrace; the renewed hard life for him at Portland Island; even perhaps--Karl's imagination was vivid just then--the scaffold in the distance as an ending! These visions surging through his brain, Karl flew to the other side of the road--lest his being on the side of the Maze might bring suspicion on it--and then walked quietly to his own entrance gates. There he stood, and turned to await the event, his head beating, his pulses leaping.