“Have you heard the news?” she asked him, breathing deeply, with a wan and troubled aspect.
He held up an arresting hand, and “Hush!” he said, “there is something curious in the wood. . . . Did ye not hear it? Something curious in the wood. . . . In the wood. . . . Did ye not . . . did ye not hear it?” and his head sank down upon his shoulders; his eyes went questing through the columns of the trees.
Again the cry rose, farther in the distance, burdened with a sense of desolation.
“A bittern,” said Mirren; “it can only be a bittern.”
“Do ye think I have not thought of that?” asked Wanlock. “Have ye ever heard a bittern boom at this time of the year, and in the middle of the day?”
“I have heard it once or twice at night of late,” said his daughter. “It can only be a bittern, or some other creature maybe wounded. Do you know that The Peel has been plundered? Last night the strong-room was broken into.”
“And robbed of the Mellish jewels?” broke in Wanlock, with exultant intuition.
“Yes, and a great collection of antique gems entrusted to Mellish for the purpose of a monograph he was writing,” said the daughter.
“A monograph?” asked Wanlock, still with eyes bent on the wood from which the dog returned indifferent.
“It is a book on gems he has been busy writing.”