"Take her in," he said; "but let no one out, nor a message, till all is done." (He thought that the kinder course.)
Then at last he went upstairs, still with his little bodyguard of four, of whom one was the man who had followed the fugitive down from the hills.
He began with the little rooms over the hall: a bedstead stood in one; in another was a table all piled with linen a third had its floor covered with early autumn fruit, ready for preserving. He struck on a panel or two as he went, for form's sake.
As he came out again he turned savagely on the informer.
"It is damned nonsense," he said; "the fellow's not here at all. I told you he'd have gone back to the hills."
The man looked up at him with a furtive kind of sneer in his face; he, too, was angry enough; the loss of the priest meant the loss of the heavy reward.
"We have not searched a room rightly yet, sir," he snarled. "There are a hundred places—"
"Not searched! You villain! Why, what would you have?"
"It's not the manner I've done it before, sir. A pike-thrust here, and a blow there—"
"I tell you I will not have the house injured! Mistress Manners—"