"Cousin," she said, "I am ashamed that my father should speak like that.
If I were mistress—"
"My dear Cousin," I said lightly, "if you were mistress, I should not be here at all."
"It is a shame," she said again, paying no attention, as her way was when she liked. "It is a shame that you should spend all night in the fields for nothing."
As she was speaking I heard James come downstairs with the valises. As he went past he told me he already had the horses tied under the trees. I nodded to him, and bade him go on, and he went out into the yard and so through the stables.
"I had best go help your father put the things away," I said. "They will not be here, at any rate, until the lights of the house are all out."
We went upstairs together and found my Cousin Tom already busy: he had my clothes all in a great heap, ready to carry down to the hiding-hole above the door; my papers he already had put away into the little recess behind the bed, and the books, most of which had not my name in them, he designed to carry to his own chamber.
We worked hard at all this—my Cousin Tom in a kind of fever, rolling his eyes at every sound; and, at the last, we had all put away, and were about to close the door of the hiding-hole. Then my Cousin Dorothy held up her hand.
"Hush!" she said; and then, "There was a step on the paved walk."
CHAPTER IX
When my Cousin Dorothy said that, we all became upon the instant as still as mice; and I saw my Cousin Tom's mouth suddenly hang open and his eyes to become fixed. For myself, I cannot say precisely what I felt; but it would be foolish to say that I was not at all frightened. For to be crept upon in the dark, when all is quiet, in a solitary country place; and to know, as I did, that behind all the silence there is the roar of a mob—(as it is called)—for blood, and the Lord Chief Justice's face of iron and his bitter murderous tongue, and the scaffold and the knife—this is daunting to any man. I made no mistake upon the matter. If this were Dangerfield himself, my life was ended; he would not have come here, so far, and with such caution; he would not have been at the pains to smell me out at all, unless he were sure of his end; and, indeed, my companying so much with the Jesuits and my encounter with Oates, and my seeking service with the King, and for no pay too—all this, in such days, was evidence enough to hang an angel from heaven.