They arrived at Chilcombe and Bounce and Hiscocks put up at the village inn, while Carstairs took Whitworth home. It was a merry gathering that night at the vicarage; Stanley Carstairs was there, and the Bevengtons came in. Whitworth was as lively as a cricket, he kept the whole company continually on the smile with his humour and endless anecdotes of his navvies and other people he had met. Jack Carstairs lay back in his chair and listened with a steady smile. He was watching Bessie Bevengton and Whitworth and was rather glad he'd brought the little man home.
It was after eleven when the party broke up, and Jack took Whitworth to his bedroom. "Here you are," he said, handing him a heavy cudgel. "I'll meet you in the hall in half an hour's time."
"Alright. I say, jolly evening. Who's that girl? Is she—engaged?"
"Oh, no, one of the best, too. We've been chums since we were kids, so I know."
The little man whirled his cudgel round his head thereby seriously endangering the furniture. "We'll flatten that beast out," he said, with extraordinary fervour.
Carstairs laughed. "In half an hour," he said, and went to his room. He turned the gas full on and stood by the window for some minutes with the blind up, in full view of the lawn and shrubbery below. The sky was quite clear, and a full moon was climbing up behind the distant Cotswold Hills. The beauty of the night enchanted him, this was his home, and many memories thronged his brain as he gazed out at the old familiar landscape silvered over with the soft, romantic light of the moon. For a moment he forgot his mission, but a rustle of leaves among the evergreens below and the hoot of an owl quite close at hand, brought him back from the dim and distant past to the pressing, urgent present. He pulled down the blind, picked up a book, and lay on the bed reading for half an hour; then he got up, lighted a bull's-eye dark lantern, turned out the gas, and crept softly downstairs; a dark figure was sitting quietly on one of the hall chairs, a big stick across its knees. It was Whitworth. "This way," Carstairs said, softly, and together they climbed quietly out of the back kitchen window; they stood in the shadow of the wall for a minute and looked round. The lawn was flooded with the soft moonlight, and the big chestnut tree cast a shadow over the clump of laurel bushes near where they stood. Silently they flitted across the narrow strip of moonlight and disappeared into the dense shadow of the evergreens. A hand stretched out in the darkness and touched Carstairs on the arm.
"Is that you, Bounce?" he whispered, very low.
"Yes, sir; nothing in sight yet."
"Alright. Get along a bit further where you can see my window. Is Hiscocks there?" Something that seemed part of the wall murmured, "Yes, sir."
"This way then." Carstairs moved forward and stepped on a dry twig which snapped with a report loud enough to wake the dead, so it seemed to their tensed nerves. Bounce stepped to the front. "I can see," he whispered, "used to the dark at sea." They moved round the shrubbery in single file, very slowly, till they came to a point where they could see the bedroom window, full in the moonlight, just missed by the shade of the big chestnut tree.