"Under the conditions it seems worth while. Go on then and clear your cousin and yourself if you can. You have until daylight to-morrow."
Bobby's gratitude was sufficiently eloquent in his eyes, but he said nothing. He hurried from the room to find Katherine. As soon as he had stepped in the corridor he saw her figure against the wall.
"Katherine!" he breathed.
"I've heard everything," she said.
He led her to the main hall where the greedy ears in her bedroom couldn't overhear them.
"Then you suspected what they were about?" he asked her.
"Uncle Silas," she answered, "seemed just as he had been when I went upstairs, so I wondered, and I remembered I had left my door unlocked."
"Then you knew those things were there?"
Her face was white. She trembled. Her words came jerkily:
"Of course I didn't. I only kept my door locked because they had searched so thoroughly before. It was an humiliation I couldn't bear to face again."