Pennington and Mr. Keegan started up as noiselessly as they might, keeping close to the wall. The darkness was so intense that they were obliged to feel for the gate, and their footfalls sounded to Pennington like gunshots in the oppressive silence. After a prolonged search, and just as they were on the point of going back to the master-at-arms for more accurate information, Pennington came to a break.
“Here it is, Keegan,” he whispered; “I can feel the hinges.”
They tried the latch, but the gate was locked. Mr. Keegan bent down to the keyhole, and gave a low whistle; but there was no response. “I’ll get over, Mr. Pennington,” he said; “give me your shoulder, sir.”
Mr. Keegan was soon on top of the wall, whence he slid easily down on the other side, and Pennington could hear him trying the lock.
“I’ll just reconnoitre up the yard a bit, Mr. Pennington,” he called through the keyhole; “you stay there, sir.”
As Pennington waited outside the gate, and minute after minute slipped by, all his misgivings returned. He began to feel like a criminal, and, what was worse, like a fool. He might have known, he told himself, that this was all an imagination of the master-at-arms, and he wondered that as practical a man as Mr. Keegan had been duped by it. It was a choice business, too, for an officer in the United States Navy to be mixed up in. What a delectable story it would make when it became known in the service! It was not that he did not love the girl; he reflected bitterly on Morgan’s words, and felt they were only too true. He remembered how his heart had sunk into his boots when he had heard they were to be ordered back to Madeira, and decided then to leave, if his orders were there, by the first steamer. And now by the well-meaning but misguided interference of his old friend Mr. Keegan, aided and abetted by Morgan and the master-at-arms, he was plunged again into the depths of misery, and, moreover, likely to be held up to his fellow-officers as an object of ridicule.
Then the things which had happened the last time he saw her began to crowd into his mind. How distinctly he recalled them—just what she had worn, and just what she had said! She would never marry him without her father’s consent, and she doubted very much whether her father would give it. She was standing beside a rose bush at the time; he could see her now—the bush itself was only on the other side of that gate. So he had gone into the house to find Mr. Inglefield, and had left her in the garden looking after him. It was as this painful point in his recollections was reached that Pennington thought he heard footsteps on the other side of the wall. He listened intently; it seemed as if there was another step besides Mr. Keegan’s. It must be his imagination, he told himself. Then there came the sound of a key turning in the lock, the gate opened, and some one came out.
It was not Mr. Keegan.
“Jack!” exclaimed the person.
“Eleanor!” exclaimed Pennington.