Ida, indeed, used afterwards to laughingly declare that old Sir James meant to indicate that he considered the whole thing as plain as A.B.C., but this was an explanation which did not commend itself to Harold’s practical mind.

CHAPTER XL

BUT NOT TO BED

Harold glanced at the clock; it was nearly one in the morning, time to go to bed if he was going.  But he did not feel inclined to go to bed.  If he did, with this great discovery on his mind he should not sleep.  There was another thing; it was Christmas Eve, or rather Christmas Day, the day of Ida’s answer.  If any succour was to be given at all, it must be given at once, before the fortress had capitulated.  Once let the engagement be renewed, and even if the money should subsequently be forthcoming, the difficulties would be doubled.  But he was building his hopes upon sand, and he knew it.  Even supposing that he held in his hand the key to the hiding place of the long-lost treasure, who knew whether it would still be there, or whether rumour had not enormously added to its proportions?  He was allowing his imagination to carry him away.

Still he could not sleep, and he had a mind to see if anything could be made of it.  Going to the gun-room he put on a pair of shooting-boots, an old coat, and an ulster.  Next he provided himself with a dark lantern and the key of the summer-house at the top of Dead Man’s Mount, and silently unlocking the back door started out into the garden.  The night was very rough, for the great gale was now rising fast, and bitterly cold, so cold that he hesitated for a moment before making up his mind to go on.  However, he did go on, and in another two minutes was climbing the steep sides of the tumulus.  There was a wan moon in the cold sky—­the wind whistled most drearily through the naked boughs of the great oaks, which groaned in answer like things in pain.  Harold was not a nervous or impressionable man, but the place had a spectral look about it, and he could not help thinking of the evil reputation it had borne for all those ages.  There was scarcely a man in Honham, or in Boisingham either, who could have been persuaded to stay half an hour by himself on Dead Man’s Mount after the sun was well down.  Harold had at different times asked one or two of them what they saw to be afraid of, and they had answered that it was not what they saw so much as what they felt.  He had laughed at the time, but now he admitted to himself that he was anything but comfortable, though if he had been obliged to put his feelings into words he could probably not have described them better than by saying that he had a general impression of somebody being behind him.