visited her sleep since she came to Raglan.  Three shrill whistles she had blown, about a hundred yards from the gate, had heard the eager crowded bark of her dog in answer, and then Dick went flying over the fields like a water-bird over the lake, that scratches its smooth surface with its feet as it flies.  Around the rampart they went.  The still night was jubilant around them as they flew.  The stars shone as if they knew all about her joy, that the shadow of guilt had been lifted from her, and that to her the world again was fair.  She felt as the freed Psyche must feel when she drops the clay, and lo! the whole chrysalid world, which had hitherto hung as a clog at her foot, fast by the inexorable chain our blindness calls gravitation, has dropped from her with the clay, and the universe is her own.

At intervals she blew her whistle, and ever kept her keen eyes and ears awake, looking and listening before and behind, in the hope of hearing her dog, or seeing him come bounding through the moonlight.

Meantime lord Herbert and his wife had taken their stand on the top of the great tower, and were looking down—­the lady into the stone court, and her husband into the grass one.  Dorothy’s shrill whistle came once, twice—­and just as it began to sound a third time,

‘Here he comes!’ cried lady Margaret.

A black shadow went from the foot of the library tower, tearing across the moonlight to the hall door, where it vanished.  But in vain lord Herbert kept his eyes on the fountain court, in the hope of its reappearance there.  Presently they heard a heavy plunge in the water on the other side of the keep, and running round, saw plainly, the moat there lying broad in the moonlight, a little black object making its way across it.  Through the obstructing floats of water-lily-leaves, it held steadily over to the other side.  There for a moment they saw the whole body of the animal, as he scrambled out of the water up against the steep side of the moat—­when suddenly, and most unaccountably to lady Margaret, he disappeared.

‘I have it!’ cried lord Herbert.  ’What an ass I was not to think of it before!  Come down with me, my dove, and I will show thee.  Dorothy’s Marquis hath got into the drain of the moat!  He is a large dog, and beyond a doubt that is where the young roundhead entered.  Who could have dreamed of such a thing!  I had no thought it was such a size.’

Dorothy, having made the circuit, and arrived again at the brick gate, found lord Herbert waiting there, and pulled up.

‘I have seen nothing of him, my lord,’ she said, as he came to her side.  ‘Shall I ride round once more?’

’Do, prithee, for I see thou dost enjoy it.  But we have already learned all we want to know, so far as goeth to the security of the castle.  There is but one marquis in Raglan, and he is, I believe, in the oak parlour.’

‘You saw my Marquis make his exit then, my lord?’