He lifted the lantern again and fixed his keen eyes on Bard.

“However,” he went on, lowering the lantern with an apologetic laugh, “I’m standin’ here askin’ questions and chatterin’ like a woman, and what you’re thinkin’ of is bed, eh?  Come on with me.”

Upstairs in the house he found Bard a corner room with a pile of straw in the corner by way of a mattress.  There he spread out some blankets, wished his guest a good sleep, and departed.

Left to himself, Anthony stretched out flat on his back.  It had been a wild, hard day, but he felt not the slightest touch of weariness; all he wished was to relax his muscles for a few moments.  Moreover, he must be away from the house with the dawn-first, because Sally Fortune might waken, guess where he had gone, and follow him; secondly because the news of what had happened at Drew’s place might reach Wood at any hour.

So he lay trying to fight the thought of Sally from his mind and concentrate on some way of getting back to Drew without riding the gauntlet of the law.

The sleep which stole upon him came by slow degrees; or, rather, he was not fully asleep, when a sound outside the house roused him to sharp consciousness compared with which his drowsiness had been a sleep.

It was a knocking at the door, not loud, but repeated.  At the same time he heard Jerry Wood cursing softly in a neighbouring room, and then the telltale creak of bedsprings.

The host was rousing himself a second time that night.  Or, rather, it was morning now, for when Anthony sat up he saw that the hills were stepping out of the shadows of the night, black, ugly shapes revealed by a grey background of the sky.  A window went up noisily.

“Am I runnin’ a hotel?” roared Jerry Wood.  “Ain’t I to have no sleep no more?  Who are ye?”

A lowered, muttering voice answered.

“All right,” said Jerry, changing his tone at once.  “I’ll come down.”

His steps descended the noisy stairs rapidly; the door creaked.  Then voices began again outside the house, an indistinct mumble, rising to one sharp height in an exclamation.

Almost at once steps again sounded on the stairs, but softly now.  Bard went quietly to the door, locked it, and stole back to the window.  Below it extended the roof of a shed, joining the main body of the house only a few feet under his window and sloping to what could not have been a dangerous distance from the ground.  He raised the window-sash.

Yet he waited, something as he had waited for Sally Fortune to speak earlier in the night, with a sense of danger, but a danger which thrilled and delighted him.  No game of polo could match suspense like this.  Besides, he would be foolish to go before he was sure.

The walls were gaping with cracks that carried the sounds, and now he heard a sibilant whisper with a perfect clearness.

“This is the room.”