m in the next room, he felt that he could go quietly
now and take it by the hand. He remembered the candles still burning
there, and stood up with a slight shiver--a characteristic shake of his
broad shoulders. As he did so his eyes fell again upon the addressed
letter. He turned them slowly to the door--and there, between him and the
lights on the long table, a vision moved towards him--the figure of a girl
dressed all in black. His hand went up to the phial in his breast-pocket,
but paused half-way as he gazed into the face and met her eyes. . . .

CHAPTER VI.

THE RAFTERS.

Two children came stealing downstairs in the early dawn, carrying their
boots in their hands, whispering, lifting their faces as if listening for
some sound to come from the upper floors. But the whole house kept
silence.

Their plan was to escape by one of the windows on the ground floor.
Tiptoeing along the hall to the door of the great parlour, Myra
noiselessly lifted the latch (all the doors in the house had old-fashioned
latches) and peeped in. The candles on the long table had burned
themselves out, and the shuttered room lay in darkness save for one long
glint of light along the mahogany table-top. It came from the half-open
doorway in the far corner, beyond which, in the counting-house, a ghost of
a flame yet trembled in Rosewarne's lamp.

Myra caught at Clem's arm and drew him back into the hall. For the moment
terror overcame her--terror of something sinister within--of their
grandfather sitting there like Giant Pope in the story, waiting to catch
them. She hurried Clem along to the kitchen-passage, which opened out of
the hall at right angles to the front door and close beside it.
The front door had a fanlight through which fell one broken sunray,
filtered to a pale green by the honeysuckle of the porch; and reaching it,
she caught her breath in a new alarm. The bolts were drawn.

After a furtive glance behind her, she peered more closely, holding Clem
fast by the sleeve. Yes, certainly the bolts were drawn, and the key had
not been turned in the lock. Very cautiously she tried the heavy latch.
The door opened easily--though with a creak that fetched her heart into
her mouth.

But there was no going back. Whatever might be the explanation of the
unbolted door, they were free now, at large in the dewy morning with the
world at their feet. The brightness of it dazzled Myra. It broke on
Clem's ears with the d