care that no one was taken ... she would thank
him presently; he would but set guards at all the doors and make a
cursory search; he would break a panel or two; no more. And that would
save both his face and her own.... Yet he loathed even such work as
this....

He turned abruptly as he came into the buttery passage.

"All the women in the hall," he said sharply. "Jack, keep the door fast
till we are done."

V

He took particular pains to do as little damage as possible.

First he went through the out-houses, himself with a pike testing the
haystacks, where he was sure that no man could be hidden. The beasts
turned slow and ruminating eyes upon him as he went by their stalls.

As he passed, a little later, the inner door into the buttery passage,
he could hear the beating of hands on the hall-door. He went on quickly
to the kitchen, hating himself, yet determined to get all done quickly,
and drove the kitchen-maid, who was crouching by the unlighted fire, out
behind him, sending a man with her to bestow her in the hall. She wailed
as she went by him, but it was unintelligible, and he was in no mood for
listening.

"Take her in," he said; "but let no one out, nor a message, till all is
done." (He thought that the kinder course.)

Then at last he went upstairs, still with his little bodyguard of four,
of whom one was the man who had followed the fugitive down from the
hills.

He began with the little rooms over the hall: a bedstead stood in one;
in another was a table all piled with linen a third had its floor
covered with early autumn fruit, ready for preserving. He struck on a
panel or two as he went, for form's sake.

As he came out again he turned savagely on the informer.

"It is damned nonsense," he said; "the fellow's not here at all. I told
you he'd have gone back to the hills."

The man looked up at him with a furtive kind of sneer in his face; he,
too, was angry enough; the loss of the priest meant the loss of the
heavy reward.

"We have not searched a room rightly yet, sir," he snarled. "There are a
hundred places--"

"Not searched! You villain! Why, what would you have?"

"It's not the manner I've done it before, sir. A pike-thrust here, and a
blow there--"

"I tell you I will not have the house injured! Mistress Manners--"

"Very good, sir. Your honour is the magistrate.... I am not."

The old man's temper boiled over. They were passing at that instant a
half-open door, and within h