was even then
parting, with whispers and mystery, from an adventurous rover. Still a
little farther, in barber Jim's back room, Silas Ropes was treating his
accomplices; and while these drank and blasphemed, close by, in the
secret cellar, Stackridge's companions were practising the soldier's
drill.

Salina parted from the rover, and came into the house while Virginia was
singing, throwing her bonnet negligently back, as she sat down.

"Why, Salina! where have you been?" said Virginia, finishing a strain,
and turning eagerly on the piano stool. "We have been wondering what had
become of you!"

"You need never wonder about me," said Salina, coldly. "I must go out
and walk, even if I don't have time till after dark."

She drummed upon the carpet with her foot, while her upper lip twitched
nervously. It was a rather short lip, and she had an unconscious habit
of hitching up one corner of it, still more closely, with a spiteful and
impatient expression. Aside from this labial peculiarity (and perhaps
the disproportionate prominence of a very large white forehead), her
features were pretty enough, although they lacked the charming freshness
of her younger sister's.

Virginia knew well that the pretence of not getting time for her walk
till after dark was absurd, but, perceiving the unhappy mood she was in,
forbore to say so. And she resumed her task of entertaining Bythewood.

VIII.

_THE ROVER._

Meanwhile the nocturnal acquaintance from whom Salina had parted took a
last look at the house, and shook his envious head darkly at the room
where the light and the music were; then, thrusting his hands into his
pockets, with a swaggering air, went plodding on his lonely way across
the fields, in the starlight.

The direction he took was that from which Penn had arrived; and in the
course of twenty minutes he approached the door of the solitary house
with the dark windows and the dogs within. He walked all around, and
seeing no light, nor any indication of life, drew near, and rapped
softly on a pane.

The dogs were roused in an instant, and barked furiously. Nothing
daunted, he waited for a lull in the storm he had raised, and rapped
again.

"Who's there?" creaked the stridulous voice of good Mrs. Sprowl.

"_You know!_" said the rover, in a suppressed, confidential tone. "One
who has a right."

Now, the excellent relict of the late lamented Sprowl reflected,
naturally, that, if anybody had a right there