“Down, Tiger!  Down, you big, noisy brute!” cried the man.  “Here, Mollie, let me help you out.”

There was no escape—­Mollie let him.  The salt breath of the sea blew in her face—­its awful thunder on the shore drowned all lesser noises.

Through the blackness of the black night she could see the blacker outline of a house, from one or two windows of which faint lights shone.  Tossing trees surrounded it—­a high board fence and a tall, padlocked gate inclosed it.

“All right, Mollie,” the man said.  “This is home!”

He drew her arm within his and hurried her up a long, graveled path, under dripping, tossing trees.

The storm of wind and rain nearly beat the breath out of the girl’s body, and she was glad when the shelter of a great front porch was gained.

“I hope you’re not very wet, my little wife,” said the man:  “because I don’t know as there is a change of garments in this establishment that will fit you.  However, as you will retire directly, it doesn’t so much matter.”

He knocked with his knuckles a thundering reveille that echoed and re-echoed ghostily through the rumbling old house.  In a moment there was a shuffling of footsteps inside, a rattling of a chain, and the noisy undoing of rusty bolts.

“Who’s there?” asked a cracked old voice.  “Is it the young master?”

“Yes, you old idiot!  Didn’t I send you word?  Open the door at once, and be hanged to you!”

A key turned gratingly in the ponderous lock—­bolts and chains fell, and the massive door swung back on creaky old hinges.

“Like an ancient castle in a story book,” thought Mollie, in the midst of her trouble.  “Where in the wide world am I?  Oh, what an unfortunate little wretch I am!  A stolen princess couldn’t be abducted and imprisoned oftener.”

The opening of the door showed a long, black, gloomy entrance hall—­bare, bleak and draughty.  Two people stood there—­a grizzly old man, stooping, and bleared, and wrinkled, who had opened the door, and a grizzly old woman, just a shade less stooping, and bleared, and wrinkled, who held a sputtering tallow candle aloft.

“How are you, Peter?  How are you, Sally?” said Mollie’s conductor, nodding familiarly to these two antediluvians.  “Is the room ready?  Here’s the lady.”

He drew Mollie, whose arm he retained in a close grasp, a little closer to him, and Mollie noticed that, for some reason, the ancient pair shrunk back, and looked as though they were a little afraid of her.

“The room’s all ready,” said the old woman, with a pair of glittering little eyes fixed, as if fascinated, on Mollie’s pretty face.  “The missis and me’s been a-tidying of it all day long.  Poor creeter! so young and so pretty!  What a pity!”

This last was sotto voce, but Mollie’s quick ear caught it.  She looked up at her conductor, but cloak and hat and whiskers disguised him as effectually as the mask had done on other occasions.  She looked back at the old woman and held out her supplicating hands.