III

For one deathly instant the two sat looking each into the other’s white face—­since even the priest changed colour at the sound. (While they had talked the dawn had begun to glimmer, and the windows showed grey and ghostly on the thin morning mist.) Then they rose together.  Marjorie was the first to speak.

“You must come upstairs at once,” she said.  “All is ready there, as you know.”

The priest’s lips moved without speaking.  Then he said suddenly: 

“I had best be off the back way; that is, if it is what I think—­”

“The house will be surrounded.”

“But you will have harboured me—­”

Marjorie’s lips opened in a smile.

“I have done that in any case,” she said.  She caught up the candle and blew it out, as she went towards the door.

“Come quickly,” she said.

At the door Janet met them.  Her old face was all distraught with fear.  She had that moment run downstairs again on hearing the noise.  Marjorie silenced her by a gesture....

The young carpenter had done his work excellently, and Marjorie had taken care that there had been no neglect since the work had been done.  Yet so short was the time since the hearing of the horses’ feet, that as the girl slipped out of the press again after drawing back the secret door, there came the loud knocking beneath, for which they had waited with such agony.

“Quick!” she said....

From within, as she waited, came the priest’s whisper.  “Is this to be pushed—?”

“Yes; yes.”

There was the sound of sliding wood and a little snap.  Then she closed the doors of the press again.

IV

Mr. Audrey outside grew indignant, and the more so since he was unhappy.

* * * * *

He had had the message from my lord Shrewsbury that a magistrate of her Grace should show more zeal; and, along with this, had come a private intimation that it was suspected that Mr. Audrey had at least once warned the recusants of an approaching attack.  It would be as well, then, if he would manifest a little activity....

But it appeared to him the worst luck in the world that the hunt should lead him to Mistress Manners’ door.

It was late in the afternoon that the informer had made his appearance at Matstead, thirsty and dishevelled, with the news that a man thought to be a Popish priest was in hiding on the moors; that he was being kept under observation by another informer; and that it was to be suspected that he was the man who had been missed at Padley when my lord had taken Garlick and Ludlam.  If it were the man, it would be the priest known by the name of Alban—­the fellow whom my lord’s man had so much distrusted at Fotheringay, and whom he had seen again in Derby a while later.  Next, if it were this man, he would almost certainly make for Padley if he were disturbed.