Max did not recover his usual spirits at luncheon, where everybody else was full of mirthful anticipation of the household dance, another idea of Mr. Wedmore’s, which was to be a feature of the evening.  And after that meal, instead of offering to drive to the station to meet Miss Appleby, as everybody had expected, Max took himself off, nobody knew where, and did not return home until dusk.

Coming through a little side gate in the park, he got into the great yard behind the house, where the stables stood on one side and a huge barn, which was only used as a storage place for lumber, on the other.  And it occurred to him that if the woman of whom the groom told him were still hanging about the premises, as the servants seemed to think, this was the very place she might be expected to choose as a hiding-place.

So he pushed open the great, creaking door of the barn and went in.  It was very dark in there, and the air was cold and damp.  A musty smell from old sacks, rotting wood and mildewed straw came to his nostrils, as he made his way carefully over the boards with which the middle part of the barn had, for some forgotten purpose or other, been floored.

Little chinks of light from above showed great beams, some with ropes hanging from them, and stacks of huge lumber of fantastic shapes to right and left.

Max stood still in the middle of the floor and listened for a sound.  But he heard nothing.  Suddenly he thought of the signal by the use of which he had summoned Carrie to the door of the house by the wharf.

Getting close to one of the piles of lumber, he gave two taps on the panel of a broken wooden chest, waited a couple of seconds, and then gave two taps more.

There was a shuffling noise along the boards on the other side of the stack, followed by the striking of a match.

Max was around the obstacle in a moment.  Holding a piece of candle in her bony hand was Mrs. Higgs.

“Hello!” said he.

She said nothing.  But the candle shook in her hand, and by the glassy look of dull yet fierce surprise in her colorless eyes Max saw that this woman, who had connived at his imprisonment in the room with the dead man, had never expected to see him again—­alive.

CHAPTER XV.

MR. WEDMORE’S SECOND FREAK.

Even if Max had not had such an ugly experience of the ways of Mrs. Higgs, even if this meeting with her in the barn had been his first, his sensations would hardly have been agreeable ones.  There was something uncanny about the old woman, something which her quiet, shuffling movements and her apparent lack of interest in what went on around her only served to accentuate.  Even now, while suffering the shock of a great surprise, Max could feel rather than see the effect which the unexpected meeting had upon her.

For she uttered no cry, no word; her eyes scarcely opened wider than before.  Her jaw dropped a little, and then began to move rapidly up and down; that was all.  And yet, as Max looked at her—­at this helpless, infirm old creature with the palsied hands and the lackluster eyes—­he shivered.