Cuthbert looked keenly around him, and soon made out that these steps must certainly lead down to the cellar beneath the Parliament Houses of which he had recently heard.  That other cellar he had visited so many months before was close at hand—­close to these great buildings; and this tall dark man seemed to have some mysterious connection with both.

What could it all mean? what did it mean?  Cuthbert felt as though he were on the eve of some strange discovery, but what that discovery could be he could not guess.

He was aroused from his reverie by the sound of approaching footfalls along the roadway, and he hastily stood upright and walked onwards to meet the advancing pedestrian.  The man carried a light which he flashed in Cuthbert’s face, and the youth saw that it was one of the men-at-arms on guard over these buildings.

“What are you doing here?” asked the man civilly, though in slightly peremptory fashion.

“I did not know that this road was anything but public,” answered Cuthbert, with careless boldness.  “I have walked in London streets before now, no man interfering with me.”

“Have a care how and where you walk at night,” returned the man, passing by without further comment.  “There be many perils abroad in the streets—­more than perchance you wot of.”

Cuthbert thanked him for the hint, and went on his way.  He would have liked well enough to linger till the tall man emerged again, but he saw that to do so would only excite suspicion.

Although it was quite dark by this time, it was not really late; for it was the last day of October save one, and masses of heavy cloud obscured the sky.  Now and again a ray of moonlight glinted through these ragged masses, but for the rest it was profoundly dark in the narrow streets, and only a little lighter on the open river.

The tide was running in fast, with a strong cold easterly wind.  Cuthbert saw that it would be hard work to row against it.

“Better wait for the ebb; it will not be long in coming now,” he said to himself as he noted the height of the tide; and stepping into his boat, he pulled idly out into midstream, as being a safer place of waiting than the dark wharf, to find himself drifting up with the strong current, which he did not care to try to stem.

“Beware of the dark-flowing river!” spoke a voice within him; “beware of the black cellar!”

He started, for it almost seemed as though some one had spoken the words in his ear, and a little thrill of fear ran through him.  But all was silent save for the wash of the current as it bore him rapidly onwards, and he knew that the voice was one in his own head.

Upwards and upwards he drifted; was it by his own will, or not?  He did not himself know, he could not have said.  He only knew that a spell seemed upon him, that an intense desire had seized him to look once again upon that lonely house beside the river bank.  He had no wish to try to obtain entrance there.  He felt that he was treading the dark mazes of some unhallowed plot.  But this very suspicion only increased his burning curiosity; and surely there could no harm come of one look at that dark and lonely place.