’Yes, the drawers were there, he supposed; those were the very ones; he stooped but little; it must have been the top one, or the next to it.  The thing was about as long as a drumstick, like a piece of whip handle, with a spring in it; it bent this way and that, as he dried it in the towel, and at the butt it was ribbed round and round with metal rings—­devilish heavy.’

So they examined the drawers again, took everything out of them, and Captain Cluffe, not thinking it a soldier-like occupation, tacitly declined being present at it, and, turning on his heel, stalked out of the room.

‘What’s become of it, Ma’am?’ said Lowe, suddenly and sternly, turning upon Mrs. Jukes, and fixing his eyes on hers.  There was no guilty knowledge there.

‘He never had any such thing that I know of,’ she answered stoutly; ’and nothing could be hid from me in these drawers, Sir; for I had the key, except when it lay in the lock, and it must ha’ been his horsewhip; it has some rings like of leather round it, and he used to lay it on these drawers.’

Cluffe was, perhaps, a little bit stupid, and Lowe knew it; but it was the weakness of that good magistrate to discover in a witness for the crown many mental and moral attributes which he would have failed to recognise in him had he appeared for the prisoner.

‘And where’s that whip, now?’ demanded Lowe.

‘By the hall-door, with his riding-coat, Sir,’ answered the bewildered housekeeper.

‘Go on, if you please, Ma’am, and let me see it.’

So to the hall they went, and there, lying across the pegs from which Mr. Dangerfield’s surtout and riding-coat depended, there certainly was a whip with the butt fashioned very much in the shape described by Captain Cluffe; but alas, no weapon—­a mere toy—­leather and cat-gut.

Lowe took it in his hand, and weighing it with a look of disgust and disappointment, asked rather impatiently—­

‘Where’s Captain Cluffe?’

The captain had gone away.

‘Very well, I see,’ said Lowe, replacing the whip; ’that will do.  The hound!’

Mr. Lowe now re-entered the little parlour, where the incongruous crowd, lighted up with Mr. Dangerfield’s wax lights, and several kitchen candles flaring in greasy brass sticks, were assisting at the treatment of the master of the castle and the wounded constables.

‘Well, Sir,’ said Mr. Dangerfield, standing erect, with his coat sleeve slit, and his arm braced up in splints, stiff and helpless in a sling, and a blot of blood in his shirt sleeve, contrasting with the white intense smirk of menace upon his face; ’if you have quite done with my linen and my housekeeper, Sir, I’m ready to accompany you under protest, as I’ve already said, wherever you design to convey my mangled person.  I charge you, Sir, with the safety of my papers and my other property which you constrain me to abandon in this house; and I think you’ll rue this night’s work to the latest hour of your existence.’