“Who is in the house besides you, Lockwood?” says the Colonel.

“There be the laundry-maid, and the kitchen-maid, Madam Beatrix’s maid, the man from London, and that be all; and he sleepeth in my lodge away from the maids,” says old Lockwood.

Esmond scribbled a line with a pencil on the note, giving it to the old man, and bidding him go on to his lady.  We knew why Beatrix had been so dutiful on a sudden, and why she spoke of “Eikon Basilike.”  She writ this letter to put the Prince on the scent, and the porter out of the way.

“We have a fine moonlight night for riding on,” says Esmond; “Frank, we may reach Castlewood in time yet.”  All the way along they made inquiries at the post-houses, when a tall young gentleman in a gray suit, with a light brown periwig, just the color of my lord’s, had been seen to pass.  He had set off at six that morning, and we at three in the afternoon.  He rode almost as quickly as we had done; he was seven hours a-head of us still when we reached the last stage.

We rode over Castlewood Downs before the breaking of dawn.  We passed the very spot where the car was upset fourteen years since, and Mohun lay.  The village was not up yet, nor the forge lighted, as we rode through it, passing by the elms, where the rooks were still roosting, and by the church, and over the bridge.  We got off our horses at the bridge and walked up to the gate.

“If she is safe,” says Frank, trembling, and his honest eyes filling with tears, “a silver statue to Our Lady!” He was going to rattle at the great iron knocker on the oak gate; but Esmond stopped his kinsman’s hand.  He had his own fears, his own hopes, his own despairs and griefs, too; but he spoke not a word of these to his companion, or showed any signs of emotion.

He went and tapped at the little window at the porter’s lodge, gently, but repeatedly, until the man came to the bars.

“Who’s there?” says he, looking out; it was the servant from Kensington.

“My Lord Castlewood and Colonel Esmond,” we said, from below.  “Open the gate and let us in without any noise.”

“My Lord Castlewood?” says the other; “my lord’s here, and in bed.”

“Open, d—­n you,” says Castlewood, with a curse.

“I shall open to no one,” says the man, shutting the glass window as Frank drew a pistol.  He would have fired at the porter, but Esmond again held his hand.

“There are more ways than one,” says he, “of entering such a great house as this.”  Frank grumbled that the west gate was half a mile round.  “But I know of a way that’s not a hundred yards off,” says Mr. Esmond; and leading his kinsman close along the wall, and by the shrubs which had now grown thick on what had been an old moat about the house, they came to the buttress, at the side of which the little window was, which was Father Holt’s private door.  Esmond climbed up to this easily, broke a pane that had been mended, and touched the spring inside, and the two gentlemen passed in that way, treading as lightly as they could; and so going through the passage into the court, over which the dawn was now reddening, and where the fountain plashed in the silence.