She slightly moved the door.  The interior of the brewhouse was wrapped in gloom, but a streak of light fell towards her in a line across the floor from the inner or workshop door, which was not quite closed.  This light was unexpected, none having been visible through hole or crevice.  Glancing in, the woman found that he had placed cloths and mats at the various apertures, and hung a sack at the window to prevent the egress of a single ray.  She could also perceive from where she stood that the bar of light fell across the brewing-copper just outside the inner door, and that upon it lay the key of her bedroom.  The illuminated interior of the workshop was also partly visible from her position through the two half-open doors.  Manston was engaged in emptying a large cupboard of the tools, gallipots, and old iron it contained.  When it was quite cleared he took a chisel, and with it began to withdraw the hooks and shoulder-nails holding the cupboard to the wall.  All these being loosened, he extended his arms, lifted the cupboard bodily from the brackets under it, and deposited it on the floor beside him.

That portion of the wall which had been screened by the cupboard was now laid bare.  This, it appeared, had been plastered more recently than the bulk of the outhouse.  Manston loosened the plaster with some kind of tool, flinging the pieces into a basket as they fell.  Having now stripped clear about two feet area of wall, he inserted a crowbar between the joints of the bricks beneath, softly wriggling it until several were loosened.  There was now disclosed the mouth of an old oven, which was apparently contrived in the thickness of the wall, and having fallen into disuse, had been closed up with bricks in this manner.  It was formed after the simple old-fashioned plan of oven-building—­a mere oblate cavity without a flue.

Manston now stretched his arm into the oven, dragged forth a heavy weight of great bulk, and let it slide to the ground.  The woman who watched him could see the object plainly.  It was a common corn-sack, nearly full, and was tied at the mouth in the usual way.

The steward had once or twice started up, as if he had heard sounds, and his motions now became more cat-like still.  On a sudden he put out the light.  Anne had made no noise, yet a foreign noise of some kind had certainly been made in the intervening portion of the house.  She heard it.  ‘One of the rats,’ she thought.

He seemed soon to recover from his alarm, but changed his tactics completely.  He did not light his candle—­going on with his work in the dark.  She had only sounds to go by now, and, judging as well as she could from these, he was piling up the bricks which closed the oven’s mouth as they had been before he disturbed them.  The query that had not left her brain all the interval of her inspection—­how should she get back into her bedroom again?—­now received a solution.  Whilst he was replacing the cupboard, she would glide across the brewhouse, take the key from the top of the copper, run upstairs, unlock the door, and bring back the key again:  if he returned to bed, which was unlikely, he would think the lock had failed to catch in the staple.  This thought and intention, occupying such length of words, flashed upon her in an instant, and hardly disturbed her strong curiosity to stay and learn the meaning of his actions in the workshop.