like a tear quivered in his arid eyes as he meditated and hoped this might be so.  His own sleeping-room faced that of his son.  He strode to it with a quick heart.  It was empty.  Alarm dislodged anger from his jealous heart, and dread of evil put a thousand questions to him that were answered in air.  After pacing up and down his room he determined to go and ask the boy Thompson, as he called Ripton, what was known to him.

The chamber assigned to Master Ripton Thompson was at the northern extremity of the passage, and overlooked Lobourne and the valley to the West.  The bed stood between the window and the door.  Six Austin found the door ajar, and the interior dark.  To his surprise, the boy Thompson’s couch, as revealed by the rays of his lamp, was likewise vacant.  He was turning back when he fancied he heard the sibilation of a whispering in the room.  Sir Austin cloaked the lamp and trod silently toward the window.  The heads of his son Richard and the boy Thompson were seen crouched against the glass, holding excited converse together.  Sir Austin listened, but he listened to a language of which he possessed not the key.  Their talk was of fire, and of delay:  of expected agrarian astonishment:  of a farmer’s huge wrath:  of violence exercised upon gentlemen, and of vengeance:  talk that the boys jerked out by fits, and that came as broken links of a chain impossible to connect.  But they awake curiosity.  The baronet condescended to play the spy upon his son.

Over Lobourne and the valley lay black night and innumerable stars.

“How jolly I feel!” exclaimed Ripton, inspired by claret; and then, after a luxurious pause—­“I think that fellow has pocketed his guinea, and cut his lucky.”

Richard allowed a long minute to pass, during which the baronet waited anxiously for his voice, hardly recognizing it when he heard its altered tones.

“If he has, I’ll go; and I’ll do it myself.”

“You would?” returned Master Ripton.  “Well, I’m hanged!—­I say, if you went to school, wouldn’t you get into rows!  Perhaps he hasn’t found the place where the box was stuck in.  I think he funks it.  I almost wish you hadn’t done it, upon my honour—­eh?  Look there! what was that?  That looked like something.—­I say! do you think we shall ever be found out?”

Master Ripton intoned this abrupt interrogation verb seriously.

“I don’t think about it,” said Richard, all his faculties bent on signs from Lobourne.

“Well, but,” Ripton persisted, “suppose we are found out?”

“If we are, I must pay for it.”

Sir Austin breathed the better for this reply.  He was beginning to gather a clue to the dialogue.  His son was engaged in a plot, and was, moreover, the leader of the plot.  He listened for further enlightenment.

“What was the fellow’s name?” inquired Ripton.

His companion answered, “Tom Bakewell.”