and preserved certain stories of ghosts seen there, that effectually blackened it in the susceptible minds of new house-maids and under-crooks, whose fears would not allow the sinner to wash his sins.  Sir Austin had heard of the tales circulated by his domestics underground.  He cherished his own belief, but discouraged theirs, and it was treason at Raynham to be caught traducing the left wing.  As the baronet advanced, the fact of a light burning was clear to him.  A slight descent brought him into the passage, and he beheld a poor human candle standing outside his son’s chamber.  At the same moment a door closed hastily.  He entered Richard’s room.  The boy was absent.  The bed was unpressed:  no clothes about:  nothing to show that he had been there that night.  Sir Austin felt vaguely apprehensive.  Has he gone to my room to await me? thought the father’s heart.  Something 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?”