I hoped so too; but there was no judging how much Dethel had contrived to ascertain respecting us and our affairs. I went to the corridor window again and listened. The noise made by the men was now plainly distinguishable. It seemed as if they were trying to file or cut their way through some obstruction. After listening for a few moments, I went back to my room and began almost mechanically to put on a few articles of clothing, asking myself again and again as I did so whether it was not possible to do something—though what that something ought to be I knew no more than the man in the moon. The nearest house was a quarter of a mile away; and even if I could have stolen out unnoticed by way of the front-door, before I could have reached the farm and brought back help, the burglars would have effected their purpose and decamped. Our pecuniary means at that time were very straitened. For some time back John had been paying off some old family debts; and the loss of the ninety pounds—which, as a matter of course, he would feel bound to make good—would be a great blow to him. If I could only have got at the money, and have hidden it where the burglars would not be likely to find it, I felt that I should have accomplished something. But the bag was locked up in John’s strong mahogany desk, and was as utterly beyond my reach as if it had been in the coffers of the Bank of England, while yet it could hardly have been placed more conveniently ready to the hands of the thieves. To them the strong mahogany desk would seem a trifling obstacle indeed. All this time, metaphorically speaking, I was wringing my hands, knowing full well how precious were the fast-fleeting moments, but only feeling my helplessness the more, the more I strove to discern some loophole of escape. Oh, the wretchedness of such a feeling! I hope never to experience it again in the same degree as I experienced it that night. The lightning, if not quite so vivid as it had been a little while previously, still came in as frequent flashes, and by its light my sister and I made a hurried toilet. Our house stood a little way back from the high-road, from which it was divided by a tiny lawn and a low screen of evergreens. Once or twice in the course of the night one of the mounted constabulary would ride slowly past as he went his rounds; but I was without any knowledge as to the particular time when he might be expected, or whether, in fact, the time at which he might be looked for at any specified point did not vary from night to night. Still, there was just a possibility that he might put in an appearance at any moment; so I stationed Bessie at the window to keep a lookout for him, and be in readiness to raise an alarm the moment she heard the tramp of his horse’s hoofs. For once in a way the lightning was something to be thankful for; each flash lighted up the high-road for a considerable distance on both sides of the house.