"Good creature!" whispers Sir Richard, as he enters the hall, and places his hand kindly on her shoulder, and with a very dark look; "you have always been true to me, Martha, and I depend on your good sense; not a word of my having been here to any one--not to Miss Alice! I have to search for papers. I shall be here but an hour or so. Don't lock or bar the door, mind, and get to your bed! Don't come up this way again--good-night!" "Won't you have some supper?" "No, thanks." "A glass of sherry and a bit o' something?" "Nothing." And he places his hand on her shoulder gently, and looks toward the corridor that led to her room; then taking up one of the candles she had left alight on the table in the hall, he says,-- "I'll give you a light," and he repeats, with a wondrous heavy sigh, "Good-night, dear old Martha." "God bless ye, Master Dick. Ye must chirp up a bit, mind," she says very kindly, with an earnest look in her face. "I'm getting to rest--ye needn't fear me walkin' about to trouble ye. But ye must be careful to shut the hall-door close. I agree, as it is a thing to be done; but ye must also knock at my bed-room window when ye've gane out, for I must get up, and lock the door, and make a' safe; and don't ye forget, Master Richard, what I tell ye." He held the candle at the end of the corridor, down which the wiry old woman went quickly; and when he returned to the hall, and set the candle down again, he felt faint. In his ears are ever the terrible words: "Mind, _I_ take command of the house, _I_ dispose of and appoint the servants; I don't appear, you do all ostensibly--but from garret to cellar, I'm _master_. I'll look it over, and tell you what is to be done." Sir Richard roused himself, and having listened at the staircase, he very softly opened the hall-door. The spire of the old church showed hoar in the moonlight. At the left, from under a deep shadow of elms, comes silently a tall figure, and softly ascends the hall-door steps. The door is closed gently. Alice sitting at her dressing-table, half an hour later, thought she heard steps--lowered her book, and listened. But no sound followed. Again the same light foot-falls disturbed her--and again, she was growing nervous. Once more she heard them, very stealthily, and now on the same floor on which her room was. She stands up breathless. There is no noise now. She was thinking of waking her maid, but she remembered that she and Louisa Diaper had in a like alarm, discovered old Martha, only two or three nights before, poking about the china-closet, dusting and counting, at one o'clock in the morning, and had then exacted a promise that she would visit that repository no more, except at seasonable hours. But old Martha was so pig-headed, and would take it for granted that she was fast asleep, and would rather fidget through the house and poke up everything at that hour than at any other.