“What! at dark hour?” ejaculated Palethorpe with a laugh. “Come along, you young liar! you shan't escape that way.” Accordingly he dragged the lad up the garden, and behind the house, into the spacious barn, of which Miss Sowersoft had spoken: and, while that innocent lady went to procure a lantern, her favourite held him tightly by the collar; save when, occasionally, to beguile the time until her return, he regaled him with a severe shake, and an additional curse or two upon his vagabond and mischievous carcass. “Do you think he knows anything about it?” asked Miss Sowersoft aside to Palethorpe, as she entered the barn, and the dim light of her horn-lantern summoned to view the spectral appearances--rather than the distinct objects themselves--of various implements of husbandry, and of heaps of thrashed wheat and straw scattered around. “Well, I don't know; but I should think not much,” said he. “I hope not,” rejoined his mistress, “or it will get into everybody's mouth. But we will question him very closely; we 'll have it out of him by hook or by crook.” She then held a broken side of the lantern a little above Colin's face, in order to cast the better light upon it; and proceeded to question the culprit. “Now, before I ask you a single question, promise to tell me the truth, and nothing but the truth. Now, mark; I shall know whether you speak the truth or not, so it will be of no use to try to deceive me. Tell me whether you heard me and Mr. Palethorpe talking in the garden; and whether you saw him pick me up so very kindly when I slipped down; and then tell me for what purpose you were standing behind those trees? No falsehoods, now. The truth, nothing else. Take care; because if you say anything untrue I shall know it directly; and then woe be to you for your trouble?” “I always do tell truth,” replied Colin, crying, “without being frightened into it that way. I'm sure I had only been writing a letter to my mother and Fanny; and I stood there because I did not want anybody to catch me.” “And why did not you want anybody to catch you?” “Why, because I didn't,” answered Colin. “Because you didn't!” exclaimed Mr. Palethorpe, as he emerged from out the shadow of Miss Sowersoft's figure; “what answer is that, you sulky ill-looking whelp? Give meesis a proper answer, or I 'll send my fist in your face in a minnit!” Miss Sowersoft put her hand on Palethorpe's arm to keep him back,--not so much to prevent him carrying his threat into execution, as because his interference seemed to imply a doubt of her own abilities in worming all she wanted to know out of the boy before her. “But _why_ didn't you?” she asked again, more emphatically. “Because they might want to read my letter.” “Oh,--there's something in it not to be seen, is there?” continued the inquisitor, as her cheeks reddened with fears of she knew not what. “It is all truth, every word of it!” contended Colin.