None thought of going farther. Though I knew very well that behind the hanging of dull purple at the lectern was the door by which Mr. Ablethorpe had saved his strange parishioners, and so cheated the hasty angers of Breckonside. Nor did I tell them of it. Somehow I was no longer a leader. And deep in my heart I felt sure that if Elsie were indeed there, Mr. Ablethorpe would give his life rather than that any harm should come to her. Besides Elsie and I had been so many times in danger of our lives, in that very place even, that I knew somehow she would come back to me unhurt. At any rate, the actual prison house where she was hidden was far beyond our ken. None of us thought of searching on the other side of the moat, where was the underground oven of the Cistercians, in which Elsie (as she has already told) was interned. Perhaps I did wrong in not revealing the secret of the passage. But then if there had been bloodshed--and our folk were quite in the mood for it--the death or ill-usage of these poor innocents (I do not speak of Miss Orrin or Mad Jeremy) would have been on my head. On the whole, I am still convinced that I acted wisely. And I am sure also that Mr. Ablethorpe did so. For he had, there was no doubt, hurried the sisters Honorine, Camilla, and Sidonia, with their eldest sister Miss Orrin, from the chapel where he had known he would be sure to find them at that hour, by the passage along which I had chased him, and had finally hidden them safely in the range of underground buildings that had been the store and treasure-houses of the monks in the days of the border moss-troopers. For then each good wife of a peel tower sent her husband to "borrow" from the holy clerks of the Moated Abbey as often as the larder and money bag were empty. And her way was a woman's way. She served him at dinner time with only this--a clean spur upon an empty plate, which being interpreted meant, "If thou would'st eat, good man of mine, rise and ride." They lived in dangerous territory, these good monks, and it is small wonder if after their departure the moated island kept its repute. The very wealth of "hidie-holes" conduced to deeds that feared the light. Mad Jeremy in his outcast days had sheltered there. He had explored them, and that knowledge had been abundantly utilized since the purchase of the Grange by Mr. Stennis. The whole situation was most favourable for his traffic, and even now when its good repute was blown upon, the Cistercian abbots' "hidie-hole" still showed itself capable of keeping its secrets. Our Breckonsiders were proverbially slow of belief, but they could not get over the facts. There before us was the house of Deep Moat, all open to the eye, silent like a church on week days, prepared as for visitors from floor to roof tree. And nothing to be found, neither there, nor in the numerous out-buildings of which Mr. Bailiff Ball, a man of approven probity, had the charge.