I don't think, however, that mother slept much. Afterwards I heard that she had never put out her light. It was, I think, about four o'clock and the moon was setting when I heard a light shower of stones and sand tinkle on my window. I made sure that it was father, though what he wanted with me I could not imagine. For he always took a pass key with him, and the extra bolts of the house door were never shut when he was out anywhere on business. He never liked any one to interfere with his comings and goings, you see. So much so that we none of us durst so much as ask him when he got back in the morning, for fear of having our heads snapped off. It was, however, Bob Kingsman who was below. "Come down, Joe!" he whispered, "an' dinna let the mistress hear ye!" I was at his side, with boots over my stockinged feet, almost before I could get myself awake. "Is it father come home?" I asked sleepily. Bob said nothing, but led me round to the stables. And there, nosing the lock of the inner door, saddled and bridled, stood Dapple, waiting to be let into her own stall. "Pass your hand over her," said Bob. The mare was warm, the perspiration and the flecks of foam still upon her. Bob held up his lantern. The bridle was fastened to a plaited thong of her mane. And the plait was the same peculiar one which my father had remarked in the whip lash in the mail cart, the morning of the loss of poor Harry Foster! * * * * * By a sort of instinct Bob opened the stable door, and, just as if nothing had happened, the mare moved to her place. He was going to take off the saddle and undo the reins, but I stopped him. There was a great fear at my heart, for which after all there did not seem to be any very definite cause. Father might have gone up to his room without awaking anybody. The great door of the yard was locked. Some one, therefore, must have unlocked it, let in Dapple, and relocked it. Who but my father could have done this? At worst he had met with some accident, and was even then dressing a wound or reposing himself. That is what we said, the one to the other. But I am quite sure that neither of us believed it, even as the words were leaving our mouths. Then we heard something that made us both jump--the voice of my mother. She was speaking down from her window. I could see the white frill of her cap. "Father," she called out in a voice in which she never spoke to me. "Is that you?" Then in quite another tone, "Who has left the stable door open?" "Me, mistress--and Joe!" said Bob. "Then there is something wrong! I am coming down." And the next moment we could hear her, for she had never undressed, descending the stairway. "What shall we do--quick--what shall we say?" Bob Kingsman was never very quick at invention. "Tell her 'an accident,'" I whispered, "we are going to look for him--say nothing about the yard door having been opened and shut again."