"I had my dreams too, Jock, and I have not slept since," answered Grey, with a significant glance at the old man. "Tell me, good fellow, what know you of the panelled guest-chamber, with the row of windows looking south over the park? Ha! why look you so, man? What know you of the chamber?" "Did he put you there, my master? Then Peter lied to me, the false-tongued knave. If I had known that! No wonder the dreams were bad that came to me. The haunted room! Tush! it is not ghosts that hurt, but men who come and go at will and leave no trace behind." "I thought so," spoke Grey composedly. "Then there is a secret way of entrance into that room?" "Ay, behind the bed. I do not know the trick, but I have heard of it. Men have been done to death in that room ere this, and none the wiser for it. Oh if I had but known!" Grey’s eyes were fixed full upon the pallid face of the old man. He put the next question gravely and almost sternly. "Tell me truly, my friend. Think you that this kinsman of mine would plot to do me hurt? He made profession of friendship." "He made the same to Sir Hugh," answered Jock in a trembling voice, "and for long the master believed in him. But methinks he never would have died as he did, had he not come to live here with Mr. Barty at Hartsbourne." Grey started and changed colour, clinching his hand, "You think that this kinsman of ours compassed his death?" Jock looked over his shoulder as though fearful of listening ears. He drew a step nearer; and Dicon, with fallen jaw and staring eyes, came up close to listen. "How can I tell? I was seldom in the house. I work in the garden, and because I am a cheap servant, asking no money, but making a pittance by what I can sell, Mr. Barty has kept me here where he found me. But when the old master came, he often sent for me. Before he became too ill, he sometimes crawled to my little cottage yonder for a bit of chat. He told me the doctors and leeches told him he had but to rest and live simply in the country for a few years to be a sound man again. But for all that he dwindled and dwindled away, and was gone in two months." "Did no leech attend him here?" asked Grey breathlessly. "Not till the very last, when they sent me to Edgeware to fetch one who could do naught. Mr. Barty professed to know many cures, and the master believed in him. He eased his pain, but he sank into an ever-increasing, ever-mastering drowsiness, and he shrank away to skin and bone. It went to my heart to see him. Many’s the time when I have wondered whether it would have ended so if he had not taken Mr. Barty’s simples and draughts." "Was he poisoned, then?" asked Grey, between his shut teeth. Jock looked nervously over his shoulder; the word seemed to frighten him. He shook his old head from side to side.