"He brought me here early last night," said she, but with a little of reproach in her voice that I knew meant I wasted good time idly. "And whither is he gone?" "Do you desire he should be present, then?" asked Idonia, very innocently. "No, but I would warn him if I could," I replied gravely, and so told her everything as it had befallen me. "Always that Malpas!" whispered the maid, and trembled so I had to clasp her tight to me. "He does not know you are here, that is clear," I said, as indeed it was manifest to both of us. "My guardian hath used this place often ere this," said Idonia, "and I suppose none thought to prate of what happened ordinarily." "Perhaps he has left you to seek out Malpas," I conjectured, and at this she nodded. "They have had some design in hand together this great while, of which I know nothing." I did not tell her that I knew it well enough, and was even commissioned to prevent it, but said-- "Wherever he hath gone, Malpas hath certainly gone to seek him; but he must not be found." "You owe him small thanks," whispered Idonia, her head low down, "and if this intends a danger to you..." I did not suffer her to finish, but asked whether she were well enough acquainted with the house to know of any means of egress from it, besides the doors that were so straitly watched. She thought a great while before she replied how, once, it might be eight years since, she being lodged there, she had gone upon some occasion into the cellars, and remembered to have noted that the window which lighted it was a sort of grate within the river wall and was even then decayed and corrupted by the salt water, so that by this time it should, she thought, be easily broken through. "The tide is out," said I, "so that if I may but get through, there is the dry bank above the pirates' gallows to go by; and after, the rest should be plain enough." Which gallows I spoke of (now all rotten) yet stood in the ooze to be flooded at high tide, it having been formerly used against such pirates and river thieves as were caught and there hanged, until, the tide rising, they were drowned. In reply to my further questionings, she said that Skene was to be sought amidst the streets about the Tower Royal, which was where I had gone that day I lost my way in the fog, when Idonia found me, and, indeed, was no great distance from Chequer Lane.