Ann turned to Tregenna, who had followed modestly in the brigadier’s steps. “And pray, sir, what may you want here? Have you a warrant too?” “Nay, Mistress Ann, I would fain have put some questions to you had you been in better health to answer them. As it is, I cannot trouble you now; I will come hither again at some more convenient season.” “Nay, sir, there’s no time like the present,” retorted Ann in a tone of considerable irritation; “ask what questions you please.” “Well, then, I have heard talk that you have a barn that’s haunted, and I would be glad to know whether ’tis by spirits or by men.” “Sure, the best way to answer that would be to see for yourself, sir,” retorted Ann sharply. “Nay, there’s a time for such apparitions, and that’s not noonday,” said Tregenna. “Come at what time you please, sir, and satisfy yourself by ear and eye.” “You mean that?” “Faith, sir, I do.” And she turned her back upon him again, and crouched once more over the fire, swaying backwards and forwards, with her hand to her swollen face. Tregenna saw that she was in pain, and made allowance for her irritation. He retreated to the other end of the long apartment, and awaited the return of the soldiers, who were now engaged in making an exhaustive search of the premises. Not much to his surprise, they presently returned to the front of the porch, while the brigadier re-entered the room, hot, flushed, and in a very bad temper. They had hunted in every corner of the house, of the outbuildings, of the barns, but not a man was to be found. They took a very cold leave of the old farmer’s wife, and of the farmer himself, who came respectfully to the door to see them off. He was about seventy years of age, and almost childish, and he obeyed mechanically his wife’s instructions to salute the visitors. When the party had ridden off, before the eyes of the old couple, and the last of the troopers’ horses had crossed the bridge over the stream at the bottom of the hill, Ann looked across, with a laugh, to the woman at the spinning-wheel. “’Twas lucky they were but men, Jack,” said she, “or they’d have found out long since that, while thy wheel went round, there was nothing spun!” And the woman at the spinning-wheel rose to a full height of some six feet, took off the cap and the gray woman’s wig, and disclosed to view the sallow, thin face and mouse-colored hair of “Long Jack,” the smuggler. CHAPTER IX. TRAITRESS OR FRIEND? The October sunshine was bright; there was a pleasant, bracing breeze coming from the sea; the brown trees were at their prettiest, as they shed their showers of dead leaves at the lightest touch of the wind: yet the brigadier and Lieutenant Tregenna, as they rode side by side away from Rede Hall, noted none of these things: for to them the sky was lowering and the wind whistled of failure and disappointment.