Then Katherine bethought her to go again to the gardener’s wife in the lodge, who had a lantern. She had been woke up before, perhaps it was less harm to wake her up again (this was not logical, but Katherine was above logic). Finally, the woman was roused, and her husband along with her, and the lantern lighted, and the three made a circle of the shrubberies. There was nothing to be found there. The man declared that the door was not only locked but jammed, so that it would be very hard to open it, and he unhesitatingly swore that it was the _Stella_ which was now gliding round beyond the Bunbridge cliffs. “How do you know it is the _Stella_? It might be any yacht,” cried Katherine. The man did not condescend to make any explanation. “I just knows it,” he said. It was proved presently by this messenger, despatched in haste to ascertain, that the _Stella_ was gone from the pier, and there was nothing more to be said. The sight of these three, hunting in every corner, filling the grounds with floating gleams of light, and voices and steps no longer subdued, while the house lay open full of sleep, the lamp burning in the hall but nobody stirring, was a strange sight. At length there was a sound heard in the silent place. A window was thrown open, a night-capped head was thrust into the air. “What the deuce is all this row about?” cried the voice of Mr. Tredgold. “Who’s there? Look out for yourselves, whoever you are; I’m not going to have strangers in my garden at this hour of the night.” And the old man, startled, put a climax to the confusion by firing wildly into space. The gardener’s wife gave a shriek and fell, and the house suddenly woke up, with candles moving from window to window, and men and women calling out in different tones of fury and affright, “Who is there? Who is there?” CHAPTER XVII.