The little baronet took his hand from the saddle, and looked at the other with a puzzled and rather angry expression. “’Tis round by the north wing, I understand,” said he coldly--“a grating that gives light to some secret hole below the basement,”--and with a brief “Good-day to you!” he turned and walked away. Mr. Tuke made no attempt to follow and conciliate him. He was in fact worried out of all present geniality by the constant strain upon his faculties engendered of wearying suspicion. While he moved so blind and helpless, a friendship that was curious merely confounded him. Therefore, instead of succumbing to a natural instinct of good-fellowship, he merely pricked his horse on, and rode round by the further wing of the house. Hitherto he had taken no concern to examine the nature of the opening that admitted light and air to the “Priest’s Hole.” Now, he had little difficulty in identifying the actual spot, for, in addition to its being below a barred aperture in the house-side, which he felt convinced was that that belonged to the gloomy chamber within, its neighbourhood presented unmistakable signs of some recent trespass. A massive grating of wrought-iron, sunk deep in the masonry of the wall, which it pierced at a basement depth of five or six feet, looked upon a sunless little area--a mere narrow box of cemented stones; and this, without doubt, was the object he sought. The excavation had been so matted in and overgrown with a generation of bramble and dog-wood and wayfaring tree, that no one might have guessed the pit sunk within the mass, had not a torn opening in the latter, bristling with white splints of branches, led him to investigation, as it led the horseman in the present instance. He dismounted, and forcing his body through the aperture, came upon the dank twilight well, and looked down. Then, as his eyes adapted their vision to the gloom, he saw that ineffectual hands had been busy at the grating--filing at it--chipping at the stones in which it was embedded--vainly, in that cabined space, endeavouring to force it from its iron grip. “H’m!” muttered he, as he rent his way to the daylight once more. “Luck and Mr. Turk are my guardian angels hitherto. I must face this business in sober earnest.” Walking round to the front again, he saw that Sir David had ridden away, and that Whimple was standing at the porch watching the operations of the men. Waiting until they were alone together for a moment--“Why did you never tell me of that attempt on the ‘Priest’s Hole’?” said he quietly. Nothing of course in reply, but that same cursed look of distress and muttering of near inaudible evasions. “Here,” he said in the same tone, “take my horse!” He walked through the house till he came to a certain dreary stone chamber and to a ring set in the boards. Here he wrenched up the flap, and leapt into the dusky hole beneath.