He breathed more freely now, but a curious chill ran through him, and he felt ready to retreat as he saw that the folding-doors were not closed, and that the faint light from the back window made several articles of furniture look grotesque and strange. "Here am I, just twenty, and as cowardly as a girl," he muttered. "I won't be afraid." All the same, though, his heart beat violently, and he shrank from moving for some minutes. "And Dick waiting," he muttered. Those words gave him the strength he sought, and, going on tiptoe across the room, half feeling as if a hand were going to be laid upon his shoulder to keep him back, he drew aside the blind, opened the French window, passed out, closed it after him, and stood there in the balcony, gazing at the heaving, star-spangled sea. "I can't be a man yet," he said to himself. "If I were I shouldn't feel so nervous. It is very horrid, though, the first time after that old woman was killed; and by some one coming up there. Ugh! it's very creepy. I half fancied I could hear the old girl snoring as she used." He leaned over the balcony rails and looked to right and left, but all seemed silent in the sleeping town, and after listening for a minute or two he seized the support of the balcony roof, stepped over the rails, lowered himself a little, and clasping the pillar with his legs, slid easily down, rested for a moment on the railings with his feet between the spikes, and then, clasping the pillar, dropped lightly down upon the pavement, to be seized by two strong hands by arm and throat, a dark figure having stepped out of the doorway to hold him fast. Volume One, Chapter XIV. SOMETHING THROWN IN THE SEA. "What--" "Hush! Who are you? What are you doing here? Why, Morton Denville!" "Richard Linnell! Is it you? Oh, I say, you did give me a scare. I thought it was that chap come again." "What do you mean?" "Why, the fellow who did that, you know," said the lad with a nod upwards. "But why have you stolen down like this, sir?" "Don't talk so loud; you'll wake the old man. Only going fishing." "Fishing? Now?" "Yes. Fisherman Dick's waiting for me on the pier." "Is this true?" asked Linnell sternly. "True! What do you mean?" said the lad haughtily. "Did you ever know a Denville tell a lie?" "No, of course not. But it looks bad, young fellow, to see you stealing out of the house like this, and after that ghastly affair." "Hush, don't talk about it," said the lad with a shudder. "But, I say, how came you here?" "I--I--" stammered Linnell. "Oh, I was walking along the cliff and I saw the window open. I thought something was wrong, and I crossed to see." "Did you think some one had come to run away with my sister, Mr Linnell?" said the lad with a sneering laugh. "Ah, well, you needn't have been alarmed, and if they had it would have been no business of yours." Richard Linnell drew his breath with a faint hiss.