Ella would have left the room when the cloth was drawn, but her uncle bade her stay; for which Conroy thanked him inwardly. The young artist quickly found that if the evening were not to languish, perhaps end in failure, he must do the brunt of the talking himself. Mr. Denison was no great talker at the best of times, and Ella, from some cause or another, was more reserved than usual; so Conroy plunged off at a tangent, and did his best to interest his hearers with an account of his experiences in Paris during the disastrous days of the Commune. As Desdemona of old was thrilled by the story of Othello's adventures, so was Ella thrilled this evening. Even Mr. Denison grew interested, and for once let his mind wander for a little while from his own interests and his own concerns. As they sat thus, the September evening slowly darkened. The candles were never lighted till the last moment. Conroy sat facing the windows which opened into the private garden at the back of the Hall. The boundary of this garden was an ivy-covered wall about six feet high. A low-browed door in one corner gave access to the kitchen-garden, beyond which was the orchard, and last of all a wide stretch of park. There were flowers in the borders round the garden wall, but opposite the windows grew two large yews, whose sombre foliage clouded much of the light that would otherwise have crept in through the diamond-paned windows, and made more gloomy still an apartment which, even on the brightest of summer days, never looked anything but cheerless and cold. On this overcast September eve the yew-trees outside blackened slowly, and seemed to draw the darkness down from the sky. Aaron came in at last with candles, and while he was disposing them Conroy rose, crossed to one of the windows, and stood looking out into the garden. It was almost dark by this time. While looking thus, he suddenly saw the figure of a man emerge from behind one of the yews, stare intently into the room for a moment, and then vanish behind the other yew. Conroy was startled. Was there, then, really truth in the Squire's assertion that spies were continually hovering round the Hall? Somehow he had deemed it nothing more than the hallucination of a sick man's fancy. With what object could spies come to Heron Dyke? It was a mystery that puzzled Conroy. He crossed over to Ella and told her in a low voice what he had seen. She looked up with a startled expression in her eyes. "Don't say a word about it to my uncle," she whispered. "It would only worry him, and could do no good. Both he and Aaron often assert that they see strange people lurking about the house; but I myself have never seen anyone." The Squire began to talk again, and nothing more passed. When Conroy rose to take his leave, his host held his hand and spoke to him cordially.