But he followed his friend up-stairs, where he found the latter slightly meditative and absent, a circumstance that would have held his attention had not his mind been full of other thoughts. Dick looked out of the window, at the inn garden. It was a perfect night, with a glorious moonlight. Dick could never go to bed in his present mood. He longed to walk, to revel in the moonlight, which was all his own, now that the rest of the world was asleep. If he could but pace beneath her window! That window also, being in line with his own, looked out on the garden. Between the two windows was that of the corridor, and beneath this there was a rear door leading to the garden, which door was flanked by a vine-clad trellis. "I'm going for a stroll in the garden," said Dick, suddenly, to Lord George, who was already in bed. "I sha'n't want a candle to go to bed by." He thereupon stepped from his window to the trellis, and descended thereby to the ground, heedless of the impeding vines. Amabel's window was already dark, as his own became a moment later. The garden sloped gently, between a wall and a hedge, to the Kennet, which reflected the moon between shadows of over-arching boughs. With its small trees, its bushes and flowers, its solitary bench, and its clear spaces of short grass, all made beautiful and mysterious by the moonlight, its spring odors, and the murmur of the stream, the place seemed to Dick like some Italian garden, and he imagined himself Romeo gazing up at Juliet's balcony. In the midst of this fancy, he was rudely brought back to England by the sound of wheels and horse, and of voices speaking guardedly in very un-Italian accents, in the inn coach-yard beyond the wall that bounded one side of the garden. The sounds came to a stop, and the gate of the wall opened cautiously, whereupon Dick stepped into the shadow of the trellis flanking the rear doorway. Through the gateway he could see a rickety coach, of which the door was open and from about which there now stepped stealthily into the garden four ill-clad, desperate-looking fellows, one wearing a cloak about his lank body and stifling a cough as he walked, another carrying a large handkerchief in his hand, two others awkwardly bearing a ladder. "'Tis all clear," said the cloaked individual. "Quick work, captain, now! That's the room." And he pointed to the window of Amabel. Dick gave a violent start. What could be the purpose, concerning her chamber, of these birds of ill omen, who, doubtless through the collusion of some inn servant, had driven so secretly into the coach-yard at this hour? He decided to wait, that he might, before interfering, discover their plans.