For it was indeed this very parlor that the footfalls were approaching. Dick led the terrified wife back into the bedchamber, and returned instantly to the parlor, in time to see Squire Bullcott burst in from the corridor. Dick had not yet closed the bedchamber door, and he now left it slightly ajar, remembering his experience in the St. Valier house in Quebec, and thinking by this negligence to disarm suspicion. The Squire was followed by the two faithful henchmen who had used Dick violently twice in the past. At sight of Wetheral, the Squire stood aghast. Dick was near the bedchamber door. On the floor beside him was an open portmanteau, very long, in which lay, among clothes, a dress sword of Lord George's. Dick stooped and took up this pretty weapon, as if merely to examine its jewelled hilt. "What, you cur!" cried Bullcott, as soon as he had got breath. "So 'tis you she ran away with! So you thought to revenge yourself on me by seducing my wife!" "Mr. Bullcott is too hasty to vilify that angelic but mistreated lady," said Dick, quietly, but with scorn as fine as the edge of the sword he was feeling. "Hear the mongrel! He'd come over me with talk like a fine gentleman's in a play! The base-born impostor! He's got the woman hid somewhere about!" "You can see for yourself that you lie!" said Dick, with a swift look around the parlor. "She's in that other room," cried Bullcott, truly. "She ain't in her own chamber, and she _is_ with you. I paid a chambermaid a guinea to tell me so, and what you pay a guinea for can't be false. Look ye, Curry!" The Squire whispered a few words to one of his followers, and that one at once left the room. "Now, Pike, go ahead and knock that rascal down, and then I'll go in and catch her. I'll show--zounds and blood! Sir Hilary Englefield!" It was indeed the voice of the fox-hunting baronet, and as it approached the parlor door, making a great hullabaloo, it seemed to throw the formidable Bullcott into a panic. "Did the knaves that bungled last night's business sell me out to him, I wonder?" queried Squire Bullcott of his remaining adherent. Dick had a sudden illumination. 'Twas Squire Bullcott that had persecuted Miss Englefield at Bath, planned her abduction while his own wife was availing herself of his absence to run away from him, and nearly succeeded in kidnapping his own wife by mistake! His present terror of Sir Hilary, then, arose from the possibility that Sir Hilary had learned of the Squire's design against that baronet's sister. But that terror proved ill-grounded. When Sir Hilary bounced into the parlor, he greeted the now quaking Bullcott with a single friendly word and bow, showing he knew not yet who had instigated the kidnapping; and then turned his wrath on Wetheral. The landlord, who had tried to prevent his entrance, had followed him in, and now made futile efforts to avoid a scandalous scene.