"But tell me how this has been obtained," said Langford. "I have no time for long stories," replied his companion sharply. "There it is! that is sufficient. But I will tell you so far, I--I alone--though directed by one who knew the house well, walked through it this night, from one end to the other; and within six yards of the old man himself, with nothing but a door between us, took this key from the hiding place where he thought it so safe, and brought it away undiscovered. Now, Harry, leave me! I am not in a humour to speak much. I have matters before me that may well make me silent. Mount your horse, and be gone with all speed. Why do you linger? Oh! I will send out ere ten minutes be over, and if there be a possibility of undoing what has been done amiss, it shall be undone, on my honour. Take the back road," he added, as he opened the door for Langford; "and for worlds go no more upon the moor to-night! I ask you for my own sake," he added, seeing his companion hesitate; "not for yours, but for mine!" Langford made no reply, but mounting his horse, rode away with feelings of a nature the most mingled and the most painful. Those of the man he left behind were of a different character, but still terrible. With Langford there were feelings which he seldom experienced, doubt and hesitation as to his own course of action, mingling with vague apprehension of evil, and deep regret to see a man possessed of many noble qualities, who had been his friend, his companion, and even his protector in the early days of youth, now plunged into a current, terrible in itself, and terrible in its consequences--following a course which he had long suspected that Gray did really follow, but without having conviction forced upon him till that night. With Franklin Gray it was very different; his whole feelings, for the time, were swallowed up in one stern and gloomy resolution. There was anger, indeed, at the bottom of that resolution; wrath of the most bitter and deadly kind; but even that was almost lost in the effort to exclude from his thoughts everything that might shake, even in the least degree, the dark and terrible determination he had formed. As soon as Langford had quitted him he returned to the hall in which he had left his comrades, and there, as he expected, he found the party increased by the presence of the two men, Wiley and Hardcastle, whose names we have mentioned more than once, and whom we have seen busy in the attack upon Alice Herbert.