"Even if forced to extremes," continued Howard, "why, one of these sharp little Frenchmen here," and he began handling one of the blades as he spoke, and laid it lightly across his finger, "would do all the business in a twinkling. What say you, Master Rumbold?" "That," answered Rumbold, breaking silence at last, "is not the point." "No, by my faith! 'Tis but the edge," cried Lord Howard, with a grimace of sudden pain, and hastily throwing down the weapon, "the foul fiend's own grindstone must have sharpened the confounded blade!" And dragging his gossamer-laced handkerchief from his pocket, he wound it round his hand. "Has it drawn blood, my lord?" timorously asked Goodenough, turning pale, and craning his neck forward. [Sidenote: A warning.] "Ay, has it, Master Sheriff," replied Howard, holding up his hand, and displaying its crimson-dyed cambric swathing, "and this helps but little to staunch it. Thanks, Master Lee," he went on, as Lawrence Lee, approaching from an obscure corner, took the wounded hand in his, and bound his own stout white linen handkerchief deftly about it; "I had better not have been quite so quick to meddle with it. Have a care what you are doing," he added, as Lee turned to replace the blade beside the rest. "Take warning by my fate." CHAPTER VIII. MOONRAKERS. "I say," doggedly began Rumbold, and taking no more notice of Lord Howard's mishap than if it had not occurred, "that this must be found, and before morning, else it will betray us." "Oh! we're betrayed! We're betrayed!" shrieked Sheppard, at the top of his small voice. "Silence, idiot!" said Rumbold, turning on him sternly; "and it is quite clear," he continued, "that it must be lying somewhere between this house and the river, since Colonel Rumsey is certain that when he stepped out of the boat he had it safe in the canvas bundle." "I'll swear to that," said Rumsey. "Now the garden has been thoroughly searched"--"Every inch of it," chorused half-a-dozen voices. "And that being the case," said the tall soldier, advancing from the hearth, where he had been standing gazing meditatively into the dying embers, "perhaps you will find it worth your while to heed now what I told you on the bridge. You may search in the garden till you're all blind. I tell you the thing fell into the water. Come, gentlemen," he went on, turning to those of the party who had accompanied him, "I am not after all, you see, such a moonraker as you would have made me out, when I told you I saw something shining in the water as we came by." "Truly you did say so, Colonel," humbly admitted those he addressed. "Verily we should not have contemned his assurance," ejaculated the snuffling tones of Master Ferguson, as he clasped his clawlike fingers, and turned upwards the ferret eyes gleaming beneath a wig almost concealing his mean little forehead; "for of a surety the hand of Providence is with those who put their faith--"