Not an instant too soon, if movements so cautious and catlike as hers could have betrayed her; and that was possible, judging by the distinctness with which she on her part can catch every syllable that is being uttered in the Warder's Room by the party of men gathering, as she can plainly see through a long crack in the wood, about the long table. [Sidenote: A cold welcome.] "All right, Master Hannibal," says a voice she does not know. "We wait your pleasure." "Nay," objected another, which Ruth at once recognized for one of those she had heard upon the bridge, "your commands, Master Rumbold." "By my faith! there you speak by the book, colonel, like the good soldier you are," shiveringly said a voice, whose delicate tones were also not strange to Ruth. "Pleasure's a fish that I for one should be for angling after in other preserves than the slush and bog of the Rye. Hu! hu!" shuddered the speaker. "And not so much as a stick of a blaze on your sepulchre of a hearth here, Master Hannibal! A merry welcome truly to bid your boys! and all of us as wringing wet as any of the rat vermin in your styx of a moat below there. I'm drenched to my skin." "Had I imagined it to be so thin," dryly returned the deep tones of the maltster, "I would never have invited your lordship to join our company." "And the place smells as mouldy as a vault," fretfully continued the nobleman. "I can tell you, had I known it was such a stretch from my house I'd in any case have spared you my company to-night." [Sidenote: A wrangle.] "We could have dispensed with such fine-weather friends," began a gruff surly voice, "if--" "Hold thy peace," interrupted Rumbold, "and save your wit, Master West, till my Lord of Escrick here can find his own to measure with it." "Of a truth, I confess my brains seem all washed out," said Howard more good-temperedly, "by that last slush hole I floundered into, when I set off in pursuit of the jack-o'-lanthorn, some idiot among you said was a light in the Rye House." "My Lord of Escrick makes a rare pother about a sprinkle of rain," said the voice which was strange to Ruth; "if he'd been jolted all the way from Fleet Street, as I have been, atop of the raw bones of a pack-horse like a sack of husks--" "Hush! by your leave, Master West," for the remembrance of his sufferings warmed the speaker's eloquence. "Not so loud. Some one sleeps in the adjoining chamber." "Marry! 'twould have been as well then," rejoined West, in sour, but considerably lowered tones, "if you had thought fit to entertain us in some other part of your ramshackle house here, less conveniently adapted for eavesdropping--" "And for getting off if we should be surprised," said Rumbold quietly. "Have I not explained often enough, that this chamber is in direct communication with the subterranean way to Nether Hall? You shall judge it for yourself presently, as I promised you."