He held the branches of the thicket apart for her, and she stole in, wondering. It was all inviolate here, unapproached and unprofaned. No one of the countless footprints that marked the recent havoc had ventured within a score yards of the place. They entered, and the green closed behind them. It gave Brion a thrill to think of his latest visit. He hurried Joan through, into the stone belvedere, up to the wheel, and, turning the great cylinder, found and lowered the movable panel and slipped it into its socket in the wall. ‘Look down,’ he said, with the conscious smile of a conjurer. ‘O, Brion! What is it?’ ‘It is steps, dear, leading down to a little stone chamber, quarried deep under the floor.’ ‘Who put it there?’ ‘Nay, I know not. Not Fulke, I think: it must have been older than his time. But, whoever put it, I discovered it. It was there I hid John Melton, and therein he lay for three weeks before being removed to the house.’ ‘Let me go down and see. O, do!’ ‘Why, you baby! Well, wait while I enter first and kindle a light, if one remains. There should.’ He laughed to her, and, descending into the pit, sought about in the gloom for the bracket on the wall which he himself had placed there, and which he knew ought to contain every material for striking a fire. It was there, and amply provided--even more so than he seemed to remember--and it was no long while before he had a taper flaring in an iron sconce. Then he turned, and looked about him--and stood looking. What was there unfamiliar about this place, so intimately associated with his last days at home? Something--something significant of an occupation which did not wholly tally with his memories of the one he had ended. He recalled very distinctly the look of the chamber as he had last seen it--the mattress bed, the brazier, the heavy cloth pushed back by the invalid himself into the corner where he had lain. Now all three lay flung apart in a heap, and, where the first and last had been, stood--what? Before he could stoop to examine, he heard Joan’s voice entreating:-- ‘Brion! How long you are!’ He hurried to the steps and up them, and half emerging: ‘Come down--quick!’ he said. ‘There is something odd here.’ She obeyed, readily enough--negotiating the narrow opening with grace but caution, while he stood below to guide her--and in another moment was wondering beside him in the chamber. ‘It is not as I left it,’ he said. ‘Some one has been in here since then.’ ‘The stranger himself, mayhap,’ she murmured, gazing open-eyed about her. ‘Yes, but why? He could not while he lay a’bed; and afterwards he had no need. Was this brought by him?’ He strode a step, and lifted from the wall, against which it leaned, a short heavy crowbar. But he had hardly raised the thing, when he flung it down with an exclamation. ‘What is that against the wall there?’