I was left standing alone by the door in the darkness, with a burden lifted from my mind. We had come in time. The single slip of paper left by Henry Wilton had been the means, through a strange combination of events, to point the way to the unknown hiding-place of the boy. He was still safe, and the enemy were on a false trail. I should not have to reproach myself with the sacrifice of the child.
Yet my mind was far from easy. The enemy might have been misled, but if they had followed the road marked out in the diagram I had brought from their den, they were too close for comfort. I listened for any sound from the outside. The dogs had quieted down. Twice I thought I heard hoof-beats, and there was a chorus of barks from the rear of the house. But it was only the horses that had brought us hither, stamping impatiently as they waited.
In a few minutes the wavering light of the candle reappeared. Mrs. Knapp was carrying a bundle that I took to be the boy, and the man brought a valise and a blanket.
"It's all right," said Mrs. Knapp. "No--I can carry him--I want to carry him."
The man opened the door, then closed and locked it as I helped Mrs. Knapp into the carriage.
"Have you got him safe?" asked Dicky incredulously. "Well, I'll have to say that you know more than I thought you did." And the relief and satisfaction in his tone were so evident that I gladly repented of my suspicions of the light-hearted Dicky.
"Have you heard anything?" I asked him anxiously.
"I thought I heard a yell over here through the woods. We had better get out of here."
"Don't wait a second," said the man. "The south road comes over this other way. If you've heard anybody there, they will be here in five minutes. I'll follow you on a horse."
With an injunction to haste, I stepped after Mrs. Knapp into the carriage, the door was shut, Dicky mounted the seat, and we rolled down the road on the return journey.
"Oh, how thankful I am!" cried Mrs. Knapp. "There is a weight of anxiety off my mind. Can you imagine what I have been fearing in the last month?"
"I had thought a little about that myself," I confessed. "But we are not yet out of the woods, I am afraid."
"Hark! what's that?" said Mrs. Knapp apprehensively.
