to reality and he was rising from his chair to retire for the night when a sound from outside the window made him sit down again. It was the sound of a step on the gravel path, a step stealthy and light, a real sound and no contraption of the imagination.

The idea of burglars sprang up in his mind, but was dismissed; that was no burglar’s footstep—and yet! He listened. The sound had ceased and now came a faint rubbing as of a hand feeling for the window followed by the sharp rapping of a knuckle on the glass. 42

42

“Hullo,” cried Pinckney, jumping to his feet and approaching the shuttered window. “Who’s there?”

“It’s me,” said a voice. “I’m locked out. Byrne’s bolted the front door. Go to the hall door, will you, please, and let me in?”

“Phyl,” said Pinckney to himself. “Good heavens!” Then to the other, “I’m coming.”

Byrne had left a lamp lighted in the hall and the guest’s candlestick waiting for him on the table. The lamp was sufficient to show him the executive side of the big front door that had been nearly battered in in the time of the Fenians and still possessed the ponderous locks and bars of a past day when the tenants of Kilgobbin had fought the pikemen of Arranakilty and Rupert Berknowles had hung seventeen rebels, no less, on the branches of the big oak “be the gates.”

Pinckney undid bolt and bar, turned the key in the great lock and flung the door open, disclosing Phyl standing in the moonlight. The contrast between the forbidding and ponderous door and the charming little figure against which it had stood as a barrier might have struck him had his mind been less astonished. As it was he could think of nothing but the strangeness of the business in hand.

“Where on earth have you been?” said he.

“Out in the woods,” said Phyl, entering quite unconcerned and removing her cloak. “A fox got trapped in the woods and I went to let it out and couldn’t find it, then that old fool Byrne locked the door; lucky you were up. I saw the light in the 43 library shining through a crack in the shutters and knocked.”

43

Pinckney was putting up the bar and sliding the bolts. He said nothing. Had Phyl been another girl, he might have laughed and joked over the matter, but care of Phyl’s well-being was now part of his business in life and 

 Prev. P 23/185 next