words with my father this morning about the Frenchman and, I fear, let
out the truth. He told me then that ere the Dunwich roses bloomed again
she who loved you would have naught but bones to kiss. Dick, you know
the fen; where can we hide till nightfall?"

"Follow me," said the man, "and keep low!"

Plunging into the dense brake of reeds, through which he glided like a
polecat, Dick led them over ground whereon, save in times of hard frost,
no man could tread, heading toward the river bank. For two hundred paces
or more they went thus, till, quite near to the lip of the stream, they
came to a patch of reeds higher and thicker than the rest, in the centre
of which was a little mound hid in a tangle of scrub and rushes. Once,
perhaps a hundred or a thousand years before, some old marsh dweller
had lived upon this mound, or been buried in it. At any rate, on its
southern side, hidden by reeds and a withered willow, was a cavity of
which the mouth could not be seen that might have been a chamber for the
living or the dead.

Thrusting aside the growths that masked it, Dick bade them enter and lie
still.

"None will find us here," he said as he lifted up the reeds behind them,
"unless they chance to have hounds, which I did not see. Hist! be still;
they come!"



CHAPTER II