"One of us had better stay here," he said with a meaning glance at the
closed door.

The butler raised an affrighted face to his.

"Go with Sir Horace, Bude," said the doctor. "I'll stay!"

Outside in the gardens of Harkings it was a raw, damp evening,
pitch-black now, with little gusts of wind which shook the naked bushes
of the rosery. The garden door led by a couple of shallow steps on to a
gravel path which ran all along the back of the house. The path extended
right up to the wall of the house. On the other side it flanked the
rosery.

The glass door was banging to and fro in the night wind as Bude, his
coat-collar turned up, hurried out into the darkness. The library, which
formed the corner of the new wing, had two windows, the one immediately
above the gravel path looking out over the rosery, the other round the
corner of the house giving on the same path, beyond which ran a high
hedge of clipped box surrounding the so-called Pleasure Ground, a plot
of smooth grass with a sundial in the centre.

A glow of light came from the library window, and in its radiance Bude
saw silhouetted the tall, well-knit figure of young Trevert. As the
butler came up, the boy raised something in his hand and there was a
crash of broken glass.

The curtains were drawn, but with the breaking of the window they began
to flap about. With the iron grating he had picked up from the drain
below the window young Trevert smashed the rest of the glass away, then