CHAPTER XIII.

THE SLIDING PANEL.

The Warder's Room was an excellent example of the famous rule that no stronghold is stronger than its weakest part. Its three outer walls, the one namely terminating the wing, the blind one giving upon the pleasaunce, and the one overlooking the moat, seemed stout enough to defy the teeth of Old Time himself; but the partition wall dividing it from Ruth's chamber beyond, was by comparison a mere piece of pie-crust, though pie-crust of perhaps rather a tough sort, inasmuch as its panellings were composed of oak of no mean thickness.

Here and there, however, whether simply from age, or whether the water-rats infesting the moat below were answerable for any share in the mischief, it was certain the wood showed signs of decay; and one day when Ruth was dusting and polishing the richly carved panels, as it was her pride to do, one large square of them fairly gave way, and fell inwards behind the skirting board.

[Sidenote: A hiding place.]

Groping with both hands to recover it, Ruth found to her astonishment, that, instead of coming, as she expected, into contact with the corresponding panelling of the room beyond, they strayed off into space, and on closer examination of the framework of the fallen panel, she found that it was grooved. Surely it looked vastly as if she had come upon one of the sliding panels old Adam Lockit declared the house was full of! Very like it indeed, Ruth thought as she kindled a light with her tinder-box, and stepping with it into the pitch-dark cavity, looked round.

Barely high enough for her to stand upright in, it evidently extended on each side of the opening, to the stone and brickwork supports of the arched communicating door, of which as we have already seen Richard Rumbold secured the key into his own keeping. Thus the opening formed a dark passage of nearly a couple of feet wide, and six or seven feet long.

While she was occupied in these investigations a sudden hustling, shuffling sound in the room beyond, ordinarily as still as the very vaults of Stanstead Church, nearly startled her out of her senses. The next instant, however, her own merry laugh at her own terrors broke the echoes, for what was the disturbance but the scratching of the rats, whom her tour of discovery had sent stampeding willy nilly, like bad Bishop Hatto's long-tailed visitors:

"From the right and the left, from behind and before, From within and without, from above and below."

Up by the chimney, down by the open windows plump into the moat.

[Sidenote: Ruth's secret.]

"Now," smiled Ruth to herself, in the dead silence that ensued, "now I have a secret! and never a creature shall be told of it. Not even Maudlin, nor Lawrence--Lawrence indeed! certainly not! A rare fine place to hide in when next Lettice Larkspur and Dorothy Dingle come to spend the day. Why, if they'd search till midnight, they'd not find me. I should be shut in safe--," here a sneeze, caused by the cloud of dust her movements had raised, interrupted her, "safe as the 'mistleto bough' bride. Almost, that is to say," she went on, brushing away the cobwebs festooning her skirts, as she stepped back over the skirting-board, and kneeling down to replace the panel, she discovered that by the merest touch of her finger she could work it backwards and forwards in its grooves. Not so hard to open as the old oak chest was, certainly; though in every probability it had been so once upon a time, before the dry-rot had shrivelled the wood in its sockets, and the fragments of iron bolts, some strewing the floor, some still hanging, had rusted and given way. A pasteboard sort of protection now the place would have been, though it was no doubt safe enough in those war times of the Roses, when it was built.

And carefully indeed Ruth had kept her secret, though there were times when it grew to be rather a burden to her. When, for instance, she lay in her bed and thought what dismal straits those poor people must have been driven to, before they should have sought such a refuge.

The very existence of the place is, however, forgotten now in this other mystery that haunts her sleeping and waking.

She does not find it at all true, as she sits uncoiling her hair, and absently brushing out its brown waves, that sharing her load of care makes it lighter, as people are so fond of telling you that it does. The weight, on the contrary, seems to have grown heavier, especially within these last hours; and oblivious of everything beyond her troubled reflections, she is only recalled to a sense of realities by Maudlin Sweetapple's voice querulously clamouring for the lamp to be extinguished. "Beshrew the thing!" piped she; "how many more times am I to shut my eyes, and open 'em again, to see all these ghosts about the place?"

"Ghosts?" queried Ruth, escaping to Maudlin's door, and peeping gingerly in.

[Sidenote: Shadows on the wall.]

"Ay, marry, ghosts; black-sheeted ghosts all over the walls," said Maudlin, pointing to the restless shadows cast by the quivering flame of Ruth's lamp. "Look at 'em bobbin' about, and a draught to cut a body's head off! Have you got a pane open in there, child?"

Doubtless that explained the inconvenience; for Ruth had opened the pane in order to catch the faintest sound that might disturb the silence of the night.

"Then shut it," went on Maudlin, as Ruth owned to the fact, "shut it, if you don't want your poor old nurse to catch her death o' rheumatics. A mighty fine sort of a night to be havin' casements open, this! What's gone, I wonder, of all yesterday's sunshine? 'Tis as cold as Candlemas. Well they may say:--

"'Cast ne'er a clout Till May be out.'

If--hark! what's that, child?"

"I heard nothing," answered Ruth, listening with all her ears, "nothing but the rain," she added, as a smart sleety shower rattled against the glass.

[Sidenote: The creak of the drawbridge.]

"So 'tis--at last. There wasn't a joint of all my poor old bones that didn't tell me that was comin'. But 'twasn't that I heard. 'Twas--hush! There 'tis again! The clank o' the draw-bridge chains! or I'll eat my head off."

"Don't make rash vows, you silly old dear!" rejoined Ruth, with an uneasy little laugh. "Wasn't the drawbridge let up at sunset, as it always is? What fancies you do take into your head, Maudlin!"

"Oh, ay; 'tis as full of 'em, I daresay, as an egg's full o' meat," grumbled on the old lady. "'Tis only the young ones that are the wise ones nowadays. Good lack! good lack! and how they do like too sittin' up disturbin' the rest o' them that's no mind for moonin' and star-gazin'."

"There's neither moon nor star to be seen," said Ruth, glancing towards the outside obscurity. "'Tis a pitch-dark night."

"And ten, as I live, by the tower clock! For shame on thee, Ruth," continued the old woman, as the strokes fell; "put out thy light this instant, and grope to bed as thou canst; or I'll warrant we shall never be hearin' the last o't from the master to-morrow. His one eye's sharper than a dozen folk's two, and if it did catch sight of a gleam--What do you say?"

"I did not speak."

"I fancied I heard you mumblin' somethin'. For the merciful powers' sake put out the light, I say."

"Good-night, Maudlin," said Ruth, obeying the injunction at last, but not without reluctance.

A smothered sound, which might have been a reciprocal good-night, but still more resembled a snore, witnessed that the darkness had speedily worked its slumberous effects on Maudlin. Poor Ruth, however, deprived of her lamp's companionship, and too wakeful for bed, groped her way back to her old seat, and sat, every nerve sharpened, to catch the faintest echo.

[Sidenote: A wild night.]

Save the driving rain, however, and the sweeping of the wind in low sullen gusts round the walls, and its jerking of the tall vane on the tower-top, till the thing complained direfully, not a sound was to be heard. A likely night, truly, for folks to choose to be abroad, especially thereabouts, where there was scarce so much as a tree to shelter you. Anyhow it was plain these expected visitors of her father's had not been so eager to be getting themselves dripping to the skin; and the maltster had no doubt given them up ever so long ago, and gone to bed.

Sidenote: The striking of the hour.]

With cramped limbs, but a lightened heart, Ruth rose and once more approached to close the pane, which she had again unfastened, after first noiselessly closing Maudlin's door. Well, bed was after all no such uncomfortable place, she thought, as the dank air blew in on her face, "when the clock must be close on--hark! yes: ding-dang! ding-dang! ding-dang! Absolutely but wanting one hour--ding-dang--to midnight! Such an unearthly ding--terrible--dang."--