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Rh ant. The next moment he saw a head appear above the eaves of one of the outhouses.

There was only one thing to be done, and he did it. Springing erect, he clutched at the sill of the open window, drew himself up to it, got inside, and closed it fast. Just as he secured the latch he saw, dimly indeed, but unmistakably, the figure of a rough-looking countryman on the roof outside. The closed window, however, baffled the fellow, for he went on crawling about over the thatch without any suspicion of the way by which his prey had escaped him.

Tregenna fancied, as he watched from behind the security of the latticed window, that he recognized in the fellow a rough-looking lad whom he had seen at work in the Parsonage garden.

The question now was, having got safely into the house, to get safely out again.

He groped about him, found the opposite wall at a distance of some five or six feet, and soon discovered that he was in a corridor, running along the back wall of the house. Following it, he came to a corner, where the corridor, now cutting through the house to the