Page:Joan, the curate.djvu/164

158 front, with rooms on each side, led to a wide staircase with a handsome carved oak railing.

Here, however, he came to a standstill, not daring to go down. For the hall below led straight into the farmhouse kitchen, and there was no door.

Tregenna caught sight of a couple of men who were busy rolling spirit-kegs into a corner of the great room; and he was prone on the floor on the instant, watching and listening. But though he heard plenty of noise, the entrance of the smugglers fresh from the raid, the greetings of their comrades from the Gray Barn, the rolling of barrels across the rough tiled floor, he saw no more. The outer door was out of his sight, and so was the fireplace; and it was between door and fireplace that the movement of the company lay.

When he became sure of this fact, he stole softly down the staircase, which was entirely unlighted, and concealed himself behind the bend in the massive oak railing at the bottom. By this time the noise of tongues, of tramping feet, of the bringing in of heavy wares, had become so loud that he was not afraid of his footsteps on the bare boards being heard.