Page:Walpole--portrait of man with red hair.djvu/65

 twenty minutes or more, then slipped back across the passage into his room again. It was now nearly seven o'clock. As he was dressing the sun was getting low in the sky. A beam of sunshine caught the intent gaze of Strang, who seemed to lean across his etching board as though to tell him, to reassure him, to warn him....

He slipped out of his room and began his explorations.

For a while he wandered, lost in a maze of passages. He understood that the Minstrels' Gallery was at the top of the house. He did not use the lift, but climbed the stairs, meeting no one; then he was on a floor that must, he thought, be servants' quarters. It had another air, something less arranged, less handsome, old-fashioned, as though it were even now as it had been two hundred years ago—a survival as the old grey tower in the market-place was a survival.

For a little while he stood hesitating. The passage was dark and he did not wish to plunge into a servant's room. Strange that up here there was no sound at all—an absolute deathly stillness!

He walked down to the end of the passage then, turning, came to a door that was larger than the others. He could see as he looked at it more closely that there was some faint carving on the woodwork