"Here, none of that sort of thing," he said, "or you will be sorry for it, my young bantam. You don't think that you can shove your way into my premises. You three just take yourselves off. You are trespassing on my ground; and it's lucky for you that the dog is tied up, or he would tear you limb from limb. Hear him!" And he paused, as a deep, distant baying was heard from somewhere within. "He is a beauty big enough to eat you. You just get off as fast as you can. Clear! If you are here in five minutes time I will set the dog on you!" And he slammed the door, and left them standing there.
"What a particularly unpleasant person!" said Warren. "His politeness is only exceeded by his good looks. Come on, Ralph, it won't do any good to stand here; and I don't fancy a meeting with that loud-voiced brute we heard. He had got a bark like a bloodhound."
"We had better do as Warren says," added Charlton, a trifle timidly, for he could understand how badly Ralph must feel. "I know what you are thinking of. You want to see inside that house, but it is impossible now. If it is done at all, it would have to be some other time, when that man did not suspect us. Only I don't think that you are right. I don't see how you can be."
"I shall never rest until I have contrived some way of doing as you say," was Ralph's reply, and his face looked very resolute again. "That cry was raised by my father. He may not be there—I do not say he is, but somehow I dislike that man and distrust him. Let us go right through the grounds. Don't you understand, Warren? I want to see if there are any other places hidden away here. Who would have said a house like that was here; and who can say what other house may be here? You go back if you like, you and Charlton; I am going on."
"Then on we all go," was Warren's reply; and he and Charlton accompanied Ralph.
They crossed the lawn and went out by the gate, and Ralph was conscious of the face of that man peering at them through one of the upper windows. He might be a recluse, a miser, a madman—that seemed the most probable thing; and yet, yet somehow Ralph must get inside that house.
They pushed their way on into the wood again, making for the opposite side to that on which they had entered; and then Ralph's words that they did not know what else they might find were proved to be very true, for, upon its farther side, bordering upon a stretch of wild open land, they came upon a ruined building. It looked as if at one time it had been a chapel, or monastery, or something of that sort; the pillars, the pointed windows, and the arched doors gave them that impression. It was a fairly large building, larger than the house they had left, and its crumbling walls were thickly overgrown with ivy. A mournful, silent ruin it was, where only the shapes and shadows of those whose feet had once trodden its stone floors now seemed to lurk; but it was a shelter, and in Ralph went.
"I don't care for twenty men and dogs," he said resolutely. "I am not going on in this rain, and I am going to have a look in this ruin."
"But you do not think that you will find any trace of your father there, Ralph," protested Warren.