One of the 28th: A Tale of Waterloo by G. A. Henty (famous ebook reader .TXT) 📗

may be nothing but an outpost skirmish; still it may be the beginning of operations on a grand scale."

"And there is an order," Desmond said dolefully, "that only one officer in each company is to go to the ball."

"You want to go—eh, Desmond?"

"Well, of course I should like to go, and so would everyone I suppose, however, it can't be helped; for of course you will go yourself."

"Well, I have made up my mind to look in for an hour or two. Conway doesn't wish to go. I'll tell you how we will arrange, Desmond. What the order means is that two officers must stop with their company. It doesn't matter in the least who they are; so that there are two out of the three with the men. Dancing will begin about eight o'clock. I will look in there at nine. An hour will be enough for me; so I will come back to the company, and you can slip away and stop there till it's over."

"Thank you very much," Desmond said gratefully.

"And look here, Desmond. You had better arrange with your man to leave your undress uniform out; so that when you get back from the ball you can slip into it and have the other packed up. That's what I am going to do. I can't afford to have my best uniform spoiled by having to sleep in it in the mud. A captain's pay doesn't run to such extravagance as that."

"What will be done with the baggage if we have to march?"

"Oh, I don't suppose we shall march to-night. But if we do, the quartermaster will detail a party to collect all the baggage left behind and put it in store. We needn't bother about that; especially when, for aught we know, we may never come back to claim it."

But although O'Connor did not know it, the duke had by this time received news indicating that the attack upon the Prussian outpost was the beginning of a great movement, and that the whole French army were pressing forward by the road where the Prussian and British army joined hands.

At daybreak the French had advanced in three columns—the right upon Chatelet, five miles below Charleroi, on the Sambre; the center on Charleroi itself; the left on Marchienne. Zieten, who was in command of the Prussian corps d'armée, defended the bridges at these three points stoutly, and then contested every foot of the ground, his cavalry making frequent charges; so that at the end of the day the French had only advanced five miles. This stout resistance enabled Blucher to bring up two out of his other three corps, Bulow, whose corps was at Liege, forty miles away, receiving his orders too late to march that day. The rest of the Prussian army concentrated round the villages of Fleurs and Ligny.

Accordingly at ten o'clock in the evening orders were issued by Wellington for the third division to march at once from Braine-le-Comte to Nivelles, for the first to move from Enghien to Braine-le-Comte, and for the second and fourth divisions to march from Ath and Grammont on Enghien. No fresh orders were issued to the troops round Brussels; and although it was known at the ball that the troops were in readiness to march at a moment's notice, there were none except the generals and a few members of the staff who had an idea that the moment was so near at hand. The regiments stationed at a distance from Brussels were assembled in the park by ten o'clock in the evening; then arms were piled, and the men permitted to fall out.

Only a few lighted fires, for the night was warm. The artillery, however, who had all along been bivouacked in the park, had their fires going as usual, and round these many of the troops gathered, but the greater part wrapped themselves in their cloaks and went quietly to sleep. Ralph strolled about for an hour or two, chatting with other officers and looking at the groups of sleepers, and listening to the talk of the soldiers gathered round the fires. Among them were many old Peninsular men, whose experience now rendered them authorities among the younger soldiers, who listened eagerly to the details of the desperate struggle at Albuera, the terrible storming of the fortresses, and lighter tales of life and adventure in Spain. Many of the men whose quarters lay near the scene of assembly had been permitted to return to them, with strict orders to be ready to join the ranks should the bugle sound.

 

CHAPTER XVI.

FOUND AT LAST.

As soon as Mrs. Conway received the box she set to work in earnest. Directly the house was still and a sufficient time had elapsed for the Miss Penfolds to have fallen asleep, she rose from the bed on which she had lain down without undressing, put on the coat and hat, and made her way noiselessly down to the library. As she kept the lock well oiled she entered noiselessly, and then locking the door behind her lighted a candle and commenced her search. On the fifth night she was rewarded by finding that the center of what looked like a solidly carved flower in the ornamentation of the mantelpiece gave way under the pressure of her finger, and at the same moment she heard a slight click. Beyond this nothing was apparent; and after trying everything within reach she came to the conclusion that it needed a second spring to be touched to reveal the entrance.

It took her another three weeks before she found this. It was a slight projection, about as large as a button, in the inside of the chimney behind the mantel. Pressing this and the other spring simultaneously, the bookcase on the left of the fireplace suddenly swung open three or four inches. For a moment she stood breathless with excitement, hesitating before she entered; then she swung the bookcase open. There, as she had expected, was a little room seven feet long by four deep; but, to her bitter disappointment, it was bare and empty. A few scraps of paper lay on the ground, but there was no furniture, chest, or boxes in the room. The revulsion was so great that Mrs. Conway returned into the library, threw herself into a chair, and had a long cry. Then she went back into the room and carefully examined the pieces of paper lying on the ground. One of them was a portion of a letter, and she recognized at once the handwriting of Mr. Tallboys.

It contained only the words: "My dear Mr. Penfold—In accordance with your request I send you the—" But above was the date, which was ten days only anterior to Mr. Penfold's death. Mrs. Conway had no doubt that the word that should have followed the fragment was "will," and that this was the letter that Mr. Tallboys had sent over with that document. It was important evidence, as it showed that Mr. Penfold had been in the habit of using this place during his lifetime, and that he had entered it after he had received the will from his solicitor a few days before his death. Why should he have entered it except to put the will in a place of security? Where that place was she did not know, but she felt certain that it was somewhere within reach of her hand.

"If it is here it must be found," she said resolutely; "but I won't begin to look for it to-night. It must be three o'clock already, and I will think the matter over thoroughly before I begin again. It is something to have found out as much as I have. I ought to be encouraged instead of being disappointed."

That day she wrote to Mr. Tallboys, giving him a full account of the discovery which she had made, and inclosing the fragment of his letter. She did not renew her search for the next two nights; for her long watchfulness and excitement had told upon her, and she felt that she needed rest before she set about the second part of the search. She received a letter from Mr. Tallboys in reply to that she had sent him:

"MY DEAR MRS. CONWAY: I congratulate you most heartily upon the great success you have met with. I own that I have never been very hopeful, for after the thorough search we made of the room I hardly thought it likely that you would succeed when we had failed; however, you have done so, and I cannot doubt that a similar success will attend your further efforts. In a small bare room such as you describe the difficulties in the way of finding the hidden receptacle cannot be so great as those you have already overcome. You are perfectly correct in your supposition that the fragment you sent me was part of the letter that I sent over with the will to Mr. Penfold by my clerk. I have compared it with the copy in my letter book, and find that it is the same. As you say, this letter proves conclusively that Mr. Penfold was in this secret room after he received the will, and one can assign no reason for his going there unless to put the will away in what he considered a secure hiding-place. That it is still somewhere there I have no doubt whatever, and I shall await with much anxiety news as to your further progress."

Thinking the matter over, Mrs. Conway had come to the conclusion that the hiding-place could only be under one of the stone flags of the floor or in the wall against the fireplace, or rather in that part of it above the fireplace. There would not be thickness enough in the walls separating the secret chamber from the passage or the rooms on either side of it; but the chimney would not be of the same width as the open fireplace below, and there might well be a space there sufficient for a good-sized closet. It was here, therefore, that she determined to begin her search. The next night, then, after touching the springs and entering the secret chamber, she began carefully to examine each stone in the wall next the fireplace at a distance about four feet above the ground.

In five minutes she uttered an exclamation of satisfaction. One of the stones, above eighteen inches square, although like the rest fitting closely to those adjoining it, was not, like the others, bedded in cement. So close was the join that it needed a close inspection to see that it was different from those around it. Still, upon close examination, it was evident that it was not cemented in. Taking out a penknife from her pocket, she found that the joint was too close even to allow this to be inserted for any distance. There was no keyhole or any other visible means of opening it, and she searched the walls in vain for any hidden spring.

For a whole week she continued the search, but without the slightest success, and at last began almost to despair; for at the end of that time she was convinced that she had passed her fingers again and again over every square inch of the floor and walls within her reach. Completely worn out with her sleepless nights, she determined to take a little rest, and to abstain altogether for a few nights from the search. On the third night, however, an idea suddenly occurred to her. She rose at once, dressed herself, and was about to go downstairs, when she thought that she heard a noise below. She returned at once to her room, hid away her hat and coat, and again went to the top of the stairs and listened.

Yes, she had not been mistaken; she distinctly heard sounds below, and, she thought, the murmur of men's voices. After a moment's thought she returned again to her