When my Cousin Dorothy said that, we all became upon the instant as still as mice; and I saw my Cousin Tom's mouth suddenly hang open and his eyes to become fixed.

For myself, I cannot say precisely what I felt; but it would be foolish to say that I was not at all frightened.
For to be crept upon in the dark, when all is quiet, in a solitary country place; and to know, as I did, that behind all the silence there is the roar of a mob--( as it is called)--for blood, and the Lord Chief Justice's face of iron and his bitter murderous tongue, and the scaffold and the knife--this is daunting to any man.

I made no mistake upon the matter.

If this were Dangerfield himself, my life was ended; he would not have come here, so far, and with such caution; he would not have been at the pains to smell me out at all, unless he were sure of his end; and, indeed, my companying so much with the Jesuits and my encounter with Oates, and my seeking service with the King, and for no pay too--all this, in such days, was evidence enough to hang an angel from heaven.
This passed through my mind like a picture; and then I remembered that it was no more than a step on a paved path.
"If it is they," I whispered, "they will be round the house by now.

We had best look from a dark window." But my Cousin Tom seized me suddenly by the arm in so fierce a grip that I winced and all but cried out; and so we stood.
"If you have brought ruin on me--" he began presently in a horrid kind of whisper; and then he gripped me again; for again, so that no man could mistake it, came a single step on the paved path; and in my mind I saw how two men had crossed from lawn to lawn, to get all round the house, each stepping once upon the stones.