“Ah,” said Nicholas, “the scent is hot, the old lady gives tongue.”
A board was withdrawn, chests piled beneath, and John Sprygs cried out, “Now, young Nick, you go and grab him.”
“After you,” said Nicholas, who remembered the weight of his young opponent’s fist that night in the woods.
John Sprygs mounted, and was no sooner in the loft than he cried,—
“The place is as dark as pitch, pass me up the torch.”
“Nay! nay!” cried Giles Hodge, “the place is full of flax.”
“We will take care of that; thou dost not want thy precious brat found.”
Up went the torch which the men had brought with them, a flaring pine torch, to assist in the operations; in very wantonness Nick Grabber tossed it into the fellow’s hand, crying “Catch.” He missed it, and it fell into a heap of flax. The man started back to avoid the blaze which instantly sprang up, and so put the fire between him and the moveable planks—the only moveable ones—which served as a trap-door.
“Come down, come down,” called out the appalled voices below.