She was honestly very much afraid just then, only it was not a dead man, but a possible live one inside the coffin, whom she feared so greatly.
“Bless you, miss, you’ve no call to be frightened; dead men won’t hurt nobody. Shall I stay and help you to lock up?” he asked, with a sympathetic kindness which Nell would have greatly appreciated, if she had not believed him to be a hypocrite, which he actually was.
“No, thank you; I would rather do it myself,” she answered brusquely, beginning to draw the first of the doors into its place.
“Good evening, miss,” he said cheerily, as he got into his cart and started the horse on its homeward journey up the hilly road between the trees.
“Good evening,” she answered, giving the half of the double doors a shake and a bang, as if it would not settle into its place properly.
The door was all right, but she wanted a moment or two in which to let the man with the cart get farther away before she acted on the inspiration which had come to her.
The horse was going slowly, and the man kept looking back, but at last he had passed the place where a derelict railway wagon blocked the view. Then she turned, and, quick as thought, seized upon the length of steel chain and passed it round the coffin four or five times. After this, as a final precaution, she dumped two heavy cases upon the polished lid, and, shutting the other half of the door, slid the great bar into its place.
It was awkward work groping her way to the side door, and she knocked herself more than once upon the way against barrels and cases, some of the latter having sharp corners.
But she was outside at last, and, locking the door behind her, had a moment in which to sort out her thoughts and decide what next had to be done.
She was quite positive in her own mind that the inmate of the coffin was a living man, that the person who had brought it had arrived purposely late for the evening train, and that a scheme was afoot to rob the big shed.