"Pa don't want me to take our sleigh so long," Tom went on. "He wants to use it before we'd be through with it. But"—and I now began to see why Tom had been so willing to share with me the glory of killing the marauder—"there's an old sleigh out here behind your barn. Nobody uses it now. Couldn't we take that?"
I felt sure that the old Squire would not care, but I proposed to ask the opinion of Addison. Tom opposed our taking Addison into our confidence.
"He's older, and he'd get all the credit for it," he objected.
Addison, moreover, had driven to the village that morning; and after some discussion we decided to take the sleigh on our own responsibility. It was partly buried in a snowdrift; but we dug it out, and then drew it across the fields on the snow crust—lifting it over three stone walls—to a little knoll below the Edwards barn.
We concluded to lay the dead lamb on the top of the knoll at a little distance from the woods; the sleigh we left on the southeast side about fifteen paces away. Tom thought that he could shoot accurately at that distance, even at night.
For my own part I thought fifteen paces much too near. Misgivings had begun to beset me.
"What if you miss him, Tom?" I said.
"I shan't miss him," he declared firmly.
"But, Tom, what if you only wounded him and he came rushing straight at us?"
"Oh, I'll fix him!" Tom exclaimed. But I had become very apprehensive; and at last, Tom helped me to bring cedar rails and posts from a fence near by to construct a kind of fortress round the sleigh. We set the posts in the hard snow and made a fence, six rails high—to protect ourselves. Even then I was afraid it might jump the fence.