“Never mind; we’ll soon find out, after I’ve changed my things at the cottage, and when you go to Lyndhurst with me on a charge of killing deer, I knows where the beast lays, and, hullo!” he cried, as he examined the weapon, “stealing a gun, too; for I’ll swear this ‘Manton’ never belonged to you.”
Seeing that the game was up for the present, Mat stalked moodily along in front of his captor to Boldre Cottage.
Arriving there, the keeper locked him in a back room, telling him that he might jump out of the window if he liked; but that the bloodhound, who had already about killed a former poacher, would make short work of him if he did; adding, in a sneering tone, that he would take care of the gun and bag, and all that it contained.
Mat was now left to his own reflections, which were not of the pleasantest.
Drenched to the skin, he paced the room for the best part of an hour, to keep himself warm, revolving in his mind all manner of means of escape, but only with the gun. He had just concluded that if only the keeper would leave the house for a few minutes, he would have a chance, because, he argued, he must think I’m a greenhorn to fear the dog. Why, he ain’t even loose. I se’ed him chained in the shed, a fine-looking beast too, and keeper he’ll—But here his meditations were interrupted by a noise which sounded like the clinking of a glass, and applying his eye to a chink in the logs, he saw his captor with his legs stretched out before a turf fire, filling a glass from Burns’ flask, which he had appropriated from the game-bag.
Mat could scarcely suppress his joy on witnessing this sight. He now remembered that Burns had refilled his flask at the Lodge with old whisky.
“Drink away, my fine fellow,” he almost whispered; “drink away; that’s not public-house tipple. I know the strength of that whisky, as I drank Burns’ health with it.” And then he softly resumed his walk.
It was now quite dark, and shortly again applying his ear to the logs, he could hear the keeper’s steady snore.
Now or never was his time. So cautiously getting out of the window, Mat crept round to the front door, taking care to go round the building on the side opposite to the shed of the bloodhound. In the porch he saw the shimmer reflected on the barrels of Burns’ gun, and might then have made straight off with it; but “No,” he said to himself, “keeper didn’t ax me if I’d like a drop, after all my hard work, so I’ll just help myself.”
Gently opening the door, he dropped on his hands and knees, and guided by the heavy breathing of the keeper, who was now in a drunken sleep, he approached that worthy, reared himself up to the table, found the flask, slipped it into his pocket, felt that the keeper was sitting on the empty game-bag, so left it to keep that worthy man warm, retreated as silently to the porch where he had left the gun, and picking it up, he got clear out without disturbing man or dog, and with long strides made off in the direction of Vinney Ridge, and in little over an hour’s time was taking a breather under his old friends, the great trees of the herons. Throwing himself down at full length, he pulled the flask from his pocket, and was just finding fault with the greediness of the keeper for having drunk so much of its contents, when in the far distance he distinctly heard the baying of a hound!