The middle of the month was nearly come. The six last barrels of powder were in the vault; the whole thirty-six were covered with stones and iron bars: Gideon Gibbons, the porter, was delivering at the door three thousand billets and five hundred faggots of wood and another man in a porter’s frock was stacking the wood in the vault.
“There, that’s the last lot!” said Gibbons, throwing in a packet of tied-up billets. “Count right, Johnson?”
“All right, Gibbons.”
“Your master likes a good fire, I should say,” observed Gibbons, with a grin of amusement, as he looked into the vault. “There’s fuel there to last most folks a couple of winters.”
“Ay, he doth so: he’s a northern man, you see—comes from where sea-coal’s cheaper than here, and they are wont to pile their fires big.”
“Shouldn’t ha’ thought them billets wouldn’t hardly ha’ taken all that there room,” said Gibbons, looking into the vault, while he scratched his head with one hand, and hitched up his porter’s frock to put the other in his pocket.
“Oh, I didn’t stack ’em so tight,” said Mr Percy’s man, carelessly, tying up a bit of string which he picked from the floor.
“Ah! well, but tight or loose, shouldn’t hardly ha’ thought it. Master coming soon, eh?”
“Haven’t heard what day. Afore long, very like.”
“Has he e’er a wife that he’ll bring?”