“What was it you had seen, Tom?” Larry began.
“Silence!” commanded Cal. “Tom has the floor.”
“Oh, I beg pardon—” Larry began apologetically.
“No, don’t do even that. Go on, Tom.”
“I will as soon as you two twin brothers cease your quarreling. As I was saying, I had seen something that aroused my curiosity. As I was peering through the bushes, looking toward the main body of the roisterers, I saw the limping one slip away from the general company and sneak off. He went very cautiously through the undergrowth to the hovel nearest me and entered it, closing the door after him. I could see a little pencil of light streaming out through a crack, so I knew he had opened his lamp in there. After a little fumbling he came out again, but he was so drunk he forgot to take his lamp with him, as I discovered by the continued streaming out of that little pencil of light.
“That was what aroused my curiosity. I wanted to know what was in that hovel, and as the lame gentleman with the ‘load’ on had obligingly left his lamp there for my accommodation, I resolved to embrace the opportunity offered. I moved cautiously upon the enemy’s works. That is to say, I crept forward toward the hovel. That’s what you fellows mistook for the signal to retreat.
“Now I am convinced that our temporary neighbors, the scoundrels, are disposed to be in all ways obliging. At any rate they had considerately placed the door of the hovel so that it fronted my side of the structure and not theirs. Thus, when I opened the door the light from the burning lamp did not shine toward them and thus give the alarm.
“I entered the place and rather minutely examined its contents.”
“What was in there?” asked Cal, forgetting in his eagerness that he had himself undertaken to prevent the interruption of Tom’s narrative by questions from any source.