Clare went ferreting as Tommy had done. He also tried to get a peep through the window with the swinging shutter, but had no better success than Tommy. Then he started to go round the corner next the blacksmith’s yard.
“Look out!” cried Tommy in a loud whisper, when he saw where he was going.
“Why?” asked Clare.
“Because there’s a horrible hole there, full of water,” answered Tommy.
“I’ll keep a look out,” returned Clare, and went.
When he was about half-way along the end of the house, he heard a noise he did not understand, and stopped to listen. Some one seemed moving somewhere.
Then came a kind of scrambling sound, and presently the noise of a great watery splash. Clare shivered from head to foot.
“Something has fallen into the hole Tommy mentioned!” he said to himself, and ran on to see. A few steps brought him to what Tommy had taken for a great hole. It was nothing but a pool of rain-water: the splash could not have come from that!
Then it occurred to him that the water-butt could not be far off. He forced his way through shrubs of various kinds, and reaching the wall, went back along it until he came to the butt. A ray of moonlight showed him that the side of it was wet, as if the water had lately come over the edge. He looked about for some means of getting a peep into the huge thing. It stood on a brick stand, of which it left a narrow edge clear, but on this edge the bulge of the butt would not permit him to mount. With the help of a small tree, however, he got on the wall, which was better.
Spying into the butt, he could see nothing at first, for a chimney was now between it and the moon. A moment more, however, and he descried something white in the dull iron gleam of the water. It was under the water, but floating near the surface. He lay down on the wall, plunged his arm into the butt, laid hold of it, and drew it out. It was a little heavy for the size, for what should it be but a tiny baby, in a flannel night-gown, which, as he drew it out, sent back little noisy streams into the butt! It lay perfectly still in his arms, he did not know whether dead or alive, but he thought it could hardly be drowned so soon after the splash. It had been drugged, and the antagonism of the two means employed to kill it was probably the saving of its life.