It was about eleven o’clock when I had finished my task, and I did not know whether to be pleased or alarmed. I felt something like a boy might who had set a bait at the end of a line to catch a crocodile, and was then very much alarmed for fear he should have any luck.
I crept away and waited, thinking a great deal about Piter, and what would be the consequences if he walked over the trap, but I argued that the chances were a hundred thousand to one against his going to that particular spot. Besides, if I left him chained up Uncle Bob was not likely to unloose him, so I determined to run the risk, and leave the trap set when I went off guard.
The time went slowly by without any alarm, and though I went now and then cautiously in the direction of my trap it had not been disturbed, and I came away more and more confident that it was in so out of the way a part of the yard that it might be there for weeks unseen.
I felt better after this, and at the appointed time called Uncle Bob, who took his watch, and when he called me in the morning the wheel was turning, and the men were coming up to their work.
“I thought you were tired, Cob, so I let you lie till the last moment.”
I was so stupid and confused with sleep that I got up yawning; and we were half-way back home before, like a flash, there came to me the recollection of my trap.
I could not make an excuse and go back, though I tried hard to invent one; but went on by my uncle’s side so quiet and thoughtful that he made a remark.
“Bit done up, Cob! You ought to have another nap after dinner.”
“Oh, I’m all right, uncle,” I said, and I went on home with him to have steel-traps for breakfast and think of nothing else save what they had caught.
For I felt perfectly sure that someone had come over the wall in the night—Stevens I expected it would prove to be—and had put his foot right in the trap, which had sprung, caught him by the leg, and cut it right off, and I felt sure that when I got back I should find him lying there where he had bled to death.