“Pannell!” I cried, as a curious feeling of dread came over me for a moment and then passed away.
“Ay, lad.”
“You don’t mean to say that?”
“Me!—I mean to say! Nay, lad, not me. I never said nothing. ’Tain’t likely!”
I looked at him searchingly, but his face seemed to turn as hard as the steel he hammered; and finding that he would not say any more, I left him, to go thoughtfully back to my desk and try to write.
But who could write situated as I was—left alone with about thirty workmen in the place, any one of whom might be set to do the biting in revenge for the trap-setting? For there was no misunderstanding Pannell’s words; they were meant as a sort of warning for me. And now what was I to do?
I wished my uncles had not gone or that they had taken me, and I nearly made up my mind to go for a walk or run back home.
But it seemed so cowardly. It was not likely that anyone would touch me there, though the knowledge the men evidently had of their masters’ movements was rather startling; and I grew minute by minute more nervous.
“What a coward I am!” I said to myself as I began writing, but stopped to listen directly, for I heard an unusual humming down in the grinders’ shop; but it ceased directly, and I heard the wheel-pit door close.
“Something loose in the gear of the great wheel, perhaps,” I thought; and I went on writing.