Patience Wins: War in the Works

by George Manville Fenn

“I must wait a bit, and get cool,” I said; and then looking about me, I shivered, for the great works looked strange and deserted, there was a horrible stillness in the place, and I had never felt so lonely and unpleasantly impressed even when watching in the middle of the night.

Just then there was a whine and a bark, and Piter gave his chain a jerk.

There was society for me at all events, and, going to the kennel, I unhooked the spring swivel and set the dog free, when, as usual, he showed his pleasure by butting his great head at me and trying to force it between my legs.

I was used to it and knew how to act, but with a stranger it would have been awkward and meant sitting down heavily upon the dog unless he leaped out of the way.

Of course I did not sit down on Piter, but lifted a leg over him, and as soon as he had become steady made a sort of inspection of the place to see that nothing was wrong, feeling that it was a sort of duty to do, as I was left alone.

Piter kept close to me, rubbing my leg with one ear as we went all over the place, and as I found no powder-cans and fuses, no bottles full of fulminating silver, or any other deadly implement, my spirits rose and I began to laugh at myself for my folly.

There was only the lower workshop with its grindstones to look through, and lit up as it was by the evening sun there did not seem to be anything very terrible there. The floor was wet, and the stones and their frames and bands cast broad shadows across the place and on the opposite wall, but nothing seemed to be wrong, only I could hear the hollow echoing plash of the water falling from the wheel sluice down into the stone-walled pit.

There was nothing new in this, only that it seemed a little plainer than usual, and as I looked I saw that the door had been left open.

That was nothing particular, but I went on to close it, not being able to see the bottom, the view being cut off by a great solid bench in the middle of the floor. On passing round this, though, I saw that there was something wrong; two or three bands had gone from as many grindstones, and had evidently been hastily thrown into the wheel-pit, whoever had done this having left one on the floor, half in and half out, and keeping the door from shutting close.

“That couldn’t be Gentles,” I said aloud as I threw back the door, and my words echoed in the great black place, where the sunlight was cutting the shadow in a series of nearly horizontal rays as it came in past the wheel.