“How did you know I was in there?”
“What, in yonder?”
“Yes, of course; oh how my arms ache and throb!”
“Let me give ’em a roob, my lad,” he said; and strongly, but not unkindly, he rubbed and seemed to knead my arms, especially the muscles above my elbows, talking softly in a gruff murmur all the while.
“I did give you a wink, lad,” he said, “for I know’d that some’at was on the way. I didn’ know what, nor that it was so bad as that theer. Lor’ how can chaps do it! Yow might hev been drowned.”
“Yes,” I said with a shiver. “The cowards!”
“Eh! Don’t speak aloud, lad. How did you get in? Some un push thee?”
“Push me! No; the platform was broken loose, and a trap set for me, baited with a wheel-band,” I added angrily.
Pannell burst into a laugh, and then checked himself.
“I weer not laughing at yow, lad,” he whispered, “but at owd Gentles. So yow got in trap too?”