“Here,” he cried at last, as Ralph disappeared through the gateway, “what’s best to stop this here? I can’t go with it all tied up.”
“Bucket o’ water from the well,” said Ram Jennings, grinning. “Say, Nick, he aren’t such a coward, arter all.”
“No,” growled Nick, after a double wipe; “and, for such a little ’un, he can hit hard.”
Chapter Nine.
Another Turn of Fortune’s Wheel.
Master Rayburn received the raven’s addled egg, and gave Ram Jennings a groat for his trouble, and for telling him all about how it was obtained, and what followed, keeping the man, and questioning him a good deal, as he smiled and frowned over the task he began at once, that of chipping a good-sized hole in one side of the egg, and extracting its contents in a little wooden bowl of clean water.
At last, after a great deal of sniffing and shuffling about, the man said, “Done with me, Master Rayburn?”
“Yes,” said the old man sharply. “Unless you can tell me any more. But why?”