“Dunno, Master Rifle; but I have hit sparrers afore now, and brought down a rabbit.”
“Oh!” ejaculated Rifle. Then after a pause. “I say, Sam, which did you put in first, the powder or shot?”
“There, it’s of no good your trying to be funny, my lad,” whispered back the gardener, “because it won’t do. You feel as unked as I do, I’m sewer. What I says is, I wish it was to-morrow mornin’.”
“Or else that they would come, German, and let us get it over,” said a voice out of the darkness, which made them start. “The suspense is painful, but keep a good heart.—Raphael, boy, you ought to be at your post. Mind and report every sound you hear.”
“Yes, father,” said the boy, who crept back to the room he had left, but not without going to the bedroom door, and whispering sharply, “It’s all right, mother. We’ll take care of you.”
He did not wait for a reply, but crept into the backroom, where all was silent, and he went from thence into the long lean-to kitchen, with its big stone fireplace and chimney.
“Pist! you there, boys?”
“Yes; mind how you come. Your gun’s standing up in the corner by the fireplace. We’re going to sit here, and take it in turns for one to watch at the window slit.”
Then after making out by touch where the others were placed, and nearly falling over Shanter, who was squatting, enjoying the warmth which came from the hearthstone to his bare feet, the boy seated himself on a rough bench by his gun, and all was silent as well as dark. From time to time the captain came round—in each case just after they had changed watches at the window loophole—but neither Norman, his cousin, nor brother had anything to report, and he went away again, after telling them the last time that all was well, and that he thought their sister and cousin had gone off to sleep.
Then there was the same oppressive darkness and silence once more, a heavy breathing by the still warm fireplace, suggesting that Shanter, well refreshed with damper, had gone to sleep, and the boys instinctively shrank from disturbing him for fear he should start into wakefulness, and lay about him with his nulla-nulla.