“I can’t help it,” muttered Sam; “it’s the gov’nor’s fault, and he’ll have to pay for it all. He sent me, and—pooh, it isn’t stealing. It’s all in the family, and I’ve a better right to have what there is than young Tom Blount.”
Sam tried to think of other things, but two matters had it all their own way—the dread of being caught, and the coming of Pete with the ladder.
But the time wore on, and neither event seemed likely to happen. He grew hotter and hotter; every now and then he felt a peculiar nervous attack in one leg, which made his right knee tremble violently, and again and again he was on the point of rushing off, leaping the wall, and making for the open country, when at last he heard some faint noise coming out of the darkness.
Once he felt that all was over, and there was nothing left for him to do but flee. For there were heavy steps in the lane coming nearer and nearer, till they stopped opposite the gate, and Sam’s heart throbbed like the beating of a soft mallet.
“Policeman!” he thought, and he would have turned to run, but his feet felt as if glued to the ground, and the agony he suffered was intense.
Just as he was at the worst point, there was a scratching sound, a gleam of light, the smell of tobacco, and directly after the steps were heard again, to pass on and die out in the distance.
“‘Conscience makes cowards of us all,’” Sam might have said, but he did not know the words; and so he only wiped his forehead, and began to think of how he could get back to town, for it was perfectly evident that Pete had got all he could out of him, and, so far from returning with a ladder, in all probability he had invented the whole story, and there was no ladder anywhere nearer than in the rascal’s imagination.
The moments passed on like minutes, and Sam felt as if an hour must have passed.
“It’s of no use,” he said to himself; “he has been too sharp for me, and I shall have to come down as the dad said, and take my chance. I can do no more.”
He sighed in his misery and dread, for he knew that there was an all-night walk before him, till he could take one of the earliest morning trains somewhere on the road. But it had to be done, and he went from out of the deep black shadow of the mill to the wall where he came over, and was in the act of raising himself up, when his neck was caught as if in a fork, and he was thrown down on to his back. Then, as he struggled up, he grasped the fact that Pete must have been coming back, and thrust the top of the ladder over first, sending the ends on each side of his neck.