The boy spoke again, pressing back against his mother:
"It was like an animal creepin' along, crouched down——"
"Show the gentlemen," said Mrs. Meagher, and without more urging the little chap slid down to the floor on his hands and knees and began padding about, bent as low as he could. It was a queer sight, believe me—the tiny figure creeping stealthily along the carpet—and we four men, all but the old man, now up on our feet, leaning forward to watch with faces of amazement.
"That way," he said, looking up sideways. "Just like that—awful quick from the door to the window." He rose and went back to his mother, cowering against her. "I thought it was some kind of bear, and I was terrible scairt. I was so scairt I couldn't raise a yell or make a break or nothin'. I stood lookin' and I saw it was a man, and——" He stopped, terrified memory halting the words.
She had to coax again, her arm around him, her face close to his.
"Go on, Dannie boy, you want the gintlemin to think you're the brave man that ye are. Go on, now, lamb." Over his head she looked at the chief and said, "It's a sight might have froze the heart of anyone, let alone a pore, sickly kid."
The boy went on, almost in a whisper:
"He had another man on his back, still, like he was dead, with his arms hangin' down. I could see the hands draggin' along the floor like they was bits of rope. And when he got to the window, quick—I never seen nothin' so quick—the one that was creepin' slid the other on to the sill. He done it this way." He crouched down on his knees with his hands raised over his head and made a forward, shoving motion. "Pushing him out. Just for a second I could see the dead one, acrost the sill, with his head down, and then the other gave a big shove and he went over."
There was a moment of dead silence in which you could hear the tick of the clock on the mantel. I had an impression of Babbitts, his face full of horror, and George, bent across the table, biting on his under lip. Only the old man held his pose of bland stolidity.
"And what did the man—the one that was on his knees—do then, Dannie?" he asked gently.