"Come on, Andy," said Moriarty, "and help me to persuade Misther Piper to jine us. Now, then; come quiet. That's it. Sure, I knew you'd listen to raison."
Miss Grimshaw, who had retired early, was just in the act of undressing when voices from the stableyard outside her window made her raise the slats of her blind and peep out.
By the full moonlight she saw Moriarty and Andy at the loose-box door. Piper was between them, Moriarty was gently persuading him from behind, applying the vis a tergo; the vis a fronte was supplied by Andy, who had fast hold of the bailiff's left arm. She could not help remembering the sheep which she had seen one night, not so very long ago, haled into the same loose-box, Moriarty pushing it behind, Andy assisting its movements from in front.
The loose-box door closed on Moriarty and his victim, just as it had closed on the sheep. Miss Grimshaw, half horrified, half amused, filled half with curiosity, half with alarm, waited for sounds to tell of what was going forward; but no sound came, and nothing spoke of tragedy save the gleam from the lantern, a topaz pencil of light that shone through the latch hole of the door and dissolved in the moonlight of the yard.
"Put your fut agin the door, Andy," said Moriarty, when Piper, knowing himself in a trap, and knowing the uselessness of calling out or resisting, was safely inside the loose-box.
He hung the lantern on a hook, and then, pointing to three buckets that stood upside down close to the heap of straw in the corner, "Take a sate," said Moriarty.
Piper took a seat on the end bucket near the door.
"Not that wan," said Moriarty. "The middle wan. Then Andy and I'll be able to sit on either side of you, and the bottle'll pass more convanient."
He produced a bottle, a jug, and a glass. It was a bottle of Teach's "Old Highland Mountain Dew." Andy had fetched it from the inn at Crowsnest. This old Highland mountain dew was a fine, old-fashioned, fusil-oil-tinctured fighting spirit. In any properly constituted community the man who distilled and sold it would be executed, instead of raised to the peerage as Teach was the other day. It is this stuff that makes murders down at the docks, wrecks little homes in Hackney, casts men on the streets, and ships on the rocks, and souls on perdition.
"Look here," said Mr. Piper, when he saw these preparations for conviviality, "I don't know what gime you're up to, but I give you warning——"