"Thomas! Thomas! Look out for yourself!"
And having attracted the young man's attention, he went through some sort of a pantomime that must have been perfectly understood, for Thomas took to his heels and was out of sight in a twinkling.
The next moment Oscar Preston darted around the corner of the hotel and entered the stable-yard. He looked everywhere for the young man, but he was not to be found.
He glanced up at the window and saw that it was closed. He walked over to his wagon, and after a short search found the link on which Thomas had been at work with a saw made of a watch-spring.
The marks of the teeth were there, but he had not done the chain any damage, because he had been interrupted before he had fairly settled down to business.
"It's lucky that I am posted," thought Oscar as he walked around the wagon to make sure that everything in and about it was just as he had left it. "If that fellow had been left undisturbed for five or ten minutes he would have sawed that link half in two. Then he would have filled up the cut with mud, and just about the time we were going up the town hill, and the oxen were beginning to lay out their strength, that link would have given way and I should have had to come back for a new start, and perhaps to have the same trick played upon me a second time. That's the way these cattle-dealers have served more than one traveller, trader, and sportsman, but they will have to try something else on me."
Having satisfied himself that his wagon had not been tampered with, Oscar walked toward the hostler, who did not look up from his work.
As an accompaniment to his manipulations, he kept up a constant hissing through his teeth, producing a sound which much resembled that which is made by drawing a brush quickly across a curry comb.
Why he did it Oscar could not understand. Perhaps it was for the same reason that an Irish laborer follows every blow of his pick with a sonorous "wish-h-h!"—viz., to make his work easier.