"Don't 'ee bustle me; then maybe I'll mind o' more. Iss, I mind Doubledick said, 'Hee! hee!' says he; 'if it do hold for another forty-eight hours,' says he;—and be-jowned if I could hear any more o' that piece of reckonin', my poor heart was a-strummin' so."
"Confound your poor heart!" cried Dick. "Do pull yourself together. It may mean salvation to Joe."
Sam scratched his head.
"If you'd only been theer instead o' me!" he muttered. "Ah! 'Twas carriers. Iss: Maister John axed if 'twas settled about carriers. 'A round score,' says Doubledick, if 't wasn't two; 'good fellers all; no wamblin', slack-twisted cripple-toes for this job,' says he."
"What job?"
"That I can't say. But Zacky Tonkin was in it; iss; gie me a minute for rec'lection; iss. Doubledick says, 'Zacky be sour as a green apple.' 'Ha! ha!' laughs Maister John, ''a don't like playin' second fiddle,' says he, which is a passel o' nonsense, 'cos Zacky never played on fiddle, fust, second, nor last either, all his born days, that I do know. ''Tis for 'ee to keep un quiet!' says Maister John. 'He hev his uses, but hain't got a mossel of brains. You've got enough for two, Doubledick,' says he."
Dick was becoming impatient. The conversation as reported was not very enlightening, and surely Doubledick had not visited the Dower House to discuss such trivialities. But Dick had learnt his lesson; he would not err again by being over-hasty; so he schooled himself to endure the slow trickle of information as it oozed from Sam's reluctant memory.
"Didn't they name Penwarden at all?" he asked.
"Never heerd un. The only other names I heerd wer Tom Pennycomequick and Jimmy Nancarrow."
"Ah! what about them?"