"Who's there?"
"It's only me," a familiar voice replied, and he knew that the visitor was none other than the boy of whom he and his lodger had just been speaking.
"Dan was tellin' me you'd lost your money. Didn't come up here reckonin' he or I'd got it, did you?"
"I ain't any sich fool as that; but Jip Collins has been makin' a good deal of cheap talk this afternoon, an' I thought perhaps you'd like to know 'bout it."
"He's allers doin' that, an' I reckon it's more wind than anythin' else."
"I wouldn't wonder if this time he got right down to business, an' you ought'er keep a pretty sharp lookout, Seth. These are too snug quarters for you to lose through a feller like Jip."
"Come inside and set down," Master Bartlett said as his lodger joined him at the door of the shed. "Dan an' me is here alone, an' you won't mind if it's dark, 'cause you see I promised Mr. Baxter straight out an' out that there shouldn't ever be any kind of a light inside. That's one of the things Jip kicked about, you know."
Sam Barney promptly accepted the invitation. Being an old friend of Seth's, he was familiar with the household arrangements, and despite the darkness made his way through the shed to the box-like home in one corner, where, after some difficulty, he found a block of wood that served as chair.
Seth threw himself upon the bed of shavings, and Dan lounged negligently near the entrance.
"I should think it would be kind er lonesome in here nights when it's like this," Sam suggested as he tried in vain to distinguish the form of either of his companions.