Rob thanked him civilly and he and Jumbo climbed the stairway and found themselves in a low-ceiled loft. The floor was of unnailed boards. Through the chinks between them the ruddy lamplight below could be seen.
“Dere’s wusser beds in dis wale ob tears dan nice clean straw,” observed Jumbo philosophically as he threw himself on his heap. Rob agreed with him. The straw did, indeed, seem soft and grateful after their recent hard knocks and experiences. Following Jumbo’s example, the lad made for himself a kind of nest. Curling up in it he was soon off in the deep, dreamless slumber of healthy boyhood.
Voices awakened Rob. He sat up sharply. They were coming from below. The sounds of the conversation floated up through the wide chinks in the rough floor.
Rob rolled on his side and peered through the most convenient crack. Three men were now in the room below him. As he gazed he was amazed to see the hearthstone swing bodily backward, on some concealed hinges, and a fourth man emerge from some secret passage.
“Wall,” said the newcomer, a huge figure of a man with a big, blond viking-like beard, “the last keg is headed and fixed up. We’ve finished our work. To-morrow——”
But the black-bearded man checked him with a sharp gesture.
“Shut up, Sims,” he warned, “not so loud. Go ahead, Watkins,” he went on, turning to one of the men with whom he had been talking.
“What I ses is,” resumed this fellow, a squatty-built, loosely-hung little fellow, with close-cropped sandy hair, and a bristly growth on his chin, like the stubble on an old tooth brush, “what I ses is, don’t take no risks.”
He paused impressively and then added in a lowered voice, but one that reached Rob, nevertheless, with thrilling clearness:
“Fix ’em.”