With his tinder and flint carefully muffled he soon had a light; then with a burning candle screened behind a coat in such a way that the only illumination was thrown upon the far wall, they renewed their waiting.
It was some time before they caught any sound; and when it came it was apparently from without. The rain was still falling briskly; occasionally the thunder pealed and the sheets of pale lightning flared across the broken panes. Paddy Burk, whose ear also detected the movement outside, whispered:
“Faith, it’s a ducking they are willing to take, to come at us.”
“I don’t understand it,” said Ben in the same low tone. “Here we are on the second floor, and yet the sounds are seemingly just outside the rear windows. I’m going to find out about it.”
He crept softly across the room to the point where he knew the rear windows to be. Then he carefully lifted his head and peered out. In a few moments the lightning flared again, giving him a glimpse of a rain-drenched roof which was almost even with the sill; and stealing across this toward the windows at one of which he stood, was the sharp-faced landlord; through an open door in the roof the huge, red-faced woman struggled clumsily. At sight of these Ben retreated to where Paddy crouched in the shadow.
“They are coming,” he whispered.
In a very few moments they heard a creaking at one of the windows, and then a long pause. It were as though the person without had caught sight of the dimmed light of the screened candle and was carefully examining it. Apparently satisfied, however, the creaking at the window resumed; a gust of damp air showed that a sash had been thrust open. Then a sound of another sort told them that some one had slid into the room.
Softly, slowly and carefully, footsteps advanced in the darkness; and when, in Ben’s judgment, the intruder had reached the center of the floor, his waiting hand drew aside the coat and the candle-light streamed about.
There stood the landlord, arrested in his next step by the disconcerting illumination; in his hand he held the bludgeon with which he had purposed to stun the expectedly sleeping boys; and framed in the open window was the huge, red face of his wife.
Seeing that he was detected, the landlord leaped forward with a snarl; but with a single blow of his pistol butt, Ben Cooper struck him down. At sight of her husband’s fall, the woman burst into a dreadful screech of rage; and in the midst of this the boys heard the sudden rush of feet below them; and the creaking and groaning of the infirm staircase told them that Tobias Hawkins and the man with the yellow smile were leaping upward.