He strode out of the tool-house and made for the barn. A large dog barked, and a voice called:
“Down, Danny, down!”
They returned hastily, and climbed laboriously out of a little window on the other side of the tool-house, striking a bee-line for the adjoining property. The treasure jingled in their pockets as they ran stealthily into this barn. The last restraint was cast away, they were on new territory. A succession of back-yard cuts had resulted in their turning a corner, and had they gone openly and in the light of day out into the street, they would have found themselves in another part of the town. The Head Captain crept in through a low window. He was entirely wrapped up in his dreadful character. Blind to consequences, hardly looking to see if the others followed him, he worked his way over the sill and stared about him. Imagination was no longer necessary. No fine-spun trickery was needed to turn the too-familiar places into weird dens, the well-known barns into menacing danger-traps. Here all was new, untried, of endless possibilities.
It was a clean, spacious spot. Great shadowy, white-draped carriages stood along the sides; a smell of varnish and new leather prevailed. On the walls hung fascinating garden tools: quaint-nosed watering-pots, coils of hose, a lawn fountain. All was still. The Head Captain strode across the floor, extending his hand with a majestic sweep.
“’Anything we want we can take!’”
“All these things—all of ’em—anything we want, we can take!” he muttered, but not to them. They could plainly see he was talking to himself. Rapt in wild dreams of unchecked depredation he stamped about, fingering the garden hose, prying behind the carriages, tossing his head and breathing hard.
Suddenly came a step as of a man walking on gravel. It drew nearer, nearer. For one awful moment the Lieutenant seemed in danger of thinking himself a frightened little boy in a strange barn; he plucked at his sash nervously. The next instant two hands fell from opposite directions on his shoulders.
“Get into a carriage—quick, quick, quick!” hissed the Head Captain, and he heard the Vicar panting as she shoved him under the flap of the sheet that draped a high-swung victoria. She was with him, huddled close beside him on the floor of the carriage, and it seemed hardly credible that the clatter of the Head Captain’s hasty dive into the neighboring surrey could have failed to catch the ear of the man who entered the barn. But he heard nothing. He walked by them lazily, he paused and struck a match on the wheel of the victoria, and the smell of tobacco crept in under the sheet. It seemed to the Vicar that the thumping of her heart must shake the carriage. She dared not gasp for breath, but she knew she should burst if that man stood there much longer. It could not be possible that he wouldn’t find them. Ah, how little he knew! Right under his very pipe lay those who could take away everything in his old barn if they chose. Perhaps the very surrey that now held that terrible Head Captain might be gone ere morning, he had such ambitions, such vaulting dreams.
Thump! thump! thump! went her heart, and the Lieutenant’s breath whistled through his teeth. Never in their lives had such straining excitement possessed their every nerve. Oh, go on, go on, or we shall scream!