“No harm in it, Jerry. Light it, if you like.”
Badger took up the lantern while speaking, and strode into the interior basement, closing the sliding door after him.
Conley struck a match and lighted an oil-lamp in a bracket on the wall, then hastened out of doors and across the lawn.
“Now is my time!” thought Patsy. “If I can get into that inner cellar, and down Amos Badger, the rest will be dead easy!”
He raised his head a little to lift the lid of the hamper.
Then he suddenly stopped, holding his breath.
The patter of soft feet on the ground near-by had reached his ears.
Then came a furious sniffing about the wickerwork of the hamper.
It was followed immediately by a long, low, threatening growl, enough to have sent a chill through a brass image.
“That infernal bloodhound again!” thought Patsy, with an ugly creeping of his every nerve. “By thunder! this is worse than being headed off by a man—or by half a dozen men! What’s the cursed brute about to do?”