“A power o’ talking, Rat,” he said, “you’ve allowed me, a power of talking.”
“And it’s talking you’ve got to do this time, Crumblejohn; don’t you make any mistake. You’ve got this lot out of the cave all right, and you’ve got the vaults filled up in time before the company. But if we have another run of goods before we get this lot up-country, there’ll be more trouble than you nor me can do away with. I haven’t read Dan’l’s letters in his coat pocket for nothing, when he was washing himself at the pump.”
Crumblejohn enjoyed this immensely.
“Ye don’t tell me he carries his orders about with him for all the world to see? A wal’able servant of the Crown, ’pon my honour. Rat, you’re a wily one.”
“And wily-er than you’d suppose, for Dan’l warn’t such an innercent as you’d be ready to think. He didn’t keep his letters so careless neither. But I’ve been watching him, and what I learned when he was at the pump ’s only a trifle to what I’ve learned by signs and tokens.”
The inn-keeper knocked the ashes from his pipe. Then he rose from his chair, ponderously.
“I wish you hadn’t given me such a power o’ talking, Rat; wish I mayn’t break my neck over it, wish I mayn’t break my neck.”
He walked across the sanded floor and unlocked the door cautiously, and the rat-faced man slipped past him into the night.
But how did he manage to muffle his footsteps, so that Crumblejohn heard no sound of him upon the road?