Up went one of Corkran’s light eyebrows. “Oh, Beetle, I am so tired o’ kickin’ you! Does that mean it’s empty now? They ought to have sent a fellow ahead to look. They’re simply bound to be collared. An’ where’ll they bunk to if they have to run for it? Parsons has only been here two terms. He don’t know the lie of the country. Orrin’s a fat ass, an’ Howlett bunks from a guv’nor” [vernacular for any native of Devon engaged in agricultural pursuits] “as far as he can see any. De Vitré’s the only decent chap in the lot, an’—an’ I put him up to usin’ Toowey’s farmyard.”
“Well, keep your hair on,” said Beetle. “What are we going to do? It’s hefty damp here.”
“Let’s think a bit.” Corkran whistled between his teeth and presently broke into a swift, short double-shuffle. “We’ll go straight up the hill and see what happens to ’em. Cut across the fields; an’ we’ll lie up in the hedge where the lane comes in by the barn—where we found that dead hedgehog last term. Come on!”
He scrambled over the earth bank and dropped onto the rain-soaked plough. It was a steep slope to the brow of the hill where Toowey’s barns stood. The boys took no account of stiles or foot-paths, crossing field after field diagonally, and where they found a hedge, bursting through it like beagles. The lane lay on their right flank, and they heard much lowing and shouting in that direction.
“Well, if De Vitré isn’t collared,” said McTurk, kicking off a few pounds of loam against a gate-post, “he jolly well ought to be.”
“We’ll get collared, too, if you go on with your nose up like that. Duck, you ass, and stalk along under the hedge. We can get quite close up to the barn,” said Corkran. “There’s no sense in not doin’ a thing stalkily while you’re about it.”
They wriggled into the top of an old hollow double hedge less than thirty yards from the big black timbered barn with its square outbuildings. Their ten-minutes’ climb had lifted them a couple of hundred feet above the Burrows. As the mists parted here and there, they could see its great triangle of sodden green, tipped with yellow sand-dunes and fringed with white foam, laid out like a blurred map below. The surge along the Pebble Ridge made a background to the wild noises in the lane.
“What did I tell you?” said Corkran, peering through the stems of the quickset which commanded a view of the farmyard. “Three farm-chaps—getting out dung—with pitchforks. It’s too late to head off De Vitré. We’d be collared if we showed up. Besides, they’ve heard ’em. They couldn’t help hearing. What asses!”
The natives, brandishing their weapons, talked together, using many times the word “Colleger.” As the tumult swelled, they disappeared into various pens and byres. The first of the cattle trotted up to the yard-gate, and De Vitré felicitated his band.
“That’s all right,” he shouted. “Oh, won’t old Vidley be wild! Open the gate, Orrin, an’ whack ’em through. They’re pretty warm.”