“You mean he’s likely to skip out before morning, eh, Elmer?”
“There’s a big chance that way, I reckon.”
“Oh! I hope so, I certainly do,” said Amos. “I never did like to run across any one who was out of his mind; they always made me feel queer. But I’ve just thought of something, Elmer, that might queer your fine game.”
“Is it—Wee Willie?” asked the other, quickly.
“How on earth did you guess so easily, I’d like to know?” gasped Amos, quite taken aback for the moment.
“Just because I had thought about him myself,” came the answer. “He’s sitting there, and drinking in everything that chap tells him as if he might be in a daze. Yes, I wondered how he would take it when he heard me say I expected those two guards to join us any old time now.”
“Gee! Wee Willie might blurt out something that would make him suspect you only said that so as to alarm him!”
“There’s only one way to prevent that,” his comrade told him. “I’ll be sure to catch his eye just before I say anything, and give him the high sign. Wee Willie knows what that’ll mean; he’ll understand that he’s got to keep his lips tightly buttoned up,—just sit there and listen. You’ll see how lucky it is we had all those signals arranged long ago.”
“That was your doing, Elmer; why, if you’d looked ahead, and seen just such an occasion as this, you couldn’t have fixed things better. But won’t Wee Willie be eating himself up with curiosity, though? He’ll wonder what under the sun it all means.”
“I expect to find a chance to tell him what’s in the wind, Amos; in fact it’s more than likely he’ll make such an opening himself, so as to be in the swim with us.”