The suggestion was graciously accepted, the door opened and closed on the host, and the crowd, leaning their backs against the wall, and cowering under the eaves, waited and listened.
For a few moments there was no sound but the dripping of water from the eaves, and the stir and rustle of wrestling boughs above them.
Then the men became uneasy, and whispered suggestion and suspicion passed from the one to the other.
“Reckon she’s caved in his head the first lick!”
“Decoyed him inter the tunnel, and barred him up, likely.”
“Got him down, and sittin’ on him.”
“Prob’ly biling suthing to heave on us; stand clear the door, boys!”
For just then the latch clicked, the door slowly opened, and a voice said—
“Come in out o’ the wet.”
The voice was neither that of the Old Man nor of his wife. It was the voice of a small boy, its weak treble broken by that preternatural hoarseness which only vagabondage and the habit of premature self-assertion can give.