“Ha, ha!” he laughed. “Jiminy! but I can’t get over it, Sam! Think of you going out and potting Major Bates, of all men! And then think of you keeping it a secret from the crowd! That’s funnier yet. But the funniest thing of all is that we didn’t dope it out. Why, there hasn’t been one of us that didn’t feel you were acting as if you had something on your mind. Yet with all the Shark’s calculations and with all my good common sense, we were as unsuspecting as babes in the woods!”
“Common sense! Poke’s common sense!” roared Step. “Say, that’s the richest joke sprung in a hundred years!”
Peter Groche, aroused by the shout which met this sally, lifted his head. He stared evilly at Sam, and his features were contorted as grotesquely as a gargoyle’s.
“He tried to plant the job on me, I tell ye!” he growled hoarsely. “Boy, I’ll get ye for that—I’ll get ye if I swing for’t!”
“Wal, I guess you’ll have to wait and do a little time fust in a cell,” quoth Lon.
Peter Groche made no reply. His head had sunk to the floor.
CHAPTER XXVIII
SAM MAKES CHOICE
The long night had dragged to an end. A pale glimmer at the windows told of the coming of a clouded dawn, while outside the old house the storm raged in unabated violence.
Sam, awakening from a doze, replenished the fire. The other boys were still sleeping, each in the posture which, to his notion, minimized the hardship of a bed of rough planks. The Shark was rolled up like a ball; Step lay flat on his back, his long arms and legs sprawling; the Trojan had pillowed his head on Herman Boyd’s shoulder; Poke, his forehead resting on his arm, was breathing very regularly and audibly; Tom Orkney, a little apart from the others, was stirring restlessly.
Lon was sitting beside Peter Groche, for whom the remnants of the old carpet and the bags from the shed served as a mattress. Peter was either ill or shamming artfully. Lon and the boys had had a hard time with him during the night; for though at intervals he lay in what seemed to be a stupor, these had been separated by quarter-hours and half-hours in which he writhed and struggled and cried out deliriously. They had done the little they could for him; and Lon had remained on duty as combined guard and nurse.