It came from the saddle-room next door. Tom sat up in his bunk.
The sound was very thin and wholly metallic, as the scraping of a dinner-knife between the prongs of a fork; suddenly a bolt shot back with a little slam.
CHAPTER XXII
THE LAST STRAW
Tom sat still in his bunk.
“A licht! A licht!” whispered a voice that he knew.
“He’ll hear ye, Mac; he’s only next door.”
“What’s about it? I’ll slit his juggler if he daurs to interfere. Heard ye that?”
“I did. That’s better!”
The crafty groom was snoring where he sat, with one eye at a cranny in the rude partition between his lair and the saddle-room. In the latter there was as yet no light.
“An’ that’s better still,” muttered Macbeth, as one was struck. “Slit his juggler?” he repeated with a chuckle. “I wadna think twice o’t, the mosing blackguard! Now whaur’s thae saddles, for my hands is free?” And his teeth snapped on something that gleamed between them in the light.
“Wait a bit. I smell the oil. Aha! here’s one.”
“An’ here’s the ither. Dinna heed the bridles. Awa’ we go afore Jarman turns in.”
Jarman was the squatter on the creek; the hour was still short of midnight; and Tom, who had bounded
