come in stealthily. They said not a word, but I could
make out their forms distinctly against the houses
opposite.

I was caught in my own trap!

Not quite! They had not seen me, for I was wholly in
shadow. I stepped quickly in at my own slide. I pushed
it back and bolted it securely, and with my heart in my
mouth, I waited at my hole of observation. In a minute
more they were close around me, though they did not
suspect I was so near.

They also had a dark-lantern, and, I thought,
more than one. They spoke in low tones; but as they
had no thought they had a hearer quite so near, I could
hear all they said.

"I tell you it was this side, and this is the side I
heard their deuced psalm-singing day before yesterday."

"What if he did hear psalm-singing? Are you going to
break into a man's garden because he sings psalms? I
came here to find out where the girl went to; and now you
talk of psalm-singing and coal-bins." This from another,
whose English was poor, and in whom I fancied I heard the
Dane. It was clear enough that be spoke sense, and a
sort of doubt fell on the whole crew; but speaker No. 1,
with a heavy crowbar he had, smashed into my pine wall,
as I have a right to call it now, with a force which made