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He opened his eyes and groaned. "The money where's the money?" he muttered. His eyes opened wider. Then of a sudden his brain cleared. He sat up with a wild cry, almost a scream; and, thrusting Rat-it-all backwards with all the force of one hand, with the other groped on the floor for his walking-staff which lay, however, a couple of yards from him and close by Mr Pamphlett's feet. "My money!
Still, the man might have the ejectment order in his pocket would, if not already furnished with it, almost certainly know about it. On the other hand there was a chance it might be worth while to discover how much Rat-it-all knew. Forewarned is forearmed. Moreover, when your country is at war, and silence holds the city, there is great comfort in a chat.
"I didn' use no such low and incorrect expression. My words was 'Now that this here coast-watchin' has come to a ontimely end." "I dessay that was the way you put it," 'Bert admitted. "When you starts talkin' Lun'on, all I can follow is the sense an' lucky if that." "Bodmin," corrected Rat-it-all modestly. "I don't pretend to no more than the Provinces as yet: though Lord knows where I may end."
"When a man's in a fit, do folks help by pokin' their noses into his cupboards?" she demanded again, not removing her eyes from Mr Pamphlett. "Pack that child out!" commanded Mr Pamphlett, standing up and addressing Rat-it-all. "Do you hear me?" "I hear, sir," answered Rat-it-all.
Rat-it-all seemed to be slightly hurt in his feelings; "because I read it on the paper only this morning. 'Against War in the abstrac' much may be urged, it said. 'But 'oo will deny as it begets a sense o' Brotherhood if it does nothin' else? That was the expression."
"Die-rigitable," added Rat-it-all. "That's the point." "Well? . . . Have 'ee seen any?" Nicky-Nan lifted his gaze skyward. "I won't go so far as to say that I've seen anything answerin' to that description knockin' about not up to the present. But these are times when a man must keep his eyes liftin' if he doesn' want Old England to be taken with what the newspapers call a Bolt from the Blue."
Parsons an' constables, as I see the matter, be men set apart, an' lonely. So when I reads 'pon the paper that this here war has made us all brothers, it strikes HOME, an' I feel inclined to stop an' pass the time o' day with anybody. I don't care who he may be." "Then why waste time danderin' along the cliffs, here?" Policeman Rat-it-all lowered his voice.
"I thought I was igsplaining to you," he went on as one who reasons patiently with an infant, "that a man has to think of something above an' beyond self in these days." "I never found time to think out the rights an' wrongs o' warfare, for my part," said Nicky-Nan. "Ah, I daresay not." Policeman Rat-it-all blew out his chest. "It's a deep subject," he added, wagging his head solemnly.
"I take no account of the elements, for my part. Never did; and now never shall havin' been born up to Bodmin, where the prison is." "Oh!" said Nicky-Nan suspiciously. "What's it like?" "Bodmin?" Policeman Rat-it-all seemed to reflect for a moment. "Well, I wouldn't just say it's altogether like any place in particular.
Nicky-Nan, bursting from the two men, gripped Rat-it-all by the collar, flung him back on the floor, snatched his bull's-eye, and diving as a rabbit into its burrow, plunged the lantern's ray into the gulf. Rat-it-all had spoken truth. The treasure every coin of it had vanished! Nicky-Nan's head dropped sideways and rattled on the boards. "Mister Nanjivell! Mis-ter Nanjivell!"
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