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But as he took them from the nail in the little hall, he felt that if he opened the door, the shooting of the bolts would alarm Mrs Fidler and the maids, so he stole back to his room, closed the door, listened again at his window, and became sure that some one was in the mill-yard. "It's Pete Warboys," he said to himself as he listened. "What mischief is he after now?"
I am glad that in so serious a matter you kept your own counsel. I don't think David would speak. Eh? Yes, Mrs Fidler, we have quite done. Come along, Tom. We'll go over into the workshop." Uncle Richard led the way, gazing keenly up at the little gallery as they crossed the mill-yard. "Tut tut tut!" he ejaculated. "Why, Tom, you might have broken your neck."
On reaching the mill-yard it was to find half-a-dozen people there with ladders, scaffold-poles, ropes, blocks, and pulleys. There was a short consultation, and soon after the men began work, unbolting the woodwork of the sails, while others began to disconnect the millstones from the iron gearing.
Had this happened earlier in the struggle, the pike must have been lost, for the line would have snapped; but now the fish had fought out his fight, and scarcely attempted to move, while Dusty Bob, who had been watching the proceedings with the most intense interest, went to the mill-yard and fetched the great rake he used to clear the weeds away with, and by means of a little raking he got hold of the obstruction, which upon being drawn to the surface proved to be an old branch, and round a rugged part the line was just hitched.
She was looking eagerly about; at the frame, a great skeleton of new timber, some of it still holding so much of the water of river and mill-yard that it glistened in the sunlight; at the moving groups of men, the figure of Peterson standing out above the others on a high girder, his arms knotted, and his neck bare, though the day was not warm; at the straining hoist, trembling with each new load that came swinging from somewhere below, to be hustled off to its place, stick by stick; and then out into the west, where the November sun was dropping, and around at the hazy flats and the strip of a river.
At one period there might have been counted, in and around this mill-yard, no less than thirty-eight dogs, young and middle-aged, and all more or less closely related.
Four of his dogs were close to his heels, as though they expected something; a yard or two behind followed a younger one, with his tongue out level with his chest. Later on in the day, when all the dogs were kennelled up, the Over-Lord might have been seen leaving the mill-yard, with something he carried in a bag, taking long draws at his pipe, and still with a smile upon his face.
Blessed, and happy too, throughout that day, especially in the midst of the mill-yard dinner which reminded me forcibly of that feast at which guests were gathered out of the highways and hedges guests such as John Halifax liked to have guests who could not, by any possibility, "recompense" him.
"Just time to get in," he said, as he increased his pace; and then "Yes, I suppose it was afraid of him, for he is a good deal bigger and stronger than I am." "Hullo, Tom! been for a walk?" saluted him, as he was hurrying at last along the lane which divided his uncle's grounds from the new purchase. Tom looked up quickly, and found that Uncle Richard was looking over the wall of the mill-yard.
But at this moment, still whistling that mournful air, we saw the miller going down the steps that led from the somewhat raised garden into the mill-yard; and so I seemed to have lost my chance of putting him in a passion.
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