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"Look behind you now and then and tell me if anybody follows us," he said, and knowing that Pete's eyes could be trusted, carefully reviewed the situation when they turned into a busy street. It was obvious that the conclusions he had come to by the peat-stack were correct, and the police, who were obviously watching him, thought he might know something about the Hulton tragedy.
"Have you forgotten the peat-stack outside Bolldyke Gate, and how you bade light it under me thirty years since?"
He had some trouble in doing so and on the way fell into a bog, but at length a light blinked on a hillside and he came to a small building, sheltered by a few stunted ash trees. A shed thatched with heather and a rough stone byre stood near the house, and a big peat-stack filled one end of a miry yard.
An old woman had presence of mind enough to maintain that the man they had seen was the shepherd. 'Why did he not stop when we called to him? said the soldier. 'He is as deaf, poor man, as a peat-stack, answered the ready-witted domestic.
A moment more and she was up and at work again, hanging a great kettle of water on the crook, and blowing up the fire, that she might have hot bottles to lay in every bed. Then she assailed the peat-stack in spite of the wind, making to it journey after journey, until she had heaped a great pile of peats in the corner nearest the hearth.
Do you remember who told them to set the peat-stack on fire under me ten years ago? Ah, ha, Sir Monk, you forget that I have been behind the screen, that I have been a monk myself, or should have been one, if my pious lady mother here had had her will of me, as she may if she likes of that doll there at her knee.
From the end of the peat-stack, out of the dark hole made by the excavation of last winter's stock of fuel, came the voice of Jock Gordon, singing: "The deil he sat on the high lumtap, HECH HOW, BLACK AN' REEKY! Gang yer ways and drink yer drap, Ye'll need it a' whan ye come to stap IN MY HOLE SAE BLACK AN' REEKY, O! HECH HOW, BLACK AN' REEKY!
The whole side of the peat-stack had tumbled bodily into the great "black peat-hole" from which the winter's peats had come, and which was a favourite lair of Jock's own, being ankle-deep in fragrant dry peat "coom" which is, strange to say, a perfectly clean and even a luxurious bedding, far to be preferred as a couch to "flock" or its kindred abominations.
These sounds proceeded from the north side of the house, and the four boys promptly and silently evacuated the ruin over the south wall. "Run for the peat-stack," Harry whispered; and when they were crouching behind it he said briefly, "It's all up. That was Mr. Neeven. We must creep round to the knowes, and then make tracks for our boat."
Winter stood, laughing and jeering again, for full ten minutes. At last: "I asked, and you have not answered: have you forgotten the peat-stack outside Bolldyke Gate? For if you have, Hereward has not. He has piled it against the gate, and it should be burnt through by this time. Go and see." Herluin disappeared with a curse.
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