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Driscoll was sorting pit-props, throwing them on to piles at the bottom of the shaft, when Thirlwell stopped to hook a small, flat lamp to his hat. The man sometimes worked in the mine for a few weeks when the trapping season was over, and Scott was generally willing to engage him because he was skilful with the axe and labor was scarce.
We weren't expecting her for another three or four hours." At the wharf lay a vessel of about 300 tons burden, with bluff, rounded bows sitting high up out of the water, a long, straight waist, and a bridge and cluster of deckhouses at the stern. "Our motor ship," Mr. Coburn explained with evident pride. "We had her specially designed for carrying the pit-props, and also for this river.
The works were shut, and by keeping the mill building between me and the manager's house, I got close up and had a good look round unobserved at least, I think I was unobserved. Well, I must say the whole business looked genuine. There's no question those tree cuttings are pit-props, and I couldn't see a single thing in the slightest degree suspicious."
But all we saw coming ashore was pit-props, Merriman, pit-props! Now don't you see?" Merriman suddenly gasped. "Lord!" he cried breathlessly. "It was in the props?" "Of course it was in the props!" Hilliard repeated triumphantly. "Hollow props; a few hollow ones full of brandy to unload in their shed, many genuine ones to sell! What do you think of that, Merriman? Got them at last, eh?"
The roof ran on at the same level for some twenty feet farther, and the side walls, here about five feet apart, went straight down from it into the water. Across the end was a wall, sloping outwards at the bottom and made of horizontal pit-props separated by spaces of two or three inches.
We must see what, if anything, goes on board that boat beside pit-props." Merriman only grunted in reply, but Hilliard, realizing his condition, was satisfied. And Merriman, lying awake that night on the port locker of the Swallow, began himself to realize his condition, and to understand that his whole future life and happiness lay between the dainty hands of Madeleine Coburn.
The reckless felling of young trees for fencing and pit-props is supposed to have roused his ill-will, and sinister stories have been told of children who have gone into the woods for acorns or hazel-nuts and have never been seen again.
But as he rounded the vessel's stern he saw that her starboard side was lighted up, and he ceased rowing, sitting motionless and silently holding water, till the boat began to drift back into the obscurity down-stream. The wharf was above the level of his head, and he could only see, appearing over its edge, the tops of the piles of pit-props.
As the train ran past the depot at Ferriby, Willis observed that the Girondin was not discharging pit-props, but instead was loading casks of some kind. He had noted on the previous Friday, when he had been in the neighborhood, that some wagons of these casks had been shunted inside the enclosure, and were being unloaded by the syndicate's men.
"Don't see it." "Well, look here. I've been making inquiries, and I find most of our pit-props come from Norway and the Baltic. But the ships that bring them don't go back empty. They carry coal. Now do you see?" It was becoming evident that Hilliard was talking of something quite definite, and Merriman's interest increased still further.
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