The Argosy — page 210: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Caramel Cottage. 193 Tod and Harry Dene went another—leaving the Squire and Mr. Jacobson at the gate, listening for shots, and conferring in whispers with old Jones. How long we marched about under the bright moonlight, keeping under the shade of the trees and hedges, I cannot tell you; but when we all four met at Dyke Neck, which lay between the Manor and the Court, we had seen nothing. Mr. Stirling went straight home then, but we continued our ramblings. <A schoolboy’s ardour is not quickly damped. Beating about fresh ground together for a little while, we then separated. JI went across towards the village: the other two else- where. It was one of the loveliest of nights, the full moon bright as day, the air warm and soft. But I neither saw nor heard signs of any poachers, and I began to suspect that somebody had played a trick on the old constable. : I turned short back at the thought, and made, as the Americans say, tracks for home. My nearest way was through the dense grove of trees at the back of Caramel Farm, and I took it, though it was not the liveliest way by any means. But no sooner was I beyond the grove than sounds struck on my ear in the stillness of the night. ‘They seemed to come from the direction of Caramel Cottage. Darting under the side hedge, and then across the side lane, and so under the hedge again that bound the cottage, I stole on the grass, as softly as a mouse. Poachers could not be at work there ; but an idea flashed across me that some- body had got into Mr. Barbary’s well-stocked garden, and was robbing it. Peering through the hedge, I saw Barbary himself. He was coming out of the brewhouse, dragging behind him, with two cords, a huge sack of some kind, well-filled and heavy. Opposite the open door, on the furnace, shone a lighted horn lantern. Mr. Barbary pushed-to the door behind him, thereby shutting out the light, dragged his burden over the yard to the garden, and. let it fall into what looked like—a freshly-dug grave. Astonishment kept me intensely still. What did it all mean? Hardly daring to breathe, I stole in at the gate and under the shade of the hedge. Whatever it might contain, that sacking lay perfectly quiet, and "Mr. Barbary began to shovel in the spadefuls of earth upon it, as one does upon a coffin. This was nothing for me to interfere with, and I went away silently. It looked like a mystery, and a dark one ; any way it was being done in secret in the witching hours of the night. What the time might be I knew not, the Squire having ordered our watches taken off before starting : perhaps one, or two, or three o’clock. Tod and Harry Dene reached the gate of Dyke Manor just as I did ; and we were greeted, all three, with a storm of reproaches by the Squire and Mr. Jacobson. What did we mean by it >—scamper GoOmiilGaooks (CO) an