Page:Oswald Bastable and Others - Nesbit.djvu/136

114 coiners' work, that's what it is, but there's nobody there. The keys must have blown down!'

The two voices talked some time, but we could not hear all their conversation. We were all wondering, as it turned out afterwards, what exactly the utmost rigour of the law was. Because, of course, we knew we were trespassers of the very deepest dye, even if we could prove that we were not real coiners.

'No,' we heard one of them say, 'if we go for the police very likely the gang will return and destroy everything. There's no one here now. Let's secure the evidence. We can easily break the door down.'

It is a sickening feeling when the evidence against you is going to be secured, and you don't know what the punishment for coining is, or whether anyone will believe you if you say you were only playing at it.

We exchanged pallid glances.

We could hear the two men shaking the door, and we had no means of knowing just how weak it was, never having seriously tampered with it ourselves.

It was then that Noël suddenly went quite mad. I think it was due to something old nurse