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136 ing him where the money was hid. As it happened he chanced on Lukie's room.

"When Lukie woke and opened her eyes to see a man in a black mask standing over her with the wood-chopper she didn't wait to hear what he had to say. She opened her mouth, and the next minute there would have been a screech that would have woke all Roffey if she had got it out. But the instant she opened her mouth there was no need for Lukie to yell: it was Mo Andrews who did that, and dropping his sack and tools he lit out in a beeline for home, the worst scared burglar that ever picked a lock. He went through the bedroom window without stopping to think of opening it, and dropping on to a moderately soft bed of cabbages he tore down the garden, howling manfully as he went.

"I don't understand much about electricity myself, but it's tolerably clear now what had happened. Hankins's little bulb had got wedged up somewhere out of harm's way, and the vinegar and other things that Lukie had eaten acted as a sort of acid and started it working at full pressure. Lukie herself got an idea that the light was accumulating inwardly as long as she was asleep, and that when she opened her mouth it leapt out like a gas explosion, but I put that down to a woman's fancy. However it may be, there is no doubt that coming suddenly in the dark the sight would have a goodish effect on a mean-spirited sort of creature like that.

"As for Andrews, he was only beginning his adventures. Half-way down the garden was a clump of bush fruit trees, gooseberries and logans and so on. Being troubled with sparrows and finches, Jane had bought a length of tarred netting early in the season and stretched it over all the trees to save the fruit. Into the middle of this net shot Andrews with enough move on him to carry clean through an ordinary hedge. A man armed