Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/156

 He wasted three matches, and continued―

'There was a lot of old galvanised iron lying about under the window, and I was frightened the swag would make a noise; anyway, I'd have to drop the rope, and that was sure to make a noise. So we agreed for one of us to go down and land the swag. If we were seen going down without the swags it didn't matter, for we could say we wanted to go out in the yard for something.'

"If you had the swag you might pretend you were walking in your sleep," I suggested, for the want of something funnier to say.

'Bosh,' said Jack, 'and get woke up with a black eye. Bushies don't generally carry their swags out of pubs in their sleep, or walk neither; it's only city swells who do that. Where's the blessed matches?

'Well, Tom agreed to go, and presently I saw a shadow under the window, and lowered away.

'All right?' I asked in a whisper.

"All right!" whispered the shadow.

'I lowered the other swag.

'All right?'

"All right!" said the shadow, and just then the moon came out.

"All right !" says the shadow.

'But it wasn't all right. It was the landlord himself!

'It seems he got up and went out to the back in the night, and just happened to be coming in when my mate Tom was sneaking out of the back door. He saw Tom, and Tom saw him, and smoked through a hole in the palings into the scrub. The boss looked