They remained perfectly still and silent, and watched the hole grow. Silently, deftly, the midnight marauder plucked handful after handful of the reed thatch away and enlarged the opening. Both of those below who watched him, had grasped by this time what it all meant. This was no man in the pay of U Saw, who suspected a hiding-place; it was just a common thief, pure and simple, who had an eye to nothing save the widow's paddy. Believing that she was alone and defenceless in the house, he had come to plunder her loft. But, whatever his motive, the risk to the Haydons remained the same. In another moment he would drop among them and infallibly discover their presence. Then his outcries would arouse the village and their capture would be certain. Very, very slowly the thief slipped his legs in at the hole, which was now big enough to admit him, and began to slide downwards. As Jack watched the rogue gently drop upon them, he felt for a second his father's hand laid upon his throat, and he understood; the man was to be seized and choked into silence; nothing else remained for them to do. Inch by inch the rascal slipped down. So cunning was he that he made less noise than a mouse moving among the dried grass, and, without doubt, he thought that he was carrying out his raid finely, and would make the widow's store of rice smart for it. The thief loosed his hold upon the rafter of the roof by which he hung, and his long, slender, naked body, bare but for his waist-cloth, dropped as a great snake might drop between Jack and his father. Mr. Haydon made one clutch, and closed his fingers in a tremendous throttling grip about the rogue's neck. Jack caught him by the arms. A most extraordinary struggle followed. The fellow was like an eel, and it proved a task of the greatest difficulty to hold him and keep him from getting loose and raising a disturbance. He was like an eel not only in his marvellous agility, his twists, his feints, his wriggling, but in his actual bodily slipperiness. The cunning rascal had smeared his naked body from head to foot with oil, so that, if seized, he could the more easily wriggle out of the hands of his captors. How clever a device this was Jack learned to his great surprise. The arms he seized were whipped out of his clutch as if he was trying to lay hold of quicksilver. He grabbed something which proved to be a leg. A swift jerk, and his fingers slipped off the greasy limb. Finally he settled the matter by throwing both arms round the slim, bare waist, and closing upon the rogue with a bear's hug which drove the breath out of the thief's body. Together they threw the man upon the dried grass, and Mr. Haydon, who had made his hold good by locking his fingers about the fellow's windpipe, now eased his grip a little so that the man could breathe.