Hugh and I always slept in soldier's cot-beds in a little room looking out over the lane. During the night we heard voices, and footsteps moving in the lane beneath us, and our dog (always kennelled at the back of the house) barked a good deal. Hugh and I crept from our bed and peered through the window, but it opened the wrong way; we could only look down the lane, whereas the noise seemed to come from just above us, near the stable door; unluckily, the frost had covered the window with ice-flowers, so that we could not see through the glass. We were, however, quite certain that there were people with lights close to our stable door; we thought at first that we had better call Mrs Cottier, and then it flashed through my mind that these were the night-riders, come to return Nigger, so I told Hugh to go back to bed and forget about it. I waited at the window for a few moments, wondering if the men would pass the house; I felt a horrible longing to see those huge and ghastly things in skirts and bee-skeps striding across the snow, going home from their night's prowl like skulking foxes; but whoever they were they took no risks. Some one softly whistled a scrap of a tune ("Tom, Tom, the piper's son") as though he were pleased at having finished a good piece of work, and then I heard footsteps going over the gap in the hedge and the crackling of twigs in the little wood on the other side of the lane. I went back to bed and slept like a top until nearly breakfast time. I went out to the stable as soon as I was dressed, to find Joe Barnicoat, our man, busy at his morning's work; he had already swept away the snow from the doors of the house and stable, so that I could not see what footmarks had been made there since I went to fetch Greylegs at eight the night before. Joe was in a great state of excitement, for during the night the stable had been broken open. I had left it locked up, as it always was locked, after I had made Greylegs comfortable. When Joe came there at about half-past seven, he had found the broken padlock lying in the snow and the door-staple secured by a wooden peg cut from an ash in the hedge. As I expected, Nigger was in his stall, but the poor horse was dead lame from a cut in the fetlock: Joe said he must have been kicked there. I was surprised to find that the trap also had come home--there it was in its place with the snow still unmelted on its wheels. I helped Joe to dress poor Nigger's leg, saying that it was a pity we had not noticed it before. Joe was grumbling about "some people not having enough sense to know when a horse was lame," so I let him grumble. When we had dressed the wound, I turned to the trap to lift out Mrs Cottier's parcels, which I carried indoors. Breakfast was ready on the table, and Mrs Cottier and Hugh were toasting some bread at the fire. My aunt was, of course, breakfasting upstairs with my uncle; he was hardly able to stir with sciatica, poor man; he needed somebody to feed him.