"W'en he said that, Bill, I do assure you, lad, that my experience in the ring seemed to fly into my knuckles, an' it was as much as ever I could do to keep my left off his nob and my right out of his breadbasket. But I restrained myself. If there's one thing I'm proud of, Bill, it's the wirtue o' self-restraint in the way o' business. I wheeled about, held up my nose, an' walked off wi' the air of a dook. You see, I didn't want for to have no more words wi' the gardener,--for why? because I'd seen all I wanted to see--d'ee see? But there was one--no, two--things I saw which it was as well I did see." "An' what was they?" asked Bill. "Two statters." "An' what are statters?" "Man alive I don't ye know? It's them things that they make out o' stone, an' marable, an' chalk--sometimes men, sometimes women, sometimes babbies, an' mostly with no clo'es on to speak of--" "Oh! I know; but _I_ call 'em statoos. Fire away, Dick; what see'd you about the statoos?" "Why, I see'd that they wasn't made in the usual way of stone or chalk, but of iron. I have heerd say that sodgers long ago used to fight in them sort o' dresses, though I don't believe it myself. Anyhow, there they was, the two of 'em, one on each side of the winder, that stiff that they could stand without nobody inside of 'em, an' one of 'em with a big thing on his shoulder, as if he wor ready to smash somebody over the head. I thought to myself if you an' me, Bill, had come on 'em unbeknown like, we'd ha' got such a start as might have caused us to make a noise. But I hadn't time to think much, for it was just then I got sight o' the gardener." "Now my plan is," continued Dick, swigging off his beer, and lowering his voice to a still more confidential tone, as he looked cautiously round, "my plan is to hang about here till dark, then take to the nearest plantation, an' wait till the moon goes down, which will be about two o'clock i' the mornin'--when it will be about time for us to go in and win." "All right," said Bill, who was not loquacious. But Bill was mistaken, for it was all wrong. There was indeed no one in the public at that early hour of the day to overhear the muttered conversation of the plotters, and the box in which they sat was too remote from the bar to permit of their words being overheard, but there was a broken pane of glass in a window at their elbow, with a seat outside immediately below it. Just before the burglars entered the house they had observed this seat, and noticed that no one was on it; but they failed to note that a small, sleepy-headed pot-boy lay at full length underneath it, basking in the sunshine and meditating on nothing--that is, nothing in particular.