The dispirited tone of suppressed yearning, and abject resignation to the miserable existence which he sensed was before them, gave to the orphan boy's words a quality and volume of meaning far beyond their linguistic significance. CHAPTER V BANISHMENT "As a sparrow alone upon the housetop--"--Ps. cii, 7 "Hey, Maria!" "I'm a-comin'." The woman rose from the door-step where she had been sitting, adjusted her snuff dip firmly in her mouth and slouched across the muddy door-yard to meet Peter. From his manner and expression of countenance it was evident he was laboring under the burden of a new idea. "Who was a-wantin' me?" he asked gruffly as Maria approached. "Thar hain't nobody ben hyar." He studied her for a moment. "Thar war somebody a-sneakin' 'roun'." "Nobody I seen." "She seed 'em." With his thumb he gestured over his shoulder. Maria understood that he referred to Mollie. "She mought ha' saw somebody a-lookin' in th' gate." A wry smile twisted the man's face in a grimace a little worse than usual. "Thar hain't a-goin' ter be no more lookin'," he declared. "I be gwine ter fix hit right now. Fotch me them tools frum th' barn an' th' can o' nails thets a-settin' on the beam over th' door." Maria obeyed, without a word, as was her wont, slouching along, barefooted, in the direction of the barn. She did not wonder or speculate as to where the children might be. To do so would require mental effort. Any mental effort demanded a degree of energy which Maria did not possess. As for Peter, he had solved his problem in mathematics. With all the cunning of the abnormal criminal, he was planning for the future in a manner entirely beyond her dull-witted conception, even had he been disposed to explain. The house stood some little distance from an old highway. The section roundabout was a wilderness of tortuous passes, skirting perilously near the series of formidable bogs. For years these bogs had proved as much of a barrier between denizens of isolated districts as any mediæval moat. Peter Grimes knew nothing of castles nor moats. But the chance remark of the man who had placed little Mollie in his care had resulted in his grasping the basic principle upon which the theory that a man's house is his castle had been founded. He proposed now to convert the old moonshiner's covert retreat into an impenetrable castle. From a heap of old boards back of the house he selected those best needed for his purpose, cut himself a large chew of tobacco, then sat down to await the return of the woman whose ancestral estate he had so calmly appropriated. Maria reappeared in due season, laden with saw, hammer and the can of nails. "Now lend me a hand with these hyar planks," ordered Peter. Maria took hold and together they carried, one by one, some half dozen of the long pieces of timber down to the fence.