'They'll niver find us, if they look till next week!' he exclaimed
exultantly, and, slipping off the heavy bundle strapped on his
back, he undid its contents. Two old woollen rugs appeared--one a
blanket, the other a horse-rug--and wrapped up in the middle of
them a jagged piece of tarpaulin, a hammer, some wooden pegs, and
two or three pieces of tallow dip. Louie, sitting cross-legged in
the other corner, with her chin in her hands, looked on with her
usual detached and critical air. David had not allowed her much of
a voice in the preparations, and she felt an instinctive aversion
towards other people's ingenuities. All she had contributed was
something to while away the time, in the shape of a bag of
bull's-eyes, bought with some of the sixpence Uncle Reuben had
given her.
Having laid out his stores, David went to work. Getting out on the
projecting stone again, he laid the bit of tarpaulin along the
sloping edge of the rock which roofed them, pegged it down into
crevices at either end, and laid a stone to hold it in the middle.
Then he slipped back again, and, behold, there was a curtain
between them and the Downfall, which, as the dusk was fast
advancing, made the little den inside almost completely dark.
'What's t' good o' that?' inquired Louie, scornfully, more than
half inclined to put out a mischievous hand and pull it down again.
'Doan't worrit, an yo'll see,' returned David, and Louie's
curiosity got the better of her malice.
Stooping down beside her, he looked through the hole which opened
to the moor. His eye travelled down the hillside to the path far
below, just visible in the twilight to a practised eye, to the
river, to the pasture-fields on the hill beyond, and to the smoke,
rising above the tops of some unseen trees, which marked the site
of the farmhouse. No one in sight. The boy crawled out, and
searched the moor till he found a large flattish stone, which he
brought and placed against the opening, ready to be drawn quite
across it from inside.
Then he slipped back again, and in the glimmer of light which
remained groped for his tin box. Louie stooped over and eagerly
watched him open it. Out came a bottle of milk, some large slices
of bread, some oatcake, and some cheese. In the corner, recklessly
near the cheese, lurked a grease-bespattered lantern and a box of
matches. David had borrowed the lantern that afternoon from a
Clough End friend under the most solemn vows of secrecy, and he
drew it out now with a deliberate and special relish. When he had
driven a peg into a cranny of the rock, trimmed half a dip
carefully, lighted it, put it into the lantern, and hung the
lantern on the peg, he fell back on his heels to study the effect,
with a beaming countenance, filled all through with the essentially
human joy of contrivance.
'Now, then, d'yo see what that tarpaulin's for?' he inquired
triumphantly of Louie.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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