He advanced very cautiously in the dark, holding his staff ready to deliver a blow, or guard his head, and the next minute there was the sound of some tool being moved on a bench, and then something alighted at his feet, setting up a soft purring and beginning to rub up against his legs. "Why, Tommy," he said, "you scar'd me, my boy. It was you, was it? After rats, eh, Tommy? Poor old puss, then." He turned on his lantern, took a good look round, and then, apparently satisfied, he pulled out an old-fashioned silver watch and consulted its face. "Eight o'clock, eh? Why, they'll think at home that I'm lost." As he spoke he made his light play round for a few minutes, and then, apparently satisfied, he put it out, placed the lamp on a shelf, and went out and across the yard to the kind of lodge, where a man was waiting to take the duty of the watchman for the night. "All raight, Mester Banks?" "All right, Rolf," was the reply. "I've been all round." Directly after the old foreman was on his way homeward, but he had hardly taken a dozen strides down the lane under the wall, before the head of Simeon Slee was cautiously raised above the edge of one of the great crucibles, or melting-pots, and then for a time he remained motionless. "You're a clever one, Joe Banks, you are," he said at last, as he raised himself up and sat on the edge of the great pot. "You can find out everything, yow can; you can trample on the raights of the British wucking-man, and get the independent spirits discharged, eh? But you're one of the ungodly bitter ones, and you must be smitten wherever you can. Let's see how the wuck 'll go on to-morrow." The speaker threw his legs over the side, and then paused to dust his trousers and his coat before proceeding further. "It's hot lying in hiding there," he muttered, pulling off his coat and rolling up his sleeves. "I have to toil and moil like a slave for the cause." His next proceeding was to open a great clasp knife and try its edge, which was keen as that of a razor; and then, armed with this, and quite as much at home in the works as the foreman, he went about with lithe steps as cautious as a cat, and, cutting through the bands that connected the wheels of the lathes with the great shaft that set them in motion, he dragged them down and piled them together till he had collected a goodly heap. This was not accomplished all at once, and with ease, for, setting aside the watchfulness with which the task had to be done, and the care to ensure silence, the bands were heavy, hard to cut, and they had to be borne some distance. Altogether it took Sim Slee a good hour's arduous labour, and he perspired profusely. In fact, it was his habit to take more pains to achieve a bad end than would have sufficed to get a good living twice over. "Phew! it's hot," he muttered in one of his pauses, during which he ran to the nearest door, and listened. "What a slave I am to the cause."