They had been walking near enough to the file of carriers for Stockdale to perceive that, when they got into the road to the village, they split up into two companies of unequal size, each of which made off in a direction of its own. One company, the smaller of the two, went towards the church, and by the time that Lizzy and Stockdale reached their own house these men had scaled the churchyard wall, and were proceeding noiselessly over the grass within. ‘I see that Owlett has arranged for one batch to be put in the church again,’ observed Lizzy. ‘Do you remember my taking you there the first night you came?’ ‘Yes, of course,’ said Stockdale. ‘No wonder you had permission to broach the tubs—they were his, I suppose?’ ‘No, they were not—they were mine; I had permission from myself. The day after that they went several miles inland in a waggon-load of manure, and sold very well.’ At this moment the group of men who had made off to the left some time before began leaping one by one from the hedge opposite Lizzy’s house, and the first man, who had no tubs upon his shoulders, came forward. ‘Mrs. Newberry, isn’t it?’ he said hastily. ‘Yes, Jim,’ said she. ‘What’s the matter?’ ‘I find that we can’t put any in Badger’s Clump to-night, Lizzy,’ said Owlett. ‘The place is watched. We must sling the apple-tree in the orchet if there’s time. We can’t put any more under the church lumber than I have sent on there, and my mixen hev already more in en than is safe.’ ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Be quick about it—that’s all. What can I do?’ ‘Nothing at all, please. Ah, it is the minister!—you two that can’t do anything had better get indoors and not be zeed.’ While Owlett thus conversed, in a tone so full of contraband anxiety and so free from lover’s jealousy, the men who followed him had been descending one by one from the hedge; and it unfortunately happened that when the hindmost took his leap, the cord slipped which sustained his tubs: the result was that both the kegs fell into the road, one of them being stove in by the blow. ‘’Od drown it all!’ said Owlett, rushing back. ‘It is worth a good deal, I suppose?’ said Stockdale. ‘O no—about two guineas and half to us now,’ said Lizzy excitedly. ‘It isn’t that—it is the smell! It is so blazing strong before it has been lowered by water, that it smells dreadfully when spilt in the road like that! I do hope Latimer won’t pass by till it is gone off.’