the old man’s excitement seemed to die down a little and he lay still, apparently quite exhausted. He kept repeating, however, what he had been shouting a moment before.
“It’s my watch,” he insisted over and over in a broken whisper. “Let me go, it’s my watch.”
He lay quiet finally, and Billy and Sally, both quite worn out, leaned limply against either side of the bench.
“Will this horrible night ever end?” thought Billy. “Is there anything left now that can still happen?”
It seemed almost in answer to his unspoken words that there came again a noise above them. It was no faint creaking this time, but the unmistakable sound of running feet, the banging of a door and the slam of a window thrown suddenly wide open. There was a loud shout in the wood outside to the right of them, it was answered immediately by a second, this time from the left, and there was a heavy rustling and crashing as of somebody running at headlong speed through the underbrush. There was a quick, breathless silence, then, above them, the sound of a sharp metallic click.
