The wisest thing to be done was to put everything in order for a sudden call, and then sit down and patiently abide the result.  This decision being put into effect, the excited crowd began to thin, and before long, with the exception of those who could render assistance, very few lookers-on remained.  Joan had lingered till the last, and then, urged by the possibility that many of her house-comforts might be needed, she hurried home to join Eve, who had gone before her.

With their minds running upon all the varied accidents of a fight, the girls, without exchanging a word of their separate fears, got ready what each fancied might prove the best remedy, until, nothing more being left to do, they sat down, one on each side of the fire, and counted the minutes by which time dragged out this weary watching into hours.

“Couldn’t ‘ee say a few hymns or somethin’, Eve?” Joan said at length, with a hope of breaking this dreadful monotony.

Eve shook her head.

“No?” said Joan disappointedly.  “I thought you might ha’ knowed o’ some.”  Then, after another pause, struck by a happier suggestion, she said, “S’pose us was to get down the big Bible and read a bit, eh?  What do ’ee say?”

But Eve only shook her head again.  “No,” she said, in a hard, dry voice:  “I couldn’t read the Bible now.”

“Couldn’t ’ee?” sighed Joan.  “Then, after all, it don’t seem that religion and that’s much of a comfort.  By what I’d heard,” she added, “I thought ‘twas made o’ purpose for folks to lay hold on in times o’ trouble.”

CHAPTER XXVII.

It was close upon three o’clock:  Joan had fallen into an uneasy doze and Eve was beginning to nod, when a rattle of the latch made them both start up.

“It can’t be!  Iss, it is, though!” screamed Joan, rushing forward to meet Adam, who caught both the girls in a close embrace.

“Uncle? uncle?” Joan cried.

“All safe,” said Adam, releasing her while he strained Eve closer to his heart.  “We’re all back safe and sound, and, saving Tom Braddon and Israel Rickard, without a scratch ’pon any of us.”

“Thank God!” sighed Eve, while Joan, verily jumping for joy, cried, “But where be they to, eh, Adam?  I must rin, wherever ’tis, and see ’em, and make sure of it with my awn eyes.”

“I left them down to quay with the rest:  they’re all together there,” said Adam, unwilling to lose the opportunity of securing a few minutes alone with Eve, and yet unable to command his voice so that it should sound in its ordinary tone.

The jar in it caught Joan’s quick ear, and, turning, she said, “Why, whatever have ‘ee bin about, then?  What’s the manin’ of it all?  Did they play ’ee false, or how?”

Adam gave a puzzled shake of the head.  “You know quite as much about it as I do,” he said.  “We started, and got on fair and right enough so far as Down End, and I was for at once dropping out the kegs, as had been agreed upon to do, at Sandy Bottom—­”