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{{frabfp214.png}} || eagles of the sky ||

--if those lurking shadowy figures knew their
business and managed it as they should, he would
be singing quite a different air before a great
while, perhaps interlarding his humming with
a choice variety of expletives concerning the
cruelty of Fate.

A few more steps and he would have reached
the well--then what must take place? Perk was
asking himself as he crouched there, his muscles
set and his breath coming in little noiseless gasps--he
resembled nothing so much as a cat ready
poised to make a deadly leap upon a fat robin
struggling with a worm that it had pulled halfway
out of its hole.

There was not one chance in twenty that the
man could actually reach the well, drop the
bucket down, switch it around in order to induce
water to enter and then make use of the windlass
so as to draw it to the top, without discovering
the presence of those two huddled forms; so
Perk did not deceive himself in the least with
any extravagant hopes of the affair passing off
smoothly and their plans being uninterrupted.

Now the man had set his pail down and was
giving the well bucket a switch as though intending
to dislodge any stale water it might contain.
From this little incident Jack understood
that undoubtedly the man must himself have
left the water they had used up in the bucket

[[214]]

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