Both men were now in the shed.I made the most desperate efforts to call to mind what tools and other things were left in it which might be used against me.But my agitation confused me.I could remember nothing except my father's big stone-saw, which was far too heavy and unwieldy to be used on the roof of the cottage.Iwas still puzzling my brains, and making my head swim to no purpose, when I heard the men dragging something out of the shed.
At the same instant that the noise caught my ear, the remembrance flashed across me like lightning of some beams of wood which had lain in the shed for years past.I had hardly time to feel certain that they were removing one of these beams before I heard Shifty Dick say to Jerry.
"Which door?"
"The front," was the answer."We've cracked it already; we'll have it down now in no time."Senses less sharpened by danger than mine would have understood but too easily, from these words, that they were about to use the beam as a battering-ram against the door.When that conviction overcame me, I lost courage at last.I felt that the door must come down.No such barricade as I had constructed could support it for more than a few minutes against such shocks as it was now to receive.
"I can do no more to keep the house against them," I said to myself, with my knees knocking together, and the tears at last beginning to wet my cheeks."I must trust to the night and the thick darkness, and save my life by running for it while there is yet time."I huddled on my cloak and hood, and had my hand on the bar of the back door, when a piteous mew from the bedroom reminded me of the existence of poor Pussy.I ran in, and huddled the creature up in my apron.Before I was out in the passage again, the first shock from the beam fell on the door.
The upper hinge gave way.The chairs and coal-scuttle, forming the top of my barricade, were hurled, rattling, on to the floor, but the lower hinge of the door, and the chest of drawers and the tool-chest still kept their places.
"One more!" I heard the villains cry--"one more run with the beam, and down it comes!"Just as they must have been starting for that "one more run," Iopened the back door and fled into the night, with the bookful of banknotes in my bosom, the silver spoons in my pocket, and the cat in my arms.I threaded my way easily enough through the familiar obstacles in the backyard, and was out in the pitch darkness of the moor before I heard the second shock, and the crash which told me that the whole door had given way.
In a few minutes they must have discovered the fact of my flight with the pocketbook, for I heard shouts in the distance as if they were running out to pursue me.I kept on at the top of my speed, and the noise soon died away.It was so dark that twenty thieves instead of two would have found it useless to follow me.
How long it was before I reached the farmhouse--the nearest place to which I could fly for refuge--I cannot tell you.I remember that I had just sense enough to keep the wind at my back (having observed in the beginning of the evening that it blew toward Moor Farm), and to go on resolutely through the darkness.In all other respects I was by this time half crazed by what I had gone through.If it had so happened that the wind had changed after Ihad observed its direction early in the evening, I should have gone astray, and have probably perished of fatigue and exposure on the moor.Providentially, it still blew steadily as it had blown for hours past, and I reached the farmhouse with my clothes wet through, and my brain in a high fever.When I made my alarm at the door, they had all gone to bed but the farmer's eldest son, who was sitting up late over his pipe and newspaper.I just mustered strength enough to gasp out a few words, telling him what was the matter, and then fell down at his feet, for the first time in my life in a dead swoon.
That swoon was followed by a severe illness.When I got strong enough to look about me again, I found myself in one of the farmhouse beds--my father, Mrs.Knifton, and the doctor were all in the room--my cat was asleep at my feet, and the pocketbook that I had saved lay on the table by my side.
There was plenty of news for me to hear as soon as I was fit to listen to it.Shifty Dick and the other rascal had been caught, and were in prison, waiting their trial at the next assizes.Mr.