eer very big rat, eh?"

"Yes," I said, "if I can."

"And you want me," he whispered, with his eyes starting with suppressed
mirth, "to make you that theer big trap."

"Yes."

"Then I'll do it," he whispered, becoming preternaturally solemn.
"Stop! 'Tween man an' man you know."

He held out his great black hard hand, which I grasped.

"On my honour, Pannell, I'll never tell a soul that you made the trap,
not for ten years, or twenty, if you like."

"That's enough," he said, giving his leg a slap. "Haw, haw, haw, haw,
haw! Here, give us the model. When dyer want it, lad?"

"As soon as ever you can get it made, Pannell."

He looked at me with his face working, and scraping a hole in the ashes
he buried the trap, seized hammer and pincers, and worked away again,
but stopped every now and then to laugh.

"I say," he said suddenly, "it'll sarve 'em right; but if they knowed as
I did it they'd wait for me coming home and give me the knobsticks. Ay,
that they would."

"But they will not know, Pannell," I said. "It's our secret, mind."

"Hey, but I'd like to see the rat i' the trap!" he whispered, after
exploding with another fit of mirth.

"Let's have the trap first," I said. "I don't know that I shall catch
him then."

"What are you going to bait with?" he said between two fierce attacks
upon a piece of steel.

"Oh, I have not settled that yet!"

"I'll tell 'ee," he whispered with his face working. "Bait it with a
wheel-band."

He roared with laughter again, and if I had had any doubts before of his
understanding that I wanted a very strong man-trap, I had none now.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

SOMETHING FOR ME.

Rash--cruel--unwise. Well, I'm afraid it was all those, but I was only
a boy, and I was stung by the injustice and cowardly cruelty of the
outrages perpetrated on us by the men who earned their bread in our
works; and hence it was, that, instead of feeling any compunction in
doing what I proposed, I was delighted with the idea, and longed for an
opportunity to put it in force.

I was, then, very eager to begin, for the present calm, I felt sure, was
only going before the storm, and after what I had found out I was
anxious to be ready.

Pannell did not keep me waiting long.

Two days after I had made my plans with him I went into his smithy, and
in answer to my inquiring look he said, in a heavy, unmoved way:

"Theer's summut for you hung up i' the forge chimney. She goes hard,
but