As I said, I was becoming drowsy with looking so long at the black cap
at the top of my float. Perhaps it was the whirr and hum of the
machinery, and the faint sound of plashing water; even the buzz and
churr and shriek of the steel upon the fast spinning stones may have had
something to do with it. At any rate I was feeling sleepy and stupid,
when all at once I was wide-awake and listening excitedly, for the
shrieking of blade held upon grindstone ceased, and I heard a voice that
was perfectly familiar to me say:

"Tell 'ee what. Do it at once if you like; but if I had my wayer I'd
tie lump o' iron fast on to that theer dorg's collar and drop 'im in
dam."

"What good ud that do?" said another voice.

"Good! Why we'd be shut on him."

"Ay, but they'd get another."

"Well, they wouldn't get another boy if we got shut o' this one," said
the first voice.

"But yow wouldn't go so far as to--"

The man stopped short, and seemed to give his stone a slap with the
blade that he was grinding.

"I d'know. He's a bad un, and allus at the bottom of it if owt is found
out."

"Ay, but yow mustn't."

"Well, p'r'aps I wouldn't then, but I'd do something as would mak him
think it were time to go home to his mother."

My face grew red, then white, I'm sure, for one moment it seemed to
burn, the next it felt wet and cold. I did not feel sleepy any longer,
but in an intense state of excitement, for those words came from the
window just above my head, so that I could hear them plainly.

"It's all nonsense," I said to myself directly after. "They know I'm
here, and it's done to scare me."

Just then the churring and screeching of the grinding steel burst out
louder than ever, and I determined to go away and treat all I had heard
with silent contempt. Pulling up my line just as a fisher will, I threw
in again for one final try, and hardly had the bait reached the bottom
before the float bobbed.

I could not believe it at first. It seemed that I must have jerked the
line--but no, there it was again, another bob, and another, and then a
series of little bobs, and the float moved slowly off over the surface,
carrying with it a dozen or so of blacks.

I was about to strike, but I thought I would give the fish a little more
time and make sure of him, and, forgetting all about the voices
overhead, I was watching the float slowly gliding away, bobbing no
longer, but with the steady motion that follows if a good fish