"No matter! He's a public nuisance, and he must be got rid of. There are often men wandering on the moor who would be glad to buy a small dog like Scorpion. They'd very likely give us a shilling for him. Then we'd drop the shilling into Mrs. Cameron's purse. Don't you see? She'd never know how it got there. Then, you understand, it would really have been Mrs. Cameron who sold Scorpion."
"Oh, delicious!" exclaimed Fly. "She'd very likely spend the money on postage stamps to send round begging charity letters."
"So Scorpion would have done good in the end," propounded David. "But come along now, Fly. The difficult thing is to catch the little brute."
It was still very early in the morning, and the corridors and passages were quite dark. David and Fly, however, could feel their way about like little mice, and they soon found themselves outside the door of the green room, which was devoted to Mrs. Cameron.
"Do you feel this?" said David, putting out his hand and touching Fly. "This is a long towel; I'm winding part of it round my hand and arm. I don't want to get hydrophobia, like poor Jane. Now, I'm going to creep into Mrs. Cameron's room so quietly, that even Scorpion won't wake. I learned how to do that from the black people in Australia. You may stand there, Fly, but you won't hear even a pin fall till I come back with Scorpion."
"If I don't hear, I feel," replied Fly. "My heart does thump so. I'm just awfully excited. Don't be very long away, Dave."
By this time David had managed to unhasp the door. He pushed it open a few inches, and then lay flat down on his face and hands. The next moment he had disappeared into the room, and all was profoundly still. Fly could hear through the partly open door the gentle and regularly kept-up sound of a duet of snoring. After three or four minutes the duet became a solo. Still there was no other sound, not a gasp, not even the pretense of a bark. More minutes passed by. Had David gone to sleep on the floor? Was Scorpion dead that he had ceased to snore?
These alarming thoughts had scarcely passed through her mind before David rejoined her.
"He's wrapped up in this towel," he said. "He's kicking with his hind legs, but he can't get a squeak out; now come along."