"If she has a blunderbuss, and fires," said I, "you must duck your
head, remember; but if she springs the rattle we must cut and run."
"Will her blunderbuss be loaded, do you think?" asked Jem. "Mother says
the one in _their_ room isn't; she told me so on Saturday. But she says
we're never to touch it, all the same, for you never can be sure about
things of that sort going off. Do you think Mrs. Wood's will be loaded?"
"It may be," said I, "and of course she might load it if she thought she
heard robbers."
"I heard father say that if you shoot a burglar outside it's murder,"
said Jem, who seemed rather troubled by the thought of the blunderbuss;
"but if you shoot him inside it's self-defence."
"Well, you may spring a rattle outside, anyway," said I; "and if hers
makes as much noise as ours, it'll be heard all the way here. So mind,
if she begins, you must jump down and cut home like mad."
Armed with these instructions and our thick sticks, Jem and I crept out
of the house before the sun was up or a bird awake. The air seemed cold
after our warm beds, and the dew was so drenching in the hedge bottoms,
and on the wayside weeds of our favourite lane, that we were soaked to
the knees before we began to force the hedge.
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