“Heerd a noise,” continued Mr. Giles. “I says, at first, “This is illusion’; and was composing myself off to sleep, when I heerd the noise again, distinct.”
“What sort of a noise?” asked the cook.
“A kind of busting noise,” replied Mr. Giles, looking round him.
“More like the noise of powdering a iron bar on a nutmeg-grater,” suggested Brittles.
“It was when you heerd it, sir,” rejoined Mr. Giles; “but, at this time, it had a busting sound. I turned down the clothes’; continued Giles, rolling back the table-cloth, “at up in bed; and listened.”
The cook and housemaid simultaneously ejaculated “Lor!” and drew their chairs closer together.
“I heerd it now, quite apparent,” resumed Mr. Giles. “‘Somebody,’ I says, “is forcing of a door, or window; what’s to be done? I’ll call up that poor lad, Brittles, and save him from being murdered in his bed; or his throat,’ I says, “may be cut from his right ear to his left, without his ever knowing it.'”
Here, all eyes were turned upon Brittles, who fixed his upon the speaker, and stared at him, with his mouth wide open, and his face expressive of the most unmitigated horror.
“I tossed off the clothes,” said Giles, throwing away the table-cloth, and looking very hard at the cook and housemaid, “got softly out of bed; drew on a pair of—’
“Ladies present, Mr. Giles,” murmured the tinker.
“—Of shoes, sir,” said Giles, turning upon him, and laying great emphasis on the word; “seized the loaded pistol that always goes upstairs with the plate-basket; and walked on tiptoes to his room. “Brittles,’ I says, when I had woke him, “don’t be frightened!'”
“So you did,” observed Brittles, in a low voice.
“‘We’re dead men, I think, Brittles,’ I says,” continued Giles; “‘but don’t be frightened.'”
“Was he frightened?” asked the cook.
“Not a bit of it,” replied Mr. Giles. “He was as firm—ah! pretty near as firm as I was.”
“I should have died at once, I’m sure, if it had been me,” observed the housemaid.
“You’re a woman,” retorted Brittles, plucking up a little.
“Brittles is right,” said Mr. Giles, nodding his head, approvingly; “from a woman, nothing else was to be expected. We, being men, took a dark lantern that was standing on Brittle’s hob, and groped our way downstairs in the pitch dark,—as it might be so.”
Mr. Giles had risen from his seat, and taken two steps with his eyes shut, to accompany his description with appropriate action, when he started violently, in common with the rest of the company, and hurried back to his chair. The cook and housemaid screamed.
“It was a knock,” said Mr. Giles, assuming perfect serenity. “Open the door, somebody.”
Nobody moved.
“It seemed a strange sort of a thing, a knock coming at such a time in the morning,” said Mr. Giles, surveying the pale faces which surrounded him, and looking very blank himself; “but the door must be opened. Do you hear, somebody?”
Mr. Giles, as he spoke, looked at Brittles; but that young man, being naturally modest, probably considered himself nobody, and so held that the inquiry could not have any application to him; at all events, he tendered no reply. Mr. Giles directed an appealing glance at the tinker; but he had suddenly fallen asleep. The women were out of the question.
“If Brittles would rather open the door, in the presence of witnesses,” said Mr. Giles, after a short silence, “I am ready to make one.”
“So am I,” said the tinker, waking up, as suddenly as he had fallen asleep.
Brittles capitulated on these terms; and the party being somewhat re-assured by the discovery (made on throwing open the shutters) that it was now broad day, took their way upstairs; with the dogs in front. The two women, who were afraid to stay below, brought up the rear. By the advice of Mr. Giles, they all talked very loud, to warn any evil-disposed person outside, that they were strong in numbers; and by a master-stroke of policy, originating in the brain of the same ingenious gentleman, the dogs’ tails were well pinched, in the hall, to make them bark savagely.