ay."

In this last statement she was perfectly accurate. Bream Mortimer, who
had been aroused by the orchestrion and who had come out to see what was
the matter, had gone away at the rate of fifty miles an hour. He had
been creeping down the passage when he found himself suddenly confronted
by a dim figure which, without a word, had attempted to slay him with an
enormous gun. The shot had whistled past his ears and gone singing down
the corridor. This was enough for Bream. He had returned to his room in
three strides, and was now under the bed. The burglars might take
everything in the house and welcome, so that they did not molest his
privacy. That was the way Bream looked at it. And very sensible of him,
too, I consider.

"We'd better go downstairs," said Jane. "Bring the candle. Not you,
Eustace darling. You stay where you are or you may catch a chill. Don't
stir out of bed!"

"I won't," said Eustace obediently.

Sec. 4

Of all the leisured pursuits, there are few less attractive to the
thinking man than sitting in a dark cupboard waiting for a house-party
to go to bed; and Sam, who had established himself in the one behind the
piano at a quarter to eight, soon began to feel as if he had been there
for an eternity. He could dimly remember a previous existence in which
he had not been sitting in his present position, but it seemed so long
ago that it was shadowy and unreal to him. The ordeal of spending the
evening in this retreat had not appeared formidable when he had
contemplated it that afternoon in the lane; but, now that he was
actually undergoing it, it was extraordinary how many disadvantages it
had.

Cupboards, as a class, are badly ventilated, and this one seemed to
contain no air at all; and the warmth of the night, combined with the
cupboard's natural stuffiness, had soon begun to reduce Sam to a
condition of pulp. He seemed to himself to be sagging like an ice-cream
in front of a fire. The darkness, too, weighed upon him. He was
abominably thirsty. Also he wanted to smoke. In addition to this, the
small of his back tickled, and he more than suspected the cupboard of
harbouring mice. Not once or twice but many hundred times he wished that
the ingenious Webster had thought of something simpler.

His was a position which would just have suited one of those Indian
mystics who sit perfectly still for twenty years, contemplating the
Infinite, but it reduced Sam to an almost imbecile state of boredom.