e
adaptation from the last Penny Dreadful lent us by the knife-and-boot
boy?

"Why did you not alarm the house?" he asked.

"'Cos I was afraid," said Harold, sweetly, "that p'raps they mightn't
believe me!"

"But how did you get down here, you naughty little boy?" put in Aunt
Maria.

Harold was hard pressed--by his own flesh and blood, too!

At that moment Edward touched me on the shoulder and glided off through
the laurels. When some ten yards away he gave a low whistle. I replied
by another. The effect was magical. Aunt Maria started up with a shriek.
Harold gave one startled glance around, and then fled like a hare, made
straight for the back door, burst in upon the servants at supper, and
buried himself in the broad bosom of the cook, his special ally. The
curate faced the laurels--hesitatingly. But Aunt Maria flung herself on
him. "O Mr. Hodgitts!" I heard her cry, "you are brave! for my sake do
not be rash!" He was not rash. When I peeped out a second later, the
coast was entirely clear.

By this time there were sounds of a household timidly emerging; and
Edward remarked to me that perhaps we had better be off. Retreat was an
easy matter. A stunted laurel gave a leg up on to the garden wall, which
led in its turn to the roof of an out-house, up which, at a dubious
angle, we could crawl to the window of the box-room. This overland route
had been revealed to us one day by the domestic cat, when hard
pressed in the course of an otter-hunt, in which the cat--somewhat
unwillingly--was filling the title role; and it had proved distinctly
useful on occasions like the present. We were snug in bed--minus some
cuticle from knees and elbows--and Harold, sleepily chewing something
sticky, had been carried up in the arms of the friendly cook, ere the
clamour of the burglar-hunters had died away.

The curate's undaunted demeanour, as reported by Aunt Maria, was
generally supposed to have terrified the burglars into flight, and much
kudos accrued to him thereby. Some days later, however, when he hid
dropped in to afternoon tea, and was making a mild curatorial joke
about the moral courage required for taking the last piece of
bread-and-butter, I felt constrained to remark dreamily, and as it were
to the universe at large, "Mr. Hodgitts! you are brave! for my sake, do
not be rash!"

Fortunately for me, the vicar was also a caller on that day; and it was
always a comparatively easy matter to dodge my long-coated friend