r a thousand dollars, provided we let him off, and don't kick
his brains out this time.' The other burglar, who was in that benevolent
frame of mind that Irish whiskey and conscious virtue sometimes produce,
agreed to the suggestion, and Hoskins was therefore unbound and seated
at the table, and told to draw a cheque at once if he had the least
regard for his life. As he was gagged he could not explain to the
burglars the kind feelings that he still had towards them, and the fact
that they could not draw the money on the cheque without being captured
by the police. So he simply signed the cheque, and groaned to think that
the poor burglars were so slow to be reformed in the way that he had
hoped they would be.

[Illustration: "TIED HIM IN A CHAIR."]

"When this business was over, the burglars tied Hoskins's wrists
together again, and then tied him in a chair. Then they set to work to
do all the damage they could do without making too much noise. They tore
the curtains and hacked the piano with knives, and poured a jug of
golden syrup over the carpet. Then they plastered Colonel Hoskins's face
with raspberry jam, and emptied a sack of flour over his head, and went
away, telling him that if he ever again ventured to trifle with the
feelings of poor but self-respecting men, they would put him to death by
slow tortures.

[Illustration: "MADE HIM WASH AT THE PUMP."]

"Hoskins sat in the chair for a couple of hours, till his wife timidly
crept downstairs and released him. It took him a good hour to get the
jam and the flour out of his hair and whiskers, and as Mrs. Hoskins said
that he was in no state to enter a decent bedroom, and made him wash at
the pump in the back yard, he found it a rather cold operation. Perhaps
it was the remarks that Mrs. Hoskins addressed to him during the
operation that irritated him, for she intimated very plainly that he was
no better than a professional idiot, and when a man's hair is stuck
together with jam remarks of this sort from the wife of his bosom seem
to be lacking in tenderness. However that may be, Colonel Hoskins had no
sooner got himself into what his wife condescended to call a state of
comparative decency, than he took down his 'Notice to Burglars,' and
tore it into a thousand pieces. That day he had an electric burglar
alarm put into his house; he bought the savagest dog that he could find,
and he stopped the payment of the cheque, which, however, was never
presented. He cont