. I stuck it into my belt with a
scrap of spunyarn, feeling that it made me a wonderful piratical figure.
If I had had a lantern I should have been a very king there.

As I sat among the rubbish there, with my pistol (a sailmaker's fid) in
my belt, it occurred to me that I would sit up till everyone had gone
to bed. Then, at eleven or twelve o'clock, I would, I thought, creep
downstairs, to explore all over the house, down even to the cellars. It
shocked me when I remembered that I was locked in. I dared not pick the
lock of that door. My scheme (after all) would have to wait for another
night, when the difficulties would be less. That scheme of mine has
waited until the present time. Though I never thought it, that was the
last hour I was to spend in my uncle's house. I walked past it, only the
other day, thinking how strange my life has been, feeling sad, too, that
I should never know to what room a door at the end of the upper passage
led. Well, I never shall know, now. I was a wild, disobedient young
rogue. Read on.

When I decided not to pick the lock of my door I thought of the
mysterious Mr. Jermyn as an alternative excitement. I crept to my window
to look out at the house, watching it with a sort of terrified pleasure,
half expecting to see a ghost flapping his wings, outside the window.

I was surprised to see that the window of the upper floor (which I knew
to be uninhabited) was open. I watched it, (it was just opposite) hoping
that something would happen. Presently two men came quickly up the lane
from the river. As they neared the house they seemed to me to shuffle in
their walk rather more than vas necessary. It must have been a signal,
for, as they came opposite the door, I saw it swing back upon its
hinges, as it had swung that morning, with Mr. Jermyn. Both men entered
the house swiftly, just as the city churches, one after the other,
chimed half-past nine o'clock. Almost directly afterwards I got the
start of my life. I was looking into the dark upper room across the
lane, expecting nothing, when suddenly, out of the darkness, so terribly
that I was scared beyond screaming, two large red eyes glowed, over
a mouth that trembled in fire. I started back in my seat, sick with
fright, but I could not take my eyes away. I watched that horrid thing,
with my hair stiffening on my head. Then in the room below it, the
luminous figure of an owl gleamed out. That was not the worst, either. I
heard that savage, "