‘It looks sound.’
‘He is as drunk as blazes, captain, I can see. Ah, he has been at the decanters and bottles after the guests have gone.’
‘No doubt about that,’ said Blodget, with a smile; ‘and I don’t mind saying that it was a part of my calculation in this little affair, that the servants would be mostly drunk, and so in too deep a sleep to hear us, or to mind us if they did hear us.’
‘Ah, captain, you know how to act about it, if any one in the world does.’
‘What is to be done with this fellow?’ said one of them.
‘Nothing: let him be. Now furnish yourselves with lighted tapers, and let us set to work.’
Each of the thieves in the course of another moment had a little piece of lighted taper in his hand, and it had the advantage that it could be, by a little pressure of the finger and thumb, stuck on any convenient place in an instant.
‘Now, quick, all of you,’ added Blodget, ‘and you follow me.’
He spoke to the one whose appointed duty it was to do so, and then at two steps at a time Blodget ascended a staircase.
When they got to the first floor landing, Blodget and the man who was with him both stopped, and sitting down on the stairs, they drew rapidly over their boots, each of them a pair of thick worsted socks, so that their footsteps were really quite inaudible after that.