“‘Hullo, up there!’ cried a voice from below.
“We craned our heads over the edge, and there was a man, dressed, as far as we could make out, in evening dress, and standing in the middle of the grass plot. We kept quiet.
“‘Hullo!’ he shouted again. ‘How do you feel yourself? Pretty comfortable, eh? Ha! ha! You London rogues thought we were green in the country. What’s your opinion now?’
“We both lay still, though feeling pretty considerably small, as you may imagine.
“‘It’s all right; I see you.’ he continued.
“‘Why, I have been waiting behind that lilac bush every night for the last week, expecting to see you. I knew you couldn’t resist going up that ladder, when you found the windows were too much for you.—Joe! Joe!’
“‘Yes, sir,’ said a voice, and another man came from among the bushes.
“‘Just you keep your eye on the roof, will you, while I ride down to the station and fetch up a couple of constables?—Au revoir, gentlemen! You don’t mind waiting, I suppose?’ And Colonel Morley—for it was the owner of the house himself—strode off; and in a few minutes we heard the rattle of his horse’s hoofs going down the avenue.
“Well, sir, we felt precious silly, as you may imagine. It wasn’t so much having been nabbed that bothered us, as the feeling of being caught in such a simple trap. We looked at each other in blank disgust, and then, to save our lives, we couldn’t help bursting into laughter at our own fix. However, it was no laughing matter; so we set to work going around the roof, and seeing if there was a likely water-pipe or anything that might give us a chance of escape. We had to give it up as a bad job; so we sat down again, and made up our minds to the worst. Suddenly an idea flashed into my head, and I groped my way over the roof until I felt wood under my feet. I bent down and found that the colonel had actually forgotten to secure the padlock! You will often notice, as you go through life, that it is the shrewdest and most cunning man who falls into the most absurd mistakes; and this was an example of it. You may guess that we did not lose much time, for we expected to hear the constables every moment. We dropped through into the lumber-room, slipped downstairs, tore open the library shutters, and were out and away before the astonished groom could make out what had happened. There wasn’t time enough to take any little souvenir with us, worse luck. I should have liked to have seen the colonel’s face when he came back with the constables and found that the birds were flown.”
“Did you ever come across the colonel again?” I asked.