I instantly dodged past him, and stood panting while he collected himself. His glasses, without which he was helpless, had flown off, and I saw his eyes, which before had seemed to fill the whole field of the great lenses, mere swollen slits, like a pig’s. He groped about in the utmost consternation as he knelt, pawing the tiles for his lost property.
“Who are you? Wait! I’ll be with you,” he ejaculated excitedly, as his bony hands swept the roof.
I backed out of their reach without replying.
At last he found what he sought, and fitting the rims to his nose, rose to his feet and stared at me.
“Hey, what!” he said—“a sweep! Well!”—and blew out a rumbling grunt, which he checked suddenly, as if he had turned a cock on it.
A moment after, he put his hand into his pocket, and fetching out a dirty fragment of biscuit, held it to me persuasively, as one might lure a colt. Seeing, however, that I still held away from him, he threw the biscuit down in a pet, and stood to canvass me in a baleful manner.
“What do you want?” he snapped out suddenly. “How did you find your way here?”
Still with my eyes on him, I answered, in a husky whisper—
“Don’t you know? Up the closet chimney.”
“Ay,” he said, dropping his own voice in tacit response to the warning in mine, “but not to sweep it?”