During the first few hours which had elapsed after Colin had retired to his ghostly-look-ing dormitory, it was in vain he tried to coax and persuade himself to sleep. That fantastical deity, Somnus, seemed determined to contradict his wishes; and therefore he lay with his eyes wide open, counting how many chinks he could see between the tiles over his head, and listening to the musical compliments which passed between some friendly tom and tabby cats, whose tails and backs were evidently elevated in a very picturesque manner outside the ridge above him.
It could not be far off one o'clock, when a very distinct sound, as of something stirring below stairs, reached his ears. Though by no means naturally timid, the young man's heart suddenly jumped as though taking a spring from a precipice. Possibly the noise might be occasioned by the rats taking advantage of this untimely hour of the night to make free with Mr. Veriquear's bones; or the cats outside were in pursuit of the aforesaid rats; or the wind was making itself merry somehow amongst the bottles; or the doors or the shutters were undergoing a process of agitation from the same cause. Whatever might originate the sound, however, it was now repeated more distinctly. There was evidently on the premises something alive as well as himself. Was it possible that he could have got into a wrong place, and that they meditated murdering him for the sake of his body? He thought of a pitch-plaster being suddenly stuck over his mouth by some unseen hand, as he lay there on his back in the dark. It was horrible, and the conceit aroused him to determination. He cautiously slipped out of bed, and, clad in nothing more than his stockings and shirt, groped his way blindly to the step-ladder, which he silently descended.
Having reached the floor of the room below, he for the first time bethought himself that he had no weapon of defence, not even a common stick. But the great bone-heap was hard by, and from such armoury he soon possessed himself with the thigh-bone of a horse, which he contrived, without material disturbance, to draw out from amongst a choice collection of other similar relics. Again the noise which had alarmed him was repeated, and carried conviction to Colin's mind that Mr. Veriquear's precautions against robbers were more needful than he had previously believed; for that there were thieves about the premises he now no more doubted than he doubted his own existence. Determined to resist the knaves, and, grasping his bony cudgel with uncommon fervour, he placed himself in an offensive attitude, and stood prepared for he knew not what.
Not the famous fighting gladiator of antiquity, nor yet the modest statue dubbed Achilles in Hyde Park, the admiration and delight of our astonished countrymen and women, looks more threatening and heroic than did Colin, as, clad in the simple but classic drapery of his under-garment, he brandished a tremendous bone, and defied his unseen foe.
At that moment the fragmentary skull of some old charger, which lay on the windowsill at the farther end of the warehouse, seemed to become partially and very mysteriously illuminated, while the shadowy form of a man standing hard by became also indistinctly visible amidst the gloom. Colin maintained his standing in breathless silence, with his eyes steadily fixed upon the figure.
In the course of a few moments it turned slowly round, and began to advance gravely towards him, but whether or not with any intention of accosting him either by word or blow, he could not yet divine. Shortly it reached within arm's length of him, and was about to address doubtless some very mysterious speech to his ear, when the thought flashed on the young man's mind like lightning that now or never was the time; so raising his drumstick of a bone, he took aim, and, before a single protest against his measure could be entered, nearly felled the intruder to the earth.
“Don't strike!—don't strike!” cried the individual thus unexpectedly attacked. “I'm Veriquear!—I'm Veriquear!”
“Certainly,” thought Colin, “you are very queer indeed!”—for he instantly recognised the voice as that of his employer, “I'm very sorry—”
“All right!—quite right!” said Veriquear, drawing a dark-lantern from a pocket behind him, and throwing a bundle of rays like a bunch of carrots on the figure of his assistant. “It was decidedly your business to do as you have done; and I'm very much obliged to you—”
“You are very welcome,” interrupted Colin.