Suddenly there came a sharp rap upon the door, then a pause; but its quick reverberations were unheeded by the prostrate man.
Again the thuds were administered to the echoing panels, and still no response.
“Uncle, I say, uncle!” cried a man’s voice. “Uncle!” and the shout was followed by a vigorous kick upon the woodwork; “Uncle! Uncle!”
At this last appeal Raikes stirred uneasily, and as the assault was continued with still greater stress, he managed finally to stagger uncertainly to his feet.
As he raised his head to listen to the clamor without, the meanness of his face, emphasized by the smudges of the coal in which it had so recently reposed, presented itself to the scandalized eye in the wall.
The miserable creature depicted the last degree of absurdity, and yet the ugly pathos of it all would have moved to pity.
“Uncle, I say!” and at the sound of the voice, which he recognized as that of his lusty nephew, Raikes, with a return of his accustomed intelligence, which had received its kindly repairs at the hands of nature during his brief coma, cried sharply: “Well, well!”
“Ah!” exclaimed the voice outside with an unmistakable accent of relief in its tone as it added, with unlettered eagerness: “It’s me—Bob!”
However, if his reawakened animation had revived his deadened spirit, it also restored the appreciation of his disaster, as, with a glance of vivid comprehension, he looked from the coal heap to the register, toward which he leaped with astonishing agility.
In an instant the inner recess was secure; in another the radiator was replaced, and Raikes, proceeding to the door, raised the bar, unlocked the catches and exclaimed, “Enter!”