“What is it, Peter?” I asked.
“It’s the stalk of a cabbage,” he answered. “I’ve scooped out the inside and filled it with tow. We’ll set fire to one end, and blow the smoke through the keyhole.”
“Whose keyhole, Peter?”
“An old witch’s that I know of. She’ll be in such a rage! It’ll be fun to hear her cursing and swearing. We’d serve the same to every house in the row, but that would be more than we could get off with. Come along. Here’s a rope to tie her door with first.”
I followed him, not without inward misgivings, which I kept down as well as I could. I argued with myself, “I am not doing it; I am only going with Peter: what business is that of anybody’s so long as I don’t touch the thing myself?” Only a few minutes more, and I was helping Peter to tie the rope to the latch-handle of a poor little cottage, saying now to myself, “This doesn’t matter. This won’t do her any harm. This isn’t smoke. And after all, smoke won’t hurt the nasty old thing. It’ll only make her angry. It may do her cough good: I dare say she’s got a cough.” I knew all I was saying was false, and yet I acted on it. Was not that as wicked as wickedness could be? One moment more, and Peter was blowing through the hollow cabbage stalk in at the keyhole with all his might. Catching a breath of the stifling smoke himself, however, he began to cough violently, and passed the wicked instrument to me. I put my mouth to it, and blew with all my might. I believe now that there was some far more objectionable stuff mingled with the tow. In a few moments we heard the old woman begin to cough. Peter, who was peeping in at the window, whispered—
“She’s rising. Now we’ll catch it, Ranald!”
Coughing as she came, I heard her with shuffling steps approach the door, thinking to open it for air. When she failed in opening it, and found besides where the smoke was coming from, she broke into a torrent of fierce and vengeful reproaches, mingled with epithets by no means flattering. She did not curse and swear as Peter had led me to expect, although her language was certainly far enough from refined; but therein I, being, in a great measure, the guilty cause, was more to blame than she. I laughed because I would not be unworthy of my companion, who was genuinely amused; but I was, in reality, shocked at the tempest I had raised. I stopped blowing, aghast at what I had done; but Peter caught the tube from my hand and recommenced the assault with fresh vigour, whispering through the keyhole, every now and then between the blasts, provoking, irritating, even insulting remarks on the old woman’s personal appearance and supposed ways of living. This threw her into paroxysms of rage and of coughing, both increasing in violence; and the war of words grew, she tugging at the door as she screamed, he answering merrily, and with pretended sympathy for her sufferings, until I lost all remaining delicacy in the humour of the wicked game, and laughed loud and heartily.
Of a sudden the scolding and coughing ceased. A strange sound and again silence followed. Then came a shrill, suppressed scream; and we heard the voice of a girl, crying:
“Grannie! grannie! What’s the matter with you? Can’t you speak to me, grannie? They’ve smothered my grannie!”