“It didn’t sound like my voice at all, as I kept on shrieking, and groaning, and crying for help, too frightened to move, though I’ve often thought since as a little twisting on my part would have set me loose, to try and climb up again. But, bless you, no; I could do nothing but shout and cry, with the noise I made sounding hollow and stifly, and the heat and smoke coming up so as to nearly choke me over and over again.
“I knew fast enough now that I had come down a chimbley where there had been a clear fire, and now some one had put lumps of coal on, and been breaking them up; and in the fright I was in I could do nothing else but shout away till my voice got weak and wiry, and I coughed and wheezed for breath.
“But I hadn’t been crying for nothing, though; for soon I heard some one shout up the chimbley, and then came a deal of poking and noise, and the smoke and heat came curling up by me worse than ever, so that I thought it was all over with me, but at the same time came a whole lot of hot, bad-smelling steam; and then some one knocked at the bricks close by my head, and I heard a buzzing sound, when I gave a hoarse sort of cry, and then felt stupid and half asleep.
“By-and-by there was a terrible knocking and hammering close beside me, getting louder and louder every moment; and yet it didn’t seem to matter to me, for I hardly knew what was going on, though the voices came nearer and the noise plainer, and at last I’ve a bit of recollection of hearing some one say ‘Fetch brandy,’ and I wondered whether they meant Barkby, while I could feel the fresh air coming upon me. Then I seemed to waken up a bit, and see the daylight through a big hole, where there was ever so much rough broken bricks and mortar between me and the light; and next thing I recollect is lying upon a mattress, with a fine gentleman leaning over me, and holding my hand in his.
“‘Don’t,’ I says in a whisper; ‘It’s all sutty.’ Then I see him smile, and he asked me how I was.
“‘Oh, there ain’t no bones broke,’ I says; ‘only Barkby’ll half kill me.’
“‘What for?’ says another gentleman.
“‘Why, coming down the wrong chimbley,’ I says; and then, warming up a bit with my wrongs, ‘But ’twarn’t my fault,’ I says. ‘Who could tell t’other from which, when there warn’t no numbers nor nothink on ’em, and they was all alike, so as you didn’t know which to come down, and him a swearing acause you was so long? Where is he?’ I says in a whisper.
“One looked at t’other, and there was six or seven people about me; for I was lying on the mattress put on the floor close aside a great hole in the wall, and a heap o’ bricks and mortar.
“‘Who?’ says the first gent, who was a doctor.