"Why, an honest merchant's house," said I, "and he traffics in calicoes."
"Look ye, Dick Ryder," says he, sitting down on the stairs, "I may be dullard, but rip me if I know how you stand in this!"
"Why," says I, "you need only know where you stand, Irons, and that's pretty sure. You know me."
He stared at me a moment, and then said he, "Well, I'll empty old Nunky of his spanks, and we'll settle afterwards," and he resumed his journey.
Now, what I had arranged with the apprentice was that I should knock upon the window when the time was come, at which he would spring in with cries of alarm and fury, falling upon the rascals that had dared break into the merchant's house. At which Irons and I were to make off, and the old gentleman, rising in terror from his bed, should discover us in flight, and his deliverer George, full-armed, in possession. Yet it did not fall out quite in this way, owing, as I believe, to Old Irons's muddled head and his stopping on the stairs.
At anyrate, we were no sooner come to the hall, after Irons had visited two rooms, than we were surprised by the figure of the old gentleman moving down the staircase in his night-dress and a large blunderbuss in his hand.
"Stand!" says he, seeing Irons in the faint light. "Stand, rogue, or I fire!"
Old Irons uttered a curse, and, edging into the shadows, put up an arm to slip the catches of the window. But his knuckles fell on it with a rap as he withdrew the catch, and immediately after there was a loud, shrill cry, the window fell open, and there was our peacock in the midst, calling in his falsetto,—
"Surrender, or I will blow a hole in you! Surrender, by—!"
I could have broken out laughing at the sight, only the situation promised to grow risky. For Old Irons, taken aback at this, and never very particular when on his lay, jumped up sharply and smashed at t'other with his pistol-butt; while, to make confusion worse, the old man in the night-cap let off his blunderbuss. Such a screeching arose as would have astonished a churchyard of ghosts, for the truth was, old Nunky hit George somewhere in his hinderparts, and simultaneously down came Irons's blow on his head. That set his finger to work on the trigger of the pistol I had given him, and ere I was aware, something had took me in the big toe, and set me cursing.