Miss Grimshaw awoke. The candle had burnt itself out, and a ray of early morning sunlight was peeping in through the blinds.
She could still hear the clank of the old stage-coach—or was it imagination? She rubbed her eyes.
Yes, there it came again. The window was half open, and the sound came from the kitchen garden below—a metallic sound that had broken through her sleep, filling her dreams with pictures of the Blidah coach and the illustrious Tartarin, with his guns, hunting-knives, and powder-horns.
She sprang out of bed, went to the window, pulled aside the curtains, and looked out.
In the kitchen garden down below she saw an object that had once been a man—more desperate even than the immortal Tartarin. The once-man was on all-fours; he could not get on his feet because his ankles were hobbled together with a piece of rope. He could not untie the rope because on each of his hands was firmly tied a boxing-glove. Try to untie a knot with your hands encased in boxing-gloves, if you wish to realise nightmare helplessness in its acutest form. A tin stable bucket was tied down over the head of the figure, and, as a last artistic touch one of old Ryan's cow's tails was tied to a band round the waist and hung down behind.
The creature was trying to get out of the kitchen garden. Miss Grimshaw could not help thinking of the blind and hopeless antics of an insect imprisoned under a wine-glass as she watched. The garden, strongly railed in, formed a sort of pound hopelessly ungetoutable.
The whole thing seemed so like a joke that the girl at the window for a moment did not connect it with the obvious. Opening the window more, she leaned further out.
"Hi!" cried Miss Grimshaw. "What are you doing there?"
The thing rose up on its knees, the boxing-gloves, like great paws, seized the bucket on either side, in a frantic endeavour to wrench it off, failed, and then from the bucket broke a volume of language that caused the listener to draw hastily in and shut the window.
She guessed.