"Oh, gracious! where's the gentleman?"
"The gentleman?" cried everybody.
"Yes, the lodger. The highly respectable gentleman who took the first-floor only a couple of hours ago. Oh, gracious, where is he? and a capital lodger too, who paid in advance, and didn't mind extras at all."
"But what lodger, mother?" said Julia.
"Oh, mum, I forgot—I forgot," said Martha, suddenly coming into the room, "I forgot to tell Miss Julia, mum, that an old gentleman had taken the first floor, mum, and gone to bed in the next room."
"In bed in the next room?" said Sir Richard Blunt.
"I am lost!" thought Todd. "I am lost now, I am quite lost! and the only thing I can do is to kill as many of them as possible, and then blow my own brains out."
"Do you mean to say, ma," said Julia, "that there's a gentleman asleep in the next room in the bed?"
"Lor!" said Ben, "you don't mean to say that, Mrs. Hardman?"
"He may be in bed, but if he is asleep," said Sir Richard, "he is a remarkable man; of course if we had had the least idea of such a thing, we should not have come up here; but here we were shown by the servant."