Leaving the others to search the house, and the females to bewail their loss, which was really a very severe one, Grimaldi beckoned a Mr. King, one of the persons who had accompanied him home from the theatre, and suggested in a whisper that they should search the garden together.
King readily complied, and he having armed himself with a heavy stick, and Grimaldi with an old broadsword which he had hastily snatched from its peg on the first alarm, they crept cautiously into the back garden, which was separated from those of the houses on either side by a wall from three to four feet high, and from a very extensive piece of pasture-land beyond it at the bottom, by another wall two or three feet higher.
It was a dark night, and they groped about the garden for some time, but found nobody. Grimaldi sprang upon the higher wall, and looking over the lower one, descried a man in the act of jumping from the wall of the next garden. Upon seeing another figure the robber paused, and taking it for that of his comrade in the darkness of the night, cried softly, "Hush! hush! is that you?"
"Yes!" replied Grimaldi, getting as near him as he could. Seeing that the man, recognising the voice as a strange one, was about to jump down, he dealt him a heavy blow with the broadsword. He yelled out loudly, and stopping for an instant, as if in extreme pain, dropped to the ground, limped off a few paces, and was lost in the darkness.
Grimaldi shouted to his friend to follow him through the back gate, but seeing, from his station on the wall, that he and the thief took directly opposite courses, he leapt into the field, and set off at full speed. He was stopped in the very outset of his career, by tumbling over a cow, which was lying on the ground, in which involuntary pantomimic feat he would most probably have cut his own head off with the weapon he carried, if his theatrical practice as a fencer had not taught him to carry edge tools with caution.
The companion having taken a little run by himself, soon returned out of breath, to say he had seen nobody, and they re-entered the house, where by the light of the candle it was seen that the sword was covered with blood.
The constable of the night had arrived by this time; and a couple of watchmen bearing large lanterns, to show the thieves they were coming, issued forth into the field, in hopes of taking the offenders alive or dead—they would have preferred the latter;—and of recovering any of the stolen property that might be scattered about. The direction which the wounded man had taken having been pointed out, they began to explore, by very slow degrees.
Bustling about, striving to raise the spirits of the party, and beginning to stow away in their proper places such articles as the thieves had condescended to leave, one of the first things Grimaldi chanced to light upon was Miss Hughes's shawl.
"Maria's gift, at all events," he said, taking it up and giving it a slight wave in his hand; when out fell a lozenge-box upon the floor, much more heavily than a lozenge-box with any ordinary lozenges inside would do.
Upon this the mother clapped her hands, and set up a louder scream than she had given vent to when she found the house robbed.