I used to lie awake listening to them. One would scurry across the floor wildly overhead, forget something, and run back for it. Another, carrying a burden, would in fright or haste drop it, scamper away as if terrified (oh, good gracious!) and then would dare to go back for it, and roll it away soundingly into safety. I am inclined to think that a certain pleasure was attendant on these dangers, and that among them, as among ourselves, the brave were the gay; for there were among them now—oh, bead-eyed, venturesome spirits!—certain delicate squeakings that had all the effect of laughter. I could have sworn their feet tittered; there was—I do assure you I am speaking the truth—something giggling in their gait.
They were not, I am sure, without their Colchases and Cassandras; but, despite these, they began ere long to have certain celebrations. Go to! Let old White-Whiskers, who foretold calamity, take himself off and lie with his nose on his paws! There are better things in the world than prudence!
Celebrations there certainly were, though of what exact kind I am unable to state; weddings, very likely; town meetings, it may be, with the ladies present and welcome; picnics, in all probability; and christenings, I lean to believe, at which I make little doubt they drank deliriously of dandelion wine. One must not demand too curiously where they got it. I really have no idea. I keep my own well corked. I only know that circumstantial evidence is strongly in favor of the belief that they had it, and that in large quantities. How else is it conceivable they could so far forget our presence and their own risk? For I heard them coming home late one night between the rafters, shortly before dawn, in an openly riotous manner. Prudence they had flung to the winds. Their behavior was wholly ramshackle and reckless. Such squeakings! such tumblings and titterings and scramblings as could only have occurred among those totally oblivious to all danger! Such a drunken dropping of acorns and other picnic viands! with little shrieks from the ladies! Too evidently they had determined to eat and drink and be merry, let come what would.
I could not help laughing myself with them, yet I sobered, too, at such recklessness on their part. This was no mere indiscretion; it was sheer folly.
I have no way of knowing whether any Daniel rose to warn them. If so, he was not heeded. The feast went on uninterrupted. Or, it is possible, too, they had not the requisite education or conscience to enable them to read the moonlight on the rafter wall for writing of an ominous character.
When I wakened in the morning, not a sound or evidence. Like Bottom, it seemed to me that I had had a most rare vision, for daylight had laid a hushing and dispersing hand on them also. Then, suddenly, I knew it all for reality. Not a beady eye among them, of course, that was not closed now; in the daytime twilight of old rafters, all of them, without doubt, slept, dandelion deep, their noses and their whiskers on their tails.
Meanwhile, time and events went forward. Miss Layng, a North-of-Ireland woman who kept house for us, while I attended to the work required of me in my study, appeared before me with a white and sleepless face.
Miss Layng had ominous colored hair, which she heaped each morning in an exact manner above a face in which delicate health, gentleness, and unalterable determination were composite. She stood before me now, like an allegorical figure of Justice, or Commerce, or Law, bearing in one outheld hand a magenta "Dutchman's head" cheese.
"You heard them?"
She spoke with quiet severity.