“Yes, sar, I done knows now,” and with a grin he banged the door, mounted his box and drove me somewhere, and I alighted, paid my fare, and heard him depart, for I could not see him, or the house either, except with the eye of faith, but of course it was mine, and I groped my way through the gate and up to the front door, to which I tried to fit my night-key, in vain, and after fumbling awhile at the key hole, and trying a shutter to see if it was unfastened, I was hunting for the bell knob, when suddenly a window from above was opened; there was a clicking sound, and then the sharp ring of a pistol broke the midnight stillness. I was not hit, but a good deal scared, and yelled out:
“For Heaven’s sake, Cilly, what do you mean by firing away at a chap like this?”
“John Logan, is that you? We thought it was a burglar. What are you here for?” some one called from the window, while at the same moment the gas flashed up in the hall and showed me where I was.
Not at my house at all, but at the large boarding house at the upper end of the street, kept by a dashing grass widow. Hastily explaining my mistake, I said good night to Bob Sawyer, one of the boarders, whose loud laugh discomfited me somewhat as I felt my way into the street and started toward home.
This time I was sure I was right by the trees near the gate, but the front door was gone—moved, and not wishing to venture into unknown regions, I concluded to try the bath-room door, for our rooms were adjoining it, and I could easily speak to Cilly without alarming her. So I tried it, and after floundering over piles of rubbish, and tearing my trousers on broads full of nails, and plunging up to my knees in what seemed to be a muddy ditch, and which smelled awfully, I suddenly found myself plump in the cistern, with the water up to my chin; at the same time I heard a succession of feminine shrieks, conspicuous among which was Cilly’s voice, crying out:
“Oh, we shall all be murdered. It is a burglar. Throw something at him.”
And they did throw—first a soap dish, then the poker, then the broom, and lastly a pair of my old boots.
“Cilly, Cilly!” I screamed; “are you mad? It’s I, John, drowning in the cistern.”
Then such a Babel as ensued; such a scrambling down stairs, and opening of doors, and thrusting out of tallow candles into the darkness. But I was out of the cistern by this time, and, wet as a drowned rat, confronted Cilly in her night-gown and crimping-pins, and asked her “What the deuse was up?”
“Oh, John!” she sobbed; “everything is up; the drain,” (that explained the smell), “the floor, and the pump, and the walk, and I’ve had such a dreadful time, and mother’s down with the rheumatism, and Jane has sprained her ankle, and Mary has gone, and I have got such a cold, and the town is full of burglars, and I thought you were one, and I wish we hadn’t repaired, it’s all so nasty and awful.”