The men uttered a yell, and rushing forward, threw themselves on the smoking heap in the hope of smothering it at once. But Jack applied the torch quickly to various parts. The flames leaped up! The men rolled off in agony. Jack, who somehow had managed to break his chain, hopped after them, showering the blazing straw on their heads, and yelling as never mortal yelled before. In two seconds the whole place was in a blaze, and I beheld Jack actually throwing somersets with his one leg over the fire and through the smoke; punching the heads of the four men most unmercifully; catching up blazing handfuls of straw, and thrusting them into their eyes and mouths in a way that quite overpowered me. I could restrain myself no longer. I began to roar in abject terror! In the midst of this dreadful scene the roof fell in with a hideous crash, and Jack, bounding through the smoking débris, cleared the walls and vanished!
At the same moment I received a dreadful blow on the side, and awoke—to find myself lying on the floor of my bedroom, and our man-servant Edwards furiously beating the bed-curtains, which I had set on fire by upsetting the candle in my fall.
“Why, Master Robert,” gasped Edwards, sitting down and panting vehemently, after having extinguished the flames, “wot have you been a-doin’ of?” I was standing speechless in the midst of my upset chair, table, and books, glaring wildly, when the man said this.
“Edwards,” I replied, with deep solemnity, “the mystery’s cleared up at last. It has been all a dream!”
“Wot’s been all a dream? You hain’t bin a bed all night, for the clo’se is never touched, an’ its broad daylight. Wot has bin up?”
I might have replied, that, according to his own statement, I had been “up,” but I did not. I began gradually to believe that the dreadful scenes I had witnessed were not reality; and an overpowering sense of joy kept filling my heart as I continued to glare at the man until I thought my chest would rend asunder. Suddenly, and without moving hand, foot, or eye, I gave vent to a loud, sharp, “Hurrah!”
Edwards started—“Eh?”
“Hurrah! hurrah! it’s a Dream!”
“Hallo! I say, you know, come, this won’t—”
“Hurrah!”