"Chimbley's on fire!" somebody else shouted, having just caught the word chimney, and everybody began to run back to the house.
"No, you idiots!" roared Lally; "but, by my sowl, if it isn't Turly's head that's perked up on the chimbley as if it was Cromwell's head on Newgate!"
Screams followed. Nurse Nancy, who was of the party, dropped on the road, and Walsh had to stop and hold her.
"Up the chimney!" she groaned. "Heavens! how are we to get him down? There isn't a ladder long enough!"
"Aisy, ould woman!" said Lally. "We'll get him down the way he got up. It's an inside job."
And away he trudged to the house with a goodly following, including Nancy herself, who soon found her feet when she heard that there was a cure for the catastrophe.
How the rescuing party blundered about the upper story, and at last found the right room, need not be related.
The door was shaken, battered, assaulted in every possible manner, but the rusty key had got stuck half-way across the lock and would not stir. In the end the door had to be taken off the hinges, and when it was removed the children made a very sooty appearance as the result of their struggle for liberty.
Turly was like a real sweep from squeezing himself up and down the chimney, and Terry had got her gold curls sprinkled with soot, the result of putting them into the grate when she looked up the chimney after Turly.
The men laughed heartily when they heard the children's story of their adventure, and Nurse, as usual, groaned and scolded at first, but afterwards relented and gave them a good dinner, having prepared them for it by a bath and clean clothing.