Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 21

by Unknown

Here ended Mr. Thomson's deposition; and great was the sensation, great the commotion which it excited in the police office. So daring a burglary—so daring an assault. The like had not been heard of for years. In a twinkling, eight or ten men were mustered, lanterned, and bludgeoned; and, headed by a sergeant, were on their march to the scene of robbery.

On arriving at Mr. Thomson's door, they found it fast, and all quiet within. What was to be done? Force open the door? Perhaps some of the villains were still in the house. At any rate, it was proper to see what state things were in.

A smith was accordingly sent for, the lock picked, and the door thrown open, when, headed by the sergeant with a pistol in his hand, in rushed a mob of policemen, a constellation of lanterns, a forest of bludgeons.

The guardians of the night now dispersed themselves over the house; but, to their great surprise, found no trace whatever of the thieves. There appeared to have been nothing disturbed, and the doors and windows remained all fast.

Puzzled by these circumstances, the police had begun to abate somewhat of that zeal with which they had first commenced their search, and were standing together in knots, some in one room and some in another, discussing the probabilities and likelihoods of the case, when those in the doctor's apartment were suddenly startled by a loud snore or grunt, proceeding from the bed, which was followed by a restless movement, and the exclamation—"Thieves, robbers!" muttered in the thick indistinct way of a person dreaming.

In an instant, half a dozen policemen rushed towards the bed, drew aside the curtains, and there beheld the unconscious face of the heroic little doctor just peering out of the blankets, and a section of the red comforter in which his head was entombed in the manner already set forth. We have said that the face on which the astonished policemen now looked was an unconscious one. So it was; for, notwithstanding the grunt he had emitted, the movement he had made, and the exclamations he had uttered, the doctor was still sound asleep; the former having been merely the result of dreamy reminiscences of the past, awakened by an indistinct sense of the presence of some person or persons in the house.

In mute surprise, the police, every one holding his lantern aloft, and thus surrounding the bed with a halo of light, gazed for a second or two on the sleeping Esculapius. They had never, in the course of all their experience, seen a burglar take things so coolly and comfortably. That he should enter a house with the intention of robbing it, and should deliberately strip, go to bed, and take a snooze in that house, was a piece of such daring impudence as they had never heard of before.

It was no time, however, for making reflections on the subject. The business in hand was to secure the villain; and this was promptly done. Finding his sleep so profound as not to be easily disturbed, half a dozen men, lanterns and sticks in hand, flung themselves on the doctor, and, seizing him by the legs and arms, had him in a twinkling on the floor on the breadth of his back. Confounded and bewildered as he was by the extraordinary and appalling circumstances in which he now found himself—surrounded with what appeared to him to be a mob—lanterns flitting about as thick as the sparks on a piece of burned paper—cudgels bristling around him like a paling—and, to complete all, a clamour and hubbub of tongues that might have been heard three streets off;—we say, confounded and bewildered as he was by these sights and sounds, the doctor's pluck did not desert him. Starting to his feet, and not doubting that he was in the midst of a mob of housebreakers, he seized one of the policemen by the throat, when a deadly struggle ensued, in which the doctor's shirt was, in a twinkling, torn up into ribbons; in another twinkling he was floored by a blow from a baton, and rendered incapable of further resistance.

The combat had been a most unequal one, and no other consequence could possibly have arisen from it.

Having knocked down the doctor, the next business, as is usual in such and similar cases, was to get him up again. Accordingly, three or four men got hold of him by the arms and shoulders, and having raised him to his feet, planted him, still senseless, in a chair.