A clamorous consultation, spoken in half a dozen different dialects, now ensued, as to how the housebreaker was to be disposed of.
"We'll teuk him to the office, to pe surely," said a hard-faced, red-whiskered Celt. "What else you'll do wi' ta roke that'll proke into shentleman's hoose, and go to ped as comfortable as a lort. Dam's impitence."
"Soul, and it's to the office we'll have him, by all manner o' means, and that in the twinkling of a bedpost," chimed in a tall raw-boned Irishman, with a spotted cotton handkerchief tied so high around the lower part of his face as to bury his mouth. "The thaif o' the world. It's a free passage across the wather he'll now get, anyhow, bad luck to him."
"Fat, tiel, would you tak the man stark naked through the street?" said a little thick-set Aberdonian. "It would be verra undecent. There's a bit cloaky there; throw that aboot his shouthers, and then we'll link him awa like a water-stoup."
"Od, ye'll no fin that so easy, I'm thinkin!" exclaimed a lumpish, broad-shouldered young fellow. "He's as fat's a Lochrin distillery pig. He's a hantle mair like his meat than his wark, that ane."
Hitherto the unfortunate subject of these remarks had been able to take no part in what was passing; but, stupefied by the blow he had received, which had covered his face with blood, and further confounded by the various circumstances of the case—his previous debauch, the violence and suddenness of his awakening, and the extraordinary clamour and uproar that surrounded him—he sat, with drooping head and confused senses, without uttering a word.
His physical energies, however, gradually recovering a little, he began to stare about him with a look of bewilderment; and at length, fixing his eye on the Irishman, who happened to be standing directly opposite him, he addressed him with a—
"Pray, friend, what is the meaning of all this?"
"Faiks, my purty fellow, and it's yourself that might be after guessing that with your own 'cute genius," replied Paddy. "Haven't you half a notion, now, of what you have been about the same blessed night?"
"I have a pretty good notion that my house has been broken into by a parcel of ruffians," said the doctor, "and that I have been half, perhaps wholly, murdered by you."