“Who’s there?” said Mrs. Sniggs.
“Boots!” was the sepulchral reply.
“Is it you, dear—you, Sniggs?”
“If you mean me by saying you, it is me—but I’m not ‘dear’—boots is ‘dear’—Sniggs, did you say? Who’s Sniggs? If he is an able-bodied man, send him down here to bear a hand, will you?” and another crash renewed the terrors of the second story, which sought vent in such loud and repeated shrieks, that even the watchman himself was awakened, and judiciously halting at the distance of half a square, he made his reconnoisance with true military caution, concluding with an inquiry as to what was the matter, that he might know exactly how to regulate his approaches to the seat of war. An idea had entered his mind that perhaps a ghost was at the bottom of all this uproar; and though perhaps as little afraid of mere flesh and blood as most people of his vocation, he had no fondness for taking spectres by the collar, or for springing his rattle at the heels of a goblin, holding it—the principle, and not the ghost—as a maxim that if such folks pay no taxes and are not allowed to vote, they are not entitled to the luxury of an arrest; for the ordinances of the city do not apply to them.
“Even if it is not a ghost nor a sperrit, and I’m not very fond of any sort of sperrits but them that comes in bottles,” said he, having now approached near enough to hear the knocking and to see a dark object in motion at the top of Mr. Sniggs’s steps; “perhaps it’s something out of the menagerie or the museum—something that bites or something that hooks; and I cannot afford to have my precious corporation used up for the benefit of the city’s corporation. The wages is too small for a man to have himself killed into the bargain.”
“But maybe it’s a bird,” continued he, as he caught a glimpse of Peter’s coat-tail fluttering in the wind. “Sho-o-o-o!”
But no regard being paid to the cry, which settled the point that there was no bird in the case—“sho-oo!” being a part of bird language, and only comprehensible by the feathered race—the watchman slowly advanced until he saw that the mysterious being was a man—a little man—apparently leveling a blunderbuss and pulling at the trigger.
“Who said shoe, when it’s boot?” inquired the unknown figure, still seemingly with a gun at its shoulder, and turning round so that the muzzle appeared to point dangerously at the intruder.
“Halloo! don’t shoot—maybe it will go off!” cried the watch, as he ducked and dived to confuse the aim and to avoid the anticipated bullet.
“Don’t shute! I know it, don’t shute—that’s what I want it to do—I’m trying to make it shute with all my ten fingers,” was the panting reply, as the apparently threatening muzzle was lowered for an instant and raised again—“and as for its going off, that’s easy done. What I want, is to make it go on.”