"Nor I neither!" exclaimed Mrs. Ducklow, turning pale. "Suppose the house should take fire! or burglars should break in! I don't wonder you was so particular about the matches! Dear me! I shall be frightened to death! I'd no idee 't was to be such dangerous property! I shall be thinking of fires and burglars!—O-h-h-h!"
The terrified woman uttered a wild scream; for just then a door flew suddenly open, and there burst into the room a frightful object, making a headlong plunge at the precious papers. Mr. Ducklow sprang back against the table set for his supper with a force that made everything jar. Then he sprang forward again, instinctively reaching to grasp and save from plunder the coupon bonds. But by this time both he and his wife had become aware of the nature of the intrusion.
"Thaddeus!" ejaculated the lady. "How came you here? Get up! Give an account of yourself!"
Taddy, whose abrupt appearance in the room had been altogether involuntary, was quite innocent of any predatory designs. Leaning forward farther and farther, in the ardor of discovery, he had, when too late to save himself, experienced the phenomenon of losing his balance, and pitched from the stairway into the kitchen with a violence that threw the door back against the wall with a bang, and laid him out, a sprawling figure, in scanty, ghostly apparel, on the floor.
"What ye want? What ye here for?" sternly demanded Mr. Ducklow, snatching him up by one arm, and shaking him.
"Don't know," faltered the luckless youngster, speaking the truth for once in his life. "Fell."
"Fell! How did you come to fall? What are you out o' bed for?"
"Don't know,"—snivelling and rubbing his eyes. "Didn't know I was."
"Got up without knowing it! That's a likely story! How could that happen, you Sir?" said Mrs. Ducklow.
"Don't know, 'thout 't was I got up in my sleep," said Taddy, who had on rare occasions been known to indulge in moderate somnambulism.