With a curious distrust of that loud-voiced father of his, the boy refrained from saying anything about his extraordinary guests; so that nothing of the matter came to the ears of Sir Leopold Kershaw.
Some three nights later little Teddy Kershaw had a dream. He thought in his dream that he had just sat down comfortably to dinner, and that in some extraordinary fashion the dining-room was open to the street; and that first one hungry child and then another crept in upon him unawares, and snatched desperately the very food from before him; that although Thomas, the large footman, and Wilkins, the equally large butler, and even his father, Sir Leopold, strove hard to drive the famished mites away, they swarmed thicker and faster—until at last, by some subtle dream-change not to be explained in waking hours, his seat at the table was usurped and he had taken the place of a shivering street-boy, who seemed the hungriest of them all; so that he stood outside the house, among the ragged ones, shivering with cold and hunger. Waking suddenly he still seemed to shiver, and found, to his astonishment, that the window of his room was wide open.
While he was meditating sleepily upon this circumstance a stranger thing happened—the head and shoulders of a man appeared against the light of the sky, and the man himself dropped, with a soft thud, into the room.
Teddy started up in bed and opened his mouth with the full intention of giving vocal effect to his alarm; but in an instant a hand—rough, and not particularly sweet-smelling—had closed over it, and a gruff voice, which seemed in the darkness curiously familiar, whispered huskily in his ear:
"Lie dahn, will yer! If yer so much as breave I'll be the death of yer!"
Teddy Kershaw could see nothing distinctly in the darkness; only the dim form of the man seemed to hover above him. On the man releasing his grip Teddy lay down passively, and tried to breathe as little as possible.
"'Oller, an' I'll be back afore yer can say 'knife' an' do fer yer," whispered the man again. Then, quite noiselessly, he crept to the door and opened it, and glided out into the house.
Master Teddy Kershaw, consumed by curiosity, waited for a few moments and then slipped out of bed and went through the door also. Outside on the stair-case a dim light was burning; and, leaning over the stair-head, Teddy could see the man gliding down and keeping as much as possible within the shadow of the wall. A door creaked on its hinges and the man disappeared.
"LEANING OVER THE STAIR-HEAD, TEDDY COULD SEE THE MAN GLIDING DOWN."