reader's heart is now standing still with apprehensionness on our account, but I do not want it to stop altogether, so I will tell you that we were not all going to be murdered in our beds, or pass peacefully away in our sleeps with angel-like smiles on our young and beautiful faces. Not at all. What really happened was this. Some time must have elapsed between our closing our eyes in serene slumber and the following narrative: Oswald was awakened by Dicky thumping him hard in the back, and saying in accents of terror[Pg 48]—at least, he says not, but Oswald knows what they sounded like: [Pg 48] 'What's that?' Oswald reared up on his elbow and listened, but there was nothing to listen to except Dicky breathing like a grampus, and the giggle-guggle of the rain-water overflowing from the tub under the window. 'What's what?' said Oswald. He did not speak furiously, as many elder brothers would have done when suddenly awakened by thumps. 'That!' said Dicky. 'There it is again!' And this time, certainly, there it was, and it sounded like somebody hammering on the front-door with his fists. There is no knocker to the plain-living, high-thinking house. Oswald controlled his fears, if he had any (I am not going to say whether he had or hadn't), and struck a match. Before the candle had had time to settle its flame after the first flare up that doesn't last, the row began again. Oswald's nerves are of iron, but it would have given anybody a start to see two white figures in the doorway, yet so it was. They proved to be Alice and Dora in their nighties; but no one[Pg 49] could blame anyone for not being sure of this at first. [Pg 49] 'Is it burglars?' said Dora; and her teeth did chatter, whatever she may say. 'I think it's Mrs. Beale,' said Alice. 'I expect she's forgotten the key.' Oswald pulled his watch out from under his pillow.
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