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Page 34
"No," said the fellow, with sanctimonious seriousness; "but with your
permission I should like to try them on, when we get to Dover. I
couldn't try them well walking on this tipsy craft's deck, you know."
"No," answered Israel, "and the beach at Dover ain't very smooth either.
I guess, upon second thought, you had better not try 'em on at all.
Besides, I am a simple sort of a soul--eccentric they call me--and don't
like my boots to go out of my sight. Ha! ha!"
"What are you laughing at?" said the fellow testily.
"Odd idea! I was just looking at those sad old patched boots there on
your feet, and thinking to myself what leaky fire-buckets they would be
to pass up a ladder on a burning building. It would hardly be fair now
to swop my new boots for those old fire-buckets, would it?"
"By plunko!" cried the fellow, willing now by a bold stroke to change
the subject, which was growing slightly annoying; "by plunko, I believe
we are getting nigh Dover. Let's see."
And so saying, he sprang up the ladder to the deck. Upon Israel
following, he found the little craft half becalmed, rolling on short
swells almost in the exact middle of the channel. It was just before the
break of the morning; the air clear and fine; the heavens spangled with
moistly twinkling stars. The French and English coasts lay distinctly
visible in the strange starlight, the white cliffs of Dover resembling a
long gabled block of marble houses. Both shores showed a long straight
row of lamps. Israel seemed standing in the middle of the crossing of
some wide stately street in London. Presently a breeze sprang up, and
ere long our adventurer disembarked at his destined port, and directly
posted on for Brentford.
The following afternoon, having gained unobserved admittance into the
house, according to preconcerted signals, he was sitting in Squire
Woodcock's closet, pulling off his boots and delivering his dispatches.
Having looked over the compressed tissuey sheets, and read a line
particularly addressed to himself, the Squire, turning round upon
Israel, congratulated him upon his successful mission, placed some
refreshment before him, and apprised him that, owing to certain
suspicious symptoms in the neighborhood, he (Israel) must now remain
concealed in the house for a day or two, till an answer should be ready
for Paris.
It was a venerable mansion, as was somewhere previously stated, of a
wide and rambling disorderly spaciousness, built, for the most part, of
weather-stained old bricks, in the goodly style called Elizabethan. As
without, it was all dark russet bricks, so within, it was nothing but
tawny oak panels.
"Now, my good fellow," said the Squire, "my wife has a number of
guests, who wander from room to room, having the freedom of the house.
So I shall have to put you very snugly away, to guard against any chance
of discovery."
So saying, first locking the door, he touched a spring nigh the open
fire-place, whereupon one of the black sooty stone jambs of the chimney
started ajar, just like the marble gate of a tomb. Inserting one leg of
the heavy tongs in the crack, the Squire pried this cavernous gate wide
open.
"Why, Squire Woodcock, what is the matter with your chimney?" said
Israel.
"Quick, go in."
"Am I to sweep the chimney?" demanded Israel; "I didn't engage for
that."
"Pooh, pooh, this is your hiding-place. Come, move in."
"But where does it go to, Squire Woodcock? I don't like the looks of
it."
"Follow me. I'll show you."
Pushing his florid corpulence into the mysterious aperture, the elderly
Squire led the way up steep stairs of stone, hardly two feet in width,
till they reached a little closet, or rather cell, built into the
massive main wall of the mansion, and ventilated and dimly lit by two
little sloping slits, ingeniously concealed without, by their forming
the sculptured mouths of two griffins cut in a great stone tablet
decorating that external part of the dwelling. A mattress lay rolled up
in one corner, with a jug of water, a flask of wine, and a wooden
trencher containing cold roast beef and bread.
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