his sides were sore. When he had
quite exhausted himself--which took some time, for he laughed as slowly
as he thought and spoke--he sat himself comfortably with his back to the
house, put his legs upon the bench, then his apron over his face, and
fell sound asleep.

How long he slept, matters not; but it was for no brief space, for
when he awoke, the rich light had faded, the sombre hues of night were
falling fast upon the landscape, and a few bright stars were already
twinkling overhead. The birds were all at roost, the daisies on the
green had closed their fairy hoods, the honeysuckle twining round the
porch exhaled its perfume in a twofold degree, as though it lost its
coyness at that silent time and loved to shed its fragrance on the
night; the ivy scarcely stirred its deep green leaves. How tranquil, and
how beautiful it was!

Was there no sound in the air, besides the gentle rustling of the
trees and the grasshopper's merry chirp? Hark! Something very faint and
distant, not unlike the murmuring in a sea-shell. Now it grew louder,
fainter now, and now it altogether died away. Presently, it came again,
subsided, came once more, grew louder, fainter--swelled into a roar. It
was on the road, and varied with its windings. All at once it burst into
a distinct sound--the voices, and the tramping feet of many men.

It is questionable whether old John Willet, even then, would have
thought of the rioters but for the cries of his cook and housemaid,
who ran screaming upstairs and locked themselves into one of the old
garrets,--shrieking dismally when they had done so, by way of rendering
their place of refuge perfectly secret and secure. These two females did
afterwards depone that Mr Willet in his consternation uttered but one
word, and called that up the stairs in a stentorian voice, six distinct
times. But as this word was a monosyllable, which, however inoffensive
when applied to the quadruped it denotes, is highly reprehensible when
used in connection with females of unimpeachable character, many persons
were inclined to believe that the young women laboured under some
hallucination caused by excessive fear; and that their ears deceived
them.

Be this as it may, John Willet, in whom the very uttermost extent of
dull-headed perplexity supplied the place of courage, stationed himself
in the porch, and waited for their coming up. Once, it dimly occurred
to him that there was a kind of door to the house, which had a l