"

"Good-night!"

"Now all I've got to do," soliloquized Charlie, "is just to keep awake,
and it is a great deal better than to go to sleep with a string tying your
big toe to the bed-post. Hark, there is some one firing off a gun! Wont I
wake 'em with a blow on my horn!" Here he saw himself, as he visited house
after house, arousing boy after boy. It would be like the falling of a row
of bricks, where the only need is to push over the first one and the whole
set will follow. Every thing, though, depended on the fall of the first
brick. Would Charlie do his part?

"I'll take this story-book about Indians, giants, and fairies," he said,
"into the entry, and that will keep me awake splendid."

It was a book startling enough, and the trouble was that it was too
startling.

After looking at the book a while, Charlie's mind was so peopled with
ferocious giants, Indians on the war-path, fire-breathing dragons, and
ghostly genii, that he transferred them to all the corners of the room,
and especially to that receptacle of shadows, the space under the table,
the very place where his legs were--ugh! Charlie did not like to look at
the book, and, dared not, at the forms under the table! He shut the book
and he shut his eyes. Hark, the clock was saying "Cheer up!" and somebody
in the lane fired a pistol that seemed to say, "Wake up!" Yes, yes, that
was all right, Charlie thought, but--but--he guessed he would close his
eyes just this once--and close them just this once--and close them just
this once--and in a few minutes the champion watchman was fast asleep! In
an hour the clock struck again, and its voice seemed harsh, as if saying,
"Young man, young man, wake up!" The notes had no startling effect on
Charlie. Indeed, he heard them only as a very sweet, musical voice. The
pistols and cannons going off in Water Street reached his ear as mild
little pops. Things went on in this way till morning. About five Charlie
dropped on the floor the book of Indians and dragons, that patiently had
been resting in his lap all night. It roused him. He partially opened his
eyes. Before him was an opened door that led into the parlor, and, sitting
in his chair, he could see the parlor windows, whose curtains were up and
whose panes were brightened by the light in the eastern sky. What did he
see at those windows? Had some of the Indians, imagined to be under
Charlie's table, gone to the outside of the windows, there to look in,
grinning at h