y, and the whole
chimney-pot turned over like the opening top of an inkstand.
I remembered the short ladder leaning against the low wall and felt
sure he had arranged his criminal approach long before.

"The collapse of the big chimney-pot ought to have been the culmination
of my chaotic feelings; but, to tell the truth, it produced a sudden sense
of comedy and even of comfort. I could not recall what connected this
abrupt bit of housebreaking with some quaint but still kindly fancies.
Then I remembered the delightful and uproarious scenes of roofs and chimneys
in the harlequinades of my childhood, and was darkly and quite irrationally
comforted by a sense of unsubstantiality in the scene, as if the houses
were of lath and paint and pasteboard, and were only meant to be tumbled
in and out of by policemen and pantaloons. The law-breaking of my companion
seemed not only seriously excusable, but even comically excusable.
Who were all these pompous preposterous people with their footmen and their
foot-scrapers, their chimney-pots and their chimney-pot hats, that they
should prevent a poor clown from getting sausages if he wanted them?
One would suppose that property was a serious thing. I had reached,
as it were, a higher level of that mountainous and vapourous visions,
the heaven of a higher levity.

"My guide had jumped down into the dark cavity revealed by the displaced
chimney-pot. He must have landed at a level considerably lower, for,
tall as he was, nothing but his weirdly tousled head remained visible.
Something again far off, and yet familiar, pleased me about this way
of invading the houses of men. I thought of little chimney-sweeps,
and `The Water Babies;' but I decided that it was not that.
Then I remembered what it was that made me connect such topsy-turvy
trespass with ideas quite opposite to the idea of crime.
Christmas Eve, of course, and Santa Claus coming down the chimney.

"Almost at the same instant the hairy head disappeared into the black hole;
but I heard a voice calling to me from below. A second or two afterwards,
the hairy head reappeared; it was dark against the more fiery part of the fog,
and nothing could be spelt of its expression, but its voice called on me
to follow with that enthusiastic impatience proper only among old friends.
I jumped into the gulf, and as blindly as Curtius, for I was still thinking
of Santa Claus and the traditional virtue of such vertical entrance.

"In every w