ed, and he crept from behind it and felt the cool, sweet
air of the night on his face.

It seemed to him that he had never known what silence was before--or
darkness. For the door opened into a close box arbor, and no sky could
be seen, or any shapes of things. Dickie felt himself almost bursting
with pride. What an adventure! And he had carried out his part of it
perfectly. He had done exactly what he had been told to do, and he had
done it well. He stood there, on his one useful foot, clinging to the
edge of the door, and it was not until something touched him that he
knew that Mr. Beale and the other men were creeping through the door
that he had opened.

And at that touch a most odd feeling came to Dickie--the last feeling he
would have expected--a feeling of pride mixed with a feeling of shame.
Pride in his own cleverness, and another kind of pride that made that
cleverness seem shameful. He had a feeling, very queer and very strong,
that he, Dickie, was not the sort of person to open doors for the
letting in of burglars. He felt as you would feel if you suddenly found
your hands covered with filth, not good honest dirt, but slimy filth,
and would not understand how you could have let it get there.

He caught at the third shape that brushed by him.

"Father," he whispered, "don't do it. Go back, and I'll fasten it all up
again. Oh! don't, father."

"Shut your mug!" whispered the red-whiskered man. Dickie knew his voice
even in that velvet-black darkness. "Shut your mug, or I'll give you
what for!"

"Don't, father," said Dickie, and said it all the more for that threat.

"I can't go back on my pals, matey," said Mr. Beale; "you see that,
don't yer?"

Dickie did see. The adventure was begun: it was impossible to stop. It
was helped and had to be eaten, as they say in Norfolk. He crouched
behind the open door, and heard the soft pad-pad of the three men's feet
on the stones of the passage grow fainter and fainter. They had woolen
socks over their boots, which made their footsteps sound no louder than
those of padded pussy-feet. Then the soft rustle-pad died away, and it
was perfectly quiet, perfectly dark. Dickie was tired; it was long past
his proper bedtime, and the exertion of being so extra clever had been
very tiring. He was almost asleep when a crack like thunder brought him
stark, staring awake--there was a noise of feet on the stairs, boots, a
blundering, hurried rush. People came rushing past him. Th