nd myself lying
on my face on the other side of the stream in the garden, with the old
gardener standing over me. I was tolerably scared. He collared me and
took me up the garden into a sort of paved yard, and placed me between a
dog kennel, occupied by a tremendous mastiff, and a pump, just outside
the reach of the dog's chain. The dog seemed to treat me with the most
utter contempt. I do not think he would have hurt me, as he simply
walked up and down and sniffed a bit, and then laid down and went to
sleep. As I stood on one side I had a view of the kitchen or scullery
with the servants, and on the other side through an open doorway in the
wall, I had a view of the lawn and flower garden, and the glass casements
of the dining room.

I was kept standing there for more than two hours, when my captor, the
old gardener, came and had a look at me, and went into the house and
returned with a stout red-faced man, with no hat and a white handkerchief
round his neck, who went into the house. It had got dark by this time,
and the lights were lit; he presently returned, and the cowardly old
brute, took me by the collar and almost choked me, and pressed his great
coarse knuckles into my neck, and tried to hurt me as much as he could.
I should have liked to have had him to myself for a little time. I know
his poor old shins would have known it. He fairly dragged me into the
house and through a glass door into the dining room, where there were at
least ten or twelve ladies and gentlemen at dessert. I was taken to the
end of the table, where a tall, white-haired old gentleman sat who was
very deaf, and I was questioned by two or three of them, and one
gentleman who looked like a clergyman, began to lecture me and said how
wicked it was to come into a gentleman's garden to steal the fruit. One
young lady said, "Oh, Pa, that cannot be, there is no fruit now." From
questions by one and the other I had to tell them everything; the usher's
going courting seemed to rather amuse the young people. After being
seriously talked to I was allowed to go, and was taken out into the front
hall, when one of the young ladies came out with a bunch of grapes and
some figs and thrust into my hand, and at the side door by the stables I
was met by one of the maid servants with a lump of pudding. I very soon
made my way down Falcon Lane to the High Street and turned into Church
Street, and as I passed old Battersea Church I knew it was nine o'