hange his mind
more openly. He got out his best brandy, he made me throw away the
cigar I was smoking, and opened a fresh box. He was a
convivial-looking party, with a red moustache, and a very humorous face
(not unlike Tom Emmett's), and from that moment I laid myself out to
attack him on his convivial flank. But he wasn't a Rosenthall, Bunny;
he had a treble-seamed, hand-sewn head, and could have drunk me under
the table ten times over.

"'All right,' I thought, 'you may go to bed sober, but you'll sleep
like a timber-yard!' And I threw half he gave me through the open
window, when he wasn't looking.

"But he was a good chap, Ewbank, and don't you imagine he was at all
intemperate. Convivial I called him, and I only wish he had been
something more. He did, however, become more and more genial as the
evening advanced, and I had not much difficulty in getting him to show
me round the bank at what was really an unearthly hour for such a
proceeding. It was when he went to fetch the revolver before turning
in. I kept him out of his bed another twenty minutes, and I knew every
inch of the business premises before I shook hands with Ewbank in my
room.

"You won't guess what I did with myself for the next hour. I undressed
and went to bed. The incessant strain involved in even the most
deliberate impersonation is the most wearing thing I know; then how
much more so when the impersonation is impromptu! There's no getting
your eye in; the next word may bowl you out; it's batting in a bad
light all through. I haven't told you of half the tight places I was
in during a conversation that ran into hours and became dangerously
intimate towards the end. You can imagine them for yourself, and then
picture me spread out on my bed, getting my second wind for the big
deed of the night.

"Once more I was in luck, for I had not been lying there long before I
heard my dear Ewbank snoring like a harmonium, and the music never
ceased for a moment; it was as loud as ever when I crept out and closed
my door behind me, as regular as ever when I stopped to listen at his.
And I have still to hear the concert that I shall enjoy much more. The
good fellow snored me out of the bank, and was still snoring when I
again stood and listened under his open window.

"Why did I leave the bank first? To catch and saddle the mare and
tether her in a clump of trees close by: to have the means of escape
nice and handy before I went to work.