After that things happened quickly. A light instantly cleaved the darkness, and he saw an open door, a candle held aloft, and the strangest figure holding it. At the same time a deep voice said:

“Stand just where you are! Move another step and I fire!”

“Don’t fire, please,” said Jeremy. “It’s only me!”

The figure confronting him was a woman’s. It was, in fact, quite easily to be recognized as that of Miss Lisbeth Mackenzie, who had lived next door to the Coles for years and years and years—ever since, in fact, Jeremy could remember—and waged, like Betsy Trotwood, incessant warfare on boys, butchers and others who walked across her lawn, whose only merit had been that she hated Aunt Amy, and told her so. She was an eccentric old woman, eccentric in manners, in habits and appearance, but surely never in her life had she looked so eccentric as she did now. With her white hair piled untidily on her head, her old face of a crow pallid behind her hooked and piercing nose, over her nightdress she had hurriedly gathered her bed-quilt—a coat, like Joseph’s, of many and varied colours—and on her feet were white woollen stockings.

In the hand that did not hold the candle she flourished a pistol that, even to Jeremy’s unaccustomed and childish eyes, was undoubtedly a very old and dusty one.

They must have been a queer couple to behold had there been any third person there to behold them: the small boy, dishevelled, hatless, his collar burst, his stockings down over his ankles, and the old woman in her patchwork quilt. Miss Mackenzie, having expected to behold a hirsute and ferocious burglar, was considerably surprised. She held the candle closer, then exclaimed:

“Why, you’re a little Cole from next door.”

“Yes,” said Jeremy. “I thought this was our pantry and it was yours. Wait a minute. I’m going to sneeze.” This he did, and then hurried on breathlessly: “Please let me go now and I’ll come in to-morrow and explain everything and pay for the cups and saucers. But I don’t want them to know that I’ve been out.”

“Here, pick the bits up at once,” she said, “or somebody will be cutting themselves. It’s just like that maid, having it out on the table. That settles it. She shall leave to-morrow.”

She put down the candle and pistol on the table, and then watched him while he picked up the pieces. They were not very many.

“And now please may I go?” said Jeremy again. “I didn’t mean to come into your house. I didn’t really. I’ll explain everything to-morrow.”

“No, you won’t,” said Miss Mackenzie grimly. “You’ll explain here and now. That’s a pretty thing to come breaking into somebody’s house after midnight, and then thinking you can go out just as easily as you came in.... You can sit down,” she said as a kind of afterthought, pointing to a chair.

“It isn’t anything really,” said Jeremy very quickly. “I mean that it isn’t anything you need mind. They dared me to run round the cathedral twice when the clock struck twelve, and I did it, and ran home and climbed into your house by mistake.”

“Who’s they?” asked Miss Mackenzie, gathering her quilt more closely about her.

“Bill Bartlett and Ernest Sampson,” he said, as though that must tell her everything. “The Dean’s son, you know; and I don’t like him, so when he dares me to anything I must do it, you see.”

“I don’t see at all,” said Miss Mackenzie. “It was a very wicked and silly thing to do. There are plenty of people I don’t like, but I don’t run round the cathedral just to please them.”

“Oh, I didn’t run round it to please him!” Jeremy said indignantly. “I don’t want to please him, of course. But he said that I wouldn’t do it and he would, whereas, as a matter of fact, I did and he didn’t.”

“As a matter of fact,” picked up from the drawing-room, was just then a very favourite phrase of his.

“Well, you’ll get it hot from your father,” said Miss Mackenzie, “when he knows about it.”

“Oh, but perhaps he won’t know,” said Jeremy eagerly. “The house looks all dark, and perhaps Hamlet didn’t wake up.”

“Hamlet?” repeated Miss Mackenzie.

“Yes; that’s my dog.”

“Oh, that hateful dog that sometimes looks through the railings into my garden as though he would like to come in and tear up all my flowers. He’d better try, that’s all.”

“He isn’t hateful,” said Jeremy. “He’s a splendid dog. He had a fight a little while ago, and was nearly killed, but he didn’t care. He just grinned.”

“He won’t grin if I get hold of him,” said Miss Mackenzie. “Now what are you going to do about it when your father knows you’ve been out like this?”

“Oh, he mustn’t know!” said Jeremy. “You’re not going to tell him, are you?”

“Of course I am,” said Miss Mackenzie. “I can’t have little boys climbing into my house after midnight and then do nothing about it!”

“Oh, please, please!” said Jeremy. “Don’t do anything this time. I promise never to do it again. It would be dreadful if father knew. It’s so important that the holidays should end well. They began so badly. You won’t tell him, will you?”

“Of course I will,” said Miss Mackenzie. “First thing in the morning. I shall ask him to whip you and to allow me to be present during the ceremony. There’s nothing that I love like seeing little boys whipped—especially naughty little boys.”

For a moment Jeremy thought that she meant it. Then he caught sight of her twinkling eye.

“No, you won’t,” he said confidently. “You’re just trying to frighten me. But I’m not frightened. I go back to school day after to-morrow, so they can’t do much anyway.”

“If I let you off,” she said, “you’ve got to promise me something. You’ve got to promise me that you’ll come and read to me twice every day during next holidays!”

“Oh, Lord!”

Jeremy couldn’t be quite sure whether she meant it or not. How awful if she did mean it! Still, a bargain was a bargain. He looked at her carefully. She seemed very old. She might die before next holidays.

“All right,” he said; “I promise. I don’t read very well, you know.”

“All the better practice for you,” she answered. Her eye mysteriously twinkled above the bed-quilt.

She let him go then, even assisting him from behind out of the pantry window. He had a look and a smile at her before he dropped on the other side. She looked so queer, with her crabbed face and untidy hair, under the jumping candle. She nodded to him grimly.

Soon he was at his own window and through it. Not a sound in the house. He crept up the stairs. The same wild snore met him, rumbling like the sleeping soul of the house. Everything the same. To him all those terrors and alarms, and they had slept as though it had been one moment of time.

He opened his own door. Hamlet’s even, whining breathing met him. Not much of a watchdog. Never mind. How tired he was! How tired! He flung off his clothes, stood for a moment to feel the cold air on his naked body, then his nightshirt was over his head.

The bed was lovely, lovely, lovely. Only as he sank down a silver slope into a sea of red and purple leaves a thought went sliding with him. The Dean’s Ernest had funked it! The Dean’s Ernest had funked it! Let us never forget! Let us ... Plunk!