I crept back again, holding by the banisters, fancying every now and then that I heard a door open behind me, and yet my feet no more consenting to quicken their motion than if I had been pursued by a murderer in the nightmare. I at length got into the room, groped for a chair, and sat down. No more hurry now. O no! There was plenty of time; and plenty to do in it, for I had to wipe away the perspiration that ran down my face in streams. What was to be done? What _had_ I done? Oh, a trifle, a mere trifle. I had only sneaked into a gentleman's house by the area-window, and pocketed his tablespoons; and here I was, locked and barred and belled in, sitting very comfortably, in the dark and alone, in his drawing-room. Very particularly comfortable. What a capital fellow, to be sure! What an amusing personage! Wouldn't the baronet laugh in the morning? Wouldn't he ask me to stay breakfast? And wouldn't I eat heartily out of the spoons I had stolen? But what name is that? Who calls me a housebreaker? Who gives me in charge? Who lugs me off by the neck? I will not stand it. I am innocent, except of breaking into a baronet's house. I am a gentleman, with another gentleman's spoons in my pocket. I claim the protection of the law. Police! police! My brain was wandering. I pressed my hand upon my wet forehead, to keep down the thick-coming fancies, and determined, for the first time in my life, to hold a deliberate consultation with myself. I was in an awkward predicament--it was impossible to deny the fact; but was there anything really serious in the case? I had unquestionably descended into the wrong area, the right-hand one instead of the left-hand one; but was I not as unquestionably the relation--the distant relation--the very distant relation--of the next-door neighbour? I had been four years absent from his house, and was there anything more natural than that I should desire to pay my next visit through a subterranean window? I had appropriated, it is true, a quantity of silver-plate I had found; but with what other intention could I have done this than to present it to my very distant relation's daughter, and reproach her with her carelessness in leaving it next door? Finally, I was snared, caged, trapped--door and window had been bolted upon me without any remonstrance on my part--and I was now some considerable time in the house, unsuspected, yet a prisoner. The position was serious; but come, suppose the worst, that I was actually laid hold of as a malefactor, and commanded to give an account of myself. Well: I was, as aforesaid, a distant relation of the individual next door. I belonged to nobody in the world, if not to him; I bore but an indifferent reputation in regard to steadiness; and after four years' absence in a foreign country, I had returned idle, penniless, and objectless--just in time to find an area-window open in the dusk of the evening, and a heap of plate lying behind it, within view of the street.